Abstract
Objective: To evaluate master’s and doctoral thesis studies that were carried out at Turkish universities between 2012, when the Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 was published, and 2021.
Materials and Methods: Master's and doctoral theses that were performed in occupational health and safety, occupational safety, occupational health and safety programs and were registered in the National Thesis Center database of the Council of Higher Education (tez.yok.gov.tr) were evaluated. They were analyzed using parameters such as thesis types, thesis numbers, distribution among universities, fields of activity, research models, writing languages, researcher genders, the provinces in which they were prepared and page ranges.
Results: 1,254 (1,231 master's and 23 doctorate) theses were defended in the field of occupational health and safety. These studies were carried out in 54 different fields of activity, especially in the construction and health sector, using 4 different research models in 3 different departments of 47 universities in 21 cities.
Conclusion: Although it has been found that the postgraduate thesis studies in the field of OHS in Turkey exhibit remarkable similarity with each other in terms of subject, researchers and postgraduate thesis advisors need to make more efforts in terms of originality, subject and method. It is beneficial to establish more doctorate programs in order to increase the number and quality of field-specific scientific studies.