Undergraduate Term Paper Citation Patterns by Disciplines and Level of Course

Abstract

The investigators collected 1775 term papers and projects from students at four institutions: East Texas Baptist University, Oregon State University, Texas A&M University, and Westmar Colege. Undergraduate students did make extensive use of library collections. Use varied by disciplines: the percentage of books to journals almost exactly reverses from the humanities (68% books/19% journals) to the sciences (21% books/65% journals). The social sciences used 57% books and 33% journals. Use of other types of information, such as citations, was fairly constant at 10- 14%. The average number of citations appears to increase from sophomore to junior to senior levels, but differences among disciplines obscure this result.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 35 citations exist upstream.