The Master Thesis in Psychology – between theory, methods and diagnoses

Abstract

In this paper, we outline three tendencies concerning the current state of psychology: (1) That psychology is increasingly becoming a-theoretical, (2) That psychology is increasingly becoming a quantitative science, and (3) That psychology is becoming more diagnostic in nature. We discuss these tendencies by taking a closer look at descriptions of all master theses from the six different institutions in Denmark that offered psychological study programmes between 2014 and 2019. In total, 4830 descriptions have been organised and categorised. We have done this by using a mixed-methods approach that combines a quantitative sentiment analysis with a qualitative approach that looks at smaller extracts of the sample. The results give surprising perspectives on all three tendencies since our analysis shows a rather large use of theory in the theses, that there is a very clear orientation towards qualitative methods in the theses and that the use of diagnoses varies considerably across universities.