Family and Consumer Sciences Graduate Research Productivity in 2018

Abstract

Representatives at 164 universities and colleges in the United States were contacted in June 2019 requesting information on theses and dissertations from family and consumer sciences graduate programs. A total of 33 universities and colleges responded to the request reporting 250 theses, 167 dissertations, and 682 non‐thesis master’s degrees were completed in the area of family and consumer sciences from the reporting universities and colleges. Graduate research topics continue to include the breadth, depth, and interdisciplinary nature of the field of family and consumer sciences and the ability of our research to improve lives.

Family and Consumer Sciences Graduate Research Productivity in 2019

“…Twenty-five institutions responded to this year's request with substantive information. This response is less than the number institutions that participated in the past four years (Kabaci, 2016;Wilmarth, 2017Wilmarth, , 2019. The decrease in participation is likely associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which was disrupting workflow around the world, including institutions of higher education at the time of the data collection.…”

“…While this year’s number is low, it is still larger than the number of non‐thesis master’s degrees from 2012, 2013, and 2015. The largest share of graduate degrees being awarded from family and consumer sciences programs continues to be non‐thesis master’s degrees; this has represented the largest share of degrees since 2014 (Kabaci, 2015, 2016; Wilmarth, 2017, 2018, 2019). Of the 1,001 reported degrees this year, 59.14% of the reported graduate degrees were non‐thesis degrees.…”

“…Human development had 10.28% of the reported theses, the third largest category. The categories of nutrition and dietetics and human development have consistently been the top three categories for master's theses for the past seven years (Kabaci, 2013(Kabaci, , 2014(Kabaci, , 2015(Kabaci, , 2016Wilmarth, 2017Wilmarth, , 2019. There were doctoral dissertations completed in 15 of the 16 subject matter categories, with no doctoral dissertations reported in the area of art and design.…”

“…Nutrition and dietetics was the largest category of thesis titles, comprising 28.97% of reported thesis titles. The second largest category was exercise physiology with 12.62% of master’s theses in 2019; this was a large increase from the 3.5% share the category had for 2018 reported theses (Wilmarth, 2019). Human development had 10.28% of the reported theses, the third largest category.…”

Helping Professors Grow as They Teach and Advise Graduate Students

“…With this last topic in mind, I have included several articles and book reviews in the appendices about teaching and advising graduate students. Many of the articles were developed for a presentation by the Associate Editors at the annual conferences of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (Adams, 2014;Borr, 2016;Delgadillo, 2016;Delgadillo, 2019;DeVaney, 2013;DeVaney, 2014;DeVaney, Delgadillo, Lee, & Spangler, 2017;DeVaney, Spangler, Lee, & Delgadillo, 2018;DeVaney, Wilmarth, Lee, Delgadillo, & Spangler, 2019;Hodges, 2011;Lee, 2014;Lee, 2015;Lee, 2016;Myers, 2014;Myers, 2015;Nielsen, 2011;Nielsen, 2015;Wilmarth, 2019;Wilmarth & Ingram, 2019). The book reviews have been published in FCSRJ to bring awareness of new ideas to our readers all over the world who are busy teaching, mentoring, and conducting research (Efron & Ravid, 2019;Leavy, 2017;Rothstein, 2019;Singh & Lukkarila, 2017;Swaminathan & Mulvihill, 20182018;Terrell, 2015;Yin, 2016).…”