Evaluating the Quality M.A. Theses for the Fields of Psychology and Education at University Tarbiate Moallem 2004- 2008

This article aims to address this question: how is the quality of M.A. thesis for the fields available in school of psychology and education at Tarbiate Moallem University during 2004- 2008? In order to find the answer, different aspects of a thesis were considered and factors impacting on thesis quality were investigated. These factors include: gender, advisor and supervisor, scientific rank of supervisor and advisor and the year of defending the thesis by the student that the conditions for investigating them were provided. The research method is evaluation and the corpus includes 213 theses defended during 2004- 2008 of M.A. degree in school of psychology and education. We used stratified sampling and under investigation sample composed of 48 defended thesis. In order to collect the data, we used "educational thesis evaluation guidelines". In order to analyze obtained data, descriptive statistical methods such as mean, standard deviation, index, and average were applied. In order to respond to research questions, we used parameter tests including t and f statistical tests. Data analysis shows that investigated thesis totally obtained 78.2% of scores. The thesis of the fields such as educational research, general psychology and educational management obtained the highest rank respectively, but educational technology; curriculum planning and consoling related thesis obtained the lowest rank respectively. total score of thesis had no relationship with the gender of supervisor and advisor and no difference was caused in thesis scores over the time during that 5 years period, but totally, the thesis of available fields (from 7 investigated fields) had scores higher than that of average total (i.e. 15.64 out of 20). It means that average score is not acceptable, although the performance related to different fields and different components’ performance has been different.