Predicting examiner recommendations on Ph.D. theses

Abstract

This paper investigates relationships between candidate and examiner characteristics, the texts of examiner reports on Ph.D. theses and examiner recommendations made on theses. The data were related to 804 examiner reports on 301 theses submitted at three Australian universities. Thesis topics ranged across ten Broad Fields of Study or discipline areas. Simple bivariate analyses were first undertaken to identify candidate, examiner and university variables significantly related to the examiner recommendation - three candidate variables, examiner location and, in some cases, the university attended were identified. Next, these variables were regressed on examiner recommendation. The text cate..