| Summary: | Background: Master's level education could strengthen the efforts to sustain and retain professionals in health and social care by providing possibilities of career development. The master's education thesis process allows students to demonstrate their research competence, which could be one answer to enhancing research competence in clinical practice. This research examines what kind of research methods have been used in the master's level health care education theses in Finland. Methods: 1056 master's theses in health care educations in Finland in 2017-2018 were analyzed with the document analysis and categorized as qualitative, quantitative, literature reviews and other methods. Results: 30% of theses were conducted with qualitative and 12 % with quantitative methods. 6 % were literature reviews while the most were categorized in the other methods (52%). Different surveys were the most widely used method (32%) and interviews (20%) for data gathering among this category but several others, like workshops, Learning Cafes, observations, SWOT analysis, benchmarking, and brainstorms were mentioned. Conclusions: Results could be partially explained with the context of the study, but at the same time they raise a critical question and need for future research.
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