The System of Indicators for Assessing writing coherence in Behavioral Science Thesis

Improving the quality of scientific writing is one of the most important concerns in the current era, receiving special attention among the scientific community members. Dissertations are one of the examples of scientific writing. Identifying features related to thesis writing, especially writing coherence as the heart of writing activities, is considered one of the most basic steps in teaching and developing writing activities. This research identified the system of indicators for measuring the writing coherence in behavioral science theses. In this research, a qualitative approach and an interpretive phenomenological method were used. The key informants were 12 faculty members of the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the University of Tehran who were selected by snowball sampling in 2022; In the ninth interview, the data reached the saturation level, and three more interviews were conducted to be sure. data were collected using a semi-structured interview and were analyzed according to Dickelman and his colleague's Data analysis led to the identification of 61 indicators and their classification in the form of six criteria including: "intratextual coherence", "simple writing", "appearance attractiveness", "writing order", "methodical order" and "sourcing order". The results indicate that compliance with the criteria and indicators identified can significantly contribute to the quality improvement of scientific writing thus making it more valuable. Also, in the end, solutions were presented to improve and enhance the quality of coherence in thesis writing.