Quality Evaluation of Academic Thesis Abstracts Based on ANSI / NISO Z39.14 (R2015) Standard: A Case Study

Abstracts are valuable tools in assessing the relevance of documents during information retrieval. Determination of abstract compliance with international standards is one of ways of generating qualified information, reducing costs and establishing aligned coordination with international standards. this study aims to assess persian theses abstracts of different educational levels with ANSI/NISO Z39.14 standard at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) from 2010-2014.
Material and This analytical survey consists of 386 titles of Persian abstracts of master’s, professional doctorate ,and specialized medicine theses abstract of different schools at SBMU from 2010-2014. Standard text of ANSI / NISO Z39.14 is used as a research tool which includes 5 content elements. Stratified sampling using random number table (commensurate with the size) was the method of this study. Descriptive statistics along with Anova test, Chi2 and Tukey’s HSD tests of SPSS 19 software were used for data analysis.
Results showed that there is a significant difference among the consistency of content elements of the standard with theses abstract of different educational levels in different schools using ANOVA and chi-square test while there was insignificant difference between the years 2010 to 2014.
The findings suggest that writing style of thesis abstracts at SBMU, in some content elements, is not in accordance with the standard ANSI/NISOZ39.14 (R2015). Therefore, it is recommended to develop an instruction and a coherent model based on international standards which are mandatory to be followed by all centers in order to improve the writing style.