On four common Philippine thesis topics, studies from Philippine institutions account for between 0.6 and 2.5 per cent of the world’s literature. That ratio is the most useful number a Chapter 2 can carry, because it converts the vaguest sentence in Philippine thesis writing — “few studies have been conducted in the local setting” — into a claim with evidence behind it.
The four worked counts
Each row below is a single query against the OpenAlex index, run on 16 August 2026, restricted to works published from 2016 onward whose title or abstract matches the phrase. The Philippine column additionally restricts to works with at least one Philippine institutional affiliation.
| Topic phrase | Philippine-affiliated works | Works worldwide | Philippine share | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| academic procrastination | 90 | 5,586 | 1.6% | OpenAlex, 16 Aug 2026 |
| financial literacy | 626 | 55,732 | 1.1% | OpenAlex, 16 Aug 2026 |
| disaster preparedness | 719 | 28,383 | 2.5% | OpenAlex, 16 Aug 2026 |
| work immersion | 124 | 19,529 | 0.6% | OpenAlex, 16 Aug 2026 |
Two of those rows are worth pausing on. Disaster preparedness is the outlier at 2.5 per cent, roughly double the others, which is what you would expect of a topic the country has an unusual amount of direct experience with. Work immersion is the lowest at 0.6 per cent, and its world total is misleading: “work immersion” is a specific senior high school programme in the Philippine K to 12 system, so most of the 19,529 global hits are using the two words in an unrelated sense. That is a caution about the method, not a finding about the topic.
Why counting beats asserting
Every Philippine research manual asks Chapter 2 to end on a gap. Most undergraduate manuscripts discharge that requirement with a sentence like “however, limited studies have been conducted in the Philippine context”, and every panellist has read that sentence several hundred times.
The question that follows is always the same: how do you know? Without a count, the honest answer is that you searched for a while and did not find much, which is indistinguishable from not having searched properly. With a count, you can say that 90 of 5,586 indexed studies on the topic since 2016 carry a Philippine affiliation, name the index and the date, and move on.
This is also one of the standard questions at a defence, alongside “which study is closest to yours” — the full inventory is in the guide to what questions are asked during a thesis defense.
The procedure, in five steps
- Reduce your title to one or two phrases. Not the whole title. “Academic procrastination”, not “The relationship between academic procrastination and academic performance among fourth-year students of X College”.
- Count the world. Search the phrase in title and abstract, restricted to a sensible period — the last ten years is defensible for most fields.
- Count the Philippines. Add the country filter for author institutions. The key is that this filters on where the researchers are, not on whether the paper mentions the country, which is exactly what a keyword search cannot do.
- Divide. The share is more meaningful than either raw number, because it controls for how big the field is.
- Record the query, the date and both counts in your search log, and repeat for any second phrase your topic needs.
Do this at the topic-selection stage, not in the week you write Chapter 2. A count of three on your exact topic tells you something urgent about scope while there is still time to act on it — and “it has already been done” is one of the four faults that get Philippine titles sent back, as set out in the guide to getting a rejected thesis title approved.
The instrument caveat, and it is a large one
The counts above use a title and abstract match. A general relevance search over the full record returns very different numbers for the same phrase: on academic procrastination, the loose search returned 779 Philippine works where the title-and-abstract match returned 90.
Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions. The loose search finds anything the index considers relevant, including papers that merely cite procrastination research. The tight search finds papers that are actually about it. For a gap statement you want the tight one, and you must say which you used.
Three further limits to state plainly if you report a count in your manuscript.
- Language and indexing. Work published in Philippine journals that are not indexed in the source you queried will not appear, and that is a real volume of research. A count is a floor, not a census.
- Unpublished theses are largely invisible. Approved undergraduate and master’s theses sitting in university repositories are not in a bibliographic index. For health topics, HERDIN indexes 11,121 theses and dissertations, which is a genuine exception; for most other fields there is no equivalent.
- Phrasing decides the answer. “Work immersion”, “on-the-job training” and “practicum” describe overlapping things and return different counts. Run each and report all of them rather than picking the smallest.
Because of the second limit in particular, a count is a supplement to searching Philippine E-Journals, HERDIN and your own institutional repository rather than a replacement for any of them. Whichever databases you use, name them and the period covered in your methodology, exactly as Chapter 3 requires of any data source.
