1. Research type:

According to the research purpose, MPA thesis research can be divided into three categories: exploratory research, descriptive research and interpretive approach. Most studies are descriptive and explanatory, but the emphasis is different.

In 104 excellent MPA papers, 27 papers focused on the causes of a phenomenon or problem in public management, revealing the influencing factors and internal laws of the phenomenon. The vast majority of papers still focus on descriptive research, focusing on the systematic description of phenomena and exploring countermeasures to solve problems.

2. Research methods:

According to the different ways of data collection and analysis in the process of writing, the research methods of this paper can be divided into three types: quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and mixed analysis.

It can be seen from the distribution scale diagram of research types that the selection of excellent MPA papers requires more and more research types, and there are more and more mixed analysis combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, and the proportion of mixed analysis and quantitative analysis has increasingly exceeded qualitative analysis. As far as the research samples of 104 excellent MPA papers are concerned, the research methods are gradually changing from qualitative analysis to quantitative and mixed analysis. This means that MPA dissertations are more scientific and rigorous in analysis and argumentation.

3. Specific research methods:

There are four specific research methods: indirect research (literature research, historical-comparative research), experimental research, investigation research and case study. However, the research methods of MPA dissertations are not either-or, and some papers will choose to use one or two research methods comprehensively.

According to statistics, in excellent MPA papers, investigation and research methods are used the most, accounting for 68.3%. Followed by case studies and indirect studies, 54.8% and 47. 1% of the papers used these two methods respectively, and experimental research methods were rarely used.

In particular, due to the nonstandard writing of some papers and inaccurate expression of research methods, the researchers only extracted and counted according to their own research methods, and did not analyze and judge the research methods of each paper, so the accuracy of the data in Table 7 may be insufficient.