Sources of Data for the Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) Dissertation Search Tool

All dissertations for our Dissertation Search Tool were pulled from open access university repositories that are free for public use. At this time, this database contains 17,935 Doctor of Education (EdD) dissertations from 88 colleges and universities. To start, EdD dissertations were pulled from institutions that are members of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED). However, while we are still focusing our initial data collection on EdD dissertations from CPED member schools, we have also begun adding dissertations from additional colleges and universities that are not members of the CPED consortium. For example, when collecting data from a repository that contains multiple campuses of a university system (i.e., the University System of Ohio or The California State University System), we collect dissertations from both CPED member and non-member institutions. To understand our methodologies for collecting dissertations for the database, please read below.

To find dissertations that follow CPED’s Dissertation in Practice (DiP) model, initially we started collecting dissertations from member schools that were published after the institution joined CPED. However, this approach does not account for the fact that it takes time for schools to implement CPED’s Framework, and that each school integrates CPED’s frameworks and principles into their curriculum in their own way, including allowing students to complete a DiP or an applied capstone project as opposed to a traditional doctoral dissertation. To account for this diversity of dissertation paradigms and objectives, and in the spirit of CPED’s own approach of developing frameworks that embrace each EdD programs’ strengths while upholding a core scholar-practitioner model, we decided to expand our data collection criteria. We are now including dissertations that were published from CPED member institutions before they joined the CPED consortium.

As we continue to add more dissertations to the database, we will revisit and collect additional dissertations from CPED member schools for which we initially only collected dissertations starting after they joined CPED. In addition, once we have collected data from as many CPED member institutions as possible, we will start collecting dissertations from non-CPED member schools as well to ensure this tool is as comprehensive as possible. Finally, our goal is to continually update the tool as universities publish new open access EdD dissertations and capstone projects.

Due to the breadth and depth of topics within this database, users of this search tool who are interested specifically in dissertations that follow the DiP model may want to search for approaches that the CPED advocates students use when completing an EdD DiP, including action research, improvement science, and evaluation.

In order for an EdD dissertation to be included in the database, it must be public with a full PDF version of the dissertation available for download.

Dissertations from institutions that only publish their students’ work online using a third party repository that requires a membership to access are not included in the tool. In addition, dissertations that are under embargo, for which the PDF is not yet available for open access download, are also not included in the tool. These dissertations may be added in the future once their embargo expires.

The following data represents the current database statistics for this search tool (Last Database Update: November 5, 2025).