Appraisal of masters dissertation of postgraduate students of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Abuja, Nigeria (2015 – 2021)

Abstract

The study is a comparative study of the research output on different programmes of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic (NILDS)/University of Benin Postgraduate Students. Its objective is to identify the pre-existing styles, patterns and relationships of the dissertations. An explanatory case study empirical research method was adopted for the study. Using an adapted methodology of Baggio et al. (2014) and multiple data gathering techniques, data was collected based on the 174 Master’s dissertations submitted for the 6 years under review that were gleaned as follows: 47 (Masters in Legislative Drafting); 44 (Masters in Parliamentary Administration), 6 (Masters in Elections and Party Politics); and 74 (Masters in Legislative Studies). Most of the dissertations used survey research method. This paper found that the abstracts lacked institutional standard; there were no explanations/justifications for non standardization; and research methodology were not identified. No dissertation was submitted in 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. A relatively larger number of dissertations studied National Assembly and FCT. The outcomes of this study can serve as a guide to the Management of NILDS/UNIBEN Postgraduate programmes for key policy decisions and planning. Thus, adoption of electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) by the Institute can also be considered because this is in conformity with global best practices as researchers will be able to maximize and get these vast information resources.