What the number does not license you to say
A low count is not a finding, and it is not automatically a justification. Three claims to avoid.
“No studies exist.” Almost never true, and one query by a panellist can disprove it. Say “few indexed studies”, give the number, and name the index.
“This is the first study of its kind.” The strongest form of overreach available to an undergraduate, and it is unnecessary. A study can be worth doing without being unprecedented.
“The topic is under-researched, therefore my study is important.” Scarcity alone is not importance; some topics are little studied because they matter little. The gap statement has to say why the missing work is worth doing, not merely that it is missing.
Turning the count into the sentence Chapter 2 needs
The gap statement is the last paragraph of your review and it should read as the mirror image of your statement of the problem. With a count in hand it writes itself.
Template: “A search of the OpenAlex index conducted on [date] returned [world count] works published since [year] whose title or abstract concerned [topic], of which [PH count] carried a Philippine institutional affiliation. Of those, the reviewed studies examined [what has been done], predominantly among [what population, in what setting]. None examined [your variable combination] among [your population] in [your locale], which is the gap the present study addresses.”
Three things that template does. It names the instrument and the date, so the claim is checkable. It distinguishes what exists from what is missing, rather than implying nothing exists. And it lands on your own population and locale, which is where almost every legitimate undergraduate contribution actually lives — you are rarely the first person to study the variable, and you are frequently the first to study it here.
How that paragraph fits into the rest of the chapter, and how to synthesise the studies you did find rather than stacking summaries of them, is set out in the guide to writing a review of related literature. The gap then has to match the problem you posed in Chapter 1, and the way all five chapters have to agree with each other is summarised in Chapters 1 to 5. For the wider context — how much Philippine research exists in total, and how fast it is growing — see Philippine higher education statistics for Chapter 1.
Write the gap once, and keep it attached to the search that proves it
Tesify holds your chapter structure and keeps each citation tied to the source you actually opened, so the gap statement in Chapter 2 and the sources behind it never drift apart. Over 9,000 students have used it to write more than 15,000 chapters, and every word is still written by you.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my thesis topic has already been studied?
Count it. Search your topic phrase in title and abstract across a bibliographic index, once worldwide and once filtered to Philippine institutions, over a fixed period, and record both numbers with the date. Then search your own university’s repository for local theses the index does not cover.
How many Philippine studies exist on a typical thesis topic?
On the four topics counted here, Philippine-affiliated work made up between 0.6 and 2.5 per cent of the world total since 2016 — 90 works on academic procrastination against 5,586 worldwide, and 719 on disaster preparedness against 28,383.
Is it a problem if many studies already exist?
No. A well-studied variable gives you a validated instrument, a settled framework and a body of findings to compare against. What you need is a population, setting or variable combination that has not been examined, not an untouched subject.
Can I say no studies exist on my topic?
Avoid it. Say few indexed studies exist, give the count, name the index and the date. Absolute claims are disproved by one query and they cost you credibility on everything else in the chapter.
Does a low count mean my topic is good?
Not by itself. Some topics are little studied because they are hard to research or of limited consequence. Your justification has to explain why the missing work matters, not just that it is missing.
Do unpublished theses count as existing studies?
For the purposes of not duplicating work, absolutely — and they are the ones most likely to be identical to your plan, because they came from a department like yours. They are largely invisible to bibliographic indexes, so search your repository separately.
What period should I count over?
The last ten years is defensible in most fields, and it matches the recency most Philippine manuals ask for in the empirical review. State the period alongside the count; a number without a date range means nothing.
Why did I get two very different counts for the same phrase?
Because a general relevance search and a title-and-abstract match are different queries. The loose search returned 779 Philippine works on academic procrastination where the tight one returned 90. Use the tight one for a gap claim and say so.
Should the count go in Chapter 1 or Chapter 2?
Chapter 2, in the summary of literature or gap section. A brief version can support the rationale in the background of the study, but the counted evidence belongs with the review it summarises.
Do I have to cite the database itself?
Yes, if you report a count from it. Name the index, the query, the filters and the date of access, exactly as you would for any other data source, so the number can be reproduced.