Past dissertations submitted by accountancy students at the University of Malta : an analysis

Abstract

The first dissertations in the Accountancy Department were submitted in 1983 and kept increasing every year. 119 dissertations were submitted in the first six years, from 1983 to 1989, and this number more than tripled, to 360, in the last five years, from 2004 to 2008. Since there were no previous studies focusing on these dissertations, which amount to more than 1000, this dissertation aims to analyse them individually according to their topic, primary research methodology used, gender of the author and the year in which they were submitted. This collected information was used to extract relevant statistics with the use of SPSS and also to index all the dissertations according to their topic. The research was divided in two sections. The first section was the preliminary research, focusing on obtaining an understanding of the subject matter and the statistical tools to be used. The second section, the main research, consisted of going through the dissertations' marks and the overall grades of students from 1994 to 2008 and also going through all the dissertations submitted, from 1983 to 2008. It was established that there is a positive relationship between marks obtained in dissertations and those obtained in the overall grade. Furthermore, it was seen that the subject of accountancy is increasing in its popularity, and the most popular topic is Financial Management. Moreover, the most common primary research methodology used in accounting dissertations was empirical research from private databases. It was also found out that there are trends in both primary research methodologies used and in dissertation topics. Finally, it was proved that there is a significant association between the primary research methodology used and the dissertation topics.