Bachelor's thesis quality assessment questions

I've noticed a trend in thesis supervision: students (at least at the Bachelor's level) don't know how to write opponent comments.

They write way too positive remarks, miss obvious improvement points (even when specifically assigned a critical role), and generally have a "positivity bias".

Now, it's okay to be positive, don't get me wrong. But at the same time, academic training deals with instilling the spirit of critical thinking. So, we need to learn how to give critical, constructive feedback.

My belief is that the root causes come down to two factors: (1) social desirability bias (=students don't want to criticize their peers' work due to fear of appearing "negative" or "hurting their feelings") and (2) they're unaware of how to properly evaluate research.?

To address the second point, I'm sharing here a list of questions that help assess the quality of academic work, especially bachelor's theses (as these should primarily be literature reviews). These questions can help bring structure to the opponent process, plus they can also help the students assess the quality of their own work.

BACHELOR'S THESIS QUALITY ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS:

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• Does the work identify a plausible research gap?
• Are the RQs clearly understandable? Are they relevant? Can they be answered via a literature review?
• Does the introduction define the key concepts of the study? Are those definitions clear and appropriate?
• Does the title match the content? Does it contain all the key concepts?
• Is the method description clear enough to understand what choices the author made and why? (*if* a method section was included)
• Does the method section contain specific details like search terms used, number of articles found and screened, databases used, screening criteria and so on? (*if* a method section was included)
• Are the references from reputable sources? (Impact Factor above 1, JUFO level 2 or 3)
• Do each of the references clearly address one or more of the RQs?
• Are there enough references to build a solid understanding of the literature?
• In its analysis, does the work compare the findings of different studies? (A practical way to see this is to look if the paragraphs contain references to multiple studies with comparative arguments -- in contrast, if a paragraph only references one work repeatedly, it's not a good sign)
• Does the author exhibit original thinking? (subjective assessment, but you'll notice if the work leaves you thinking, "wow, the author really presented a novel angle to this topic")
• Are there tables and figures that summarize information? Are these the original work of the author?
• Does each result section end with a short synthesis of the findings?
• Does the discussion section briefly summarize the answers to the RQs?
• Does the discussion section list practical implications for relevant stakeholders?
• Does the discussion section mention key limitations?
• How well does the discussion section formulate future research directions, and do those directions form a logical continuum from the current work?
• Does the conclusion clearly summarize the findings?

(The list may not be exhaustive and it's possible that missed some points --- feel free to chime in!)