Özet:

This study was prepared with the intention of revealing the paradigmatic preferences of the works put forward within the discipline of public relations, which aims to gain a theoretical ground from practice. As a sample, PhD dissertations written under the title "Public Relations" in Turkey (n=219) were taken into consideration. The examined theses were categorized based on the field of expertise, methodology, data collection technique, year, and university codes, and then transferred to the MAXQDA 2022 software package as an Excel table. After conducting the analyses, it was observed that the PhD dissertations written under the title of public relations were mostly in the field of "Public Relations" (n=71) for the purpose of obtaining associate professorship, with the highest production in the year 2021 (n=18). The methodological orientation was found to be predominantly qualitative (N=129), and the data collection technique of choice was primarily the survey method (n=86). Marmara University stood out as the university with the highest number of PhD dissertations written under the title of public relations (n=49). From this point, it can be understood that the dissertations written under the title of public relations tend to prefer the hermeneutic (interpretive) paradigm. It should be noted that this study is limited in scope since it only focuses on PhD dissertations with the title "Public Relations." However, it is considered important as an example for other studies to be conducted in this regard. This is because the paradigmatic preferences of a discipline can significantly reveal the scientific foundation of the relevant discipline.

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