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Description: Abstract Objectives: To investigate which study designs Swiss social work Bachelor students from HETS Valais report using in their respective Bachelor Theses. Study design: Cross-sectional, methodological study Methods: Google Scholar and RERO DOC search for bachelor theses written by HETS Valais students. The PDFs of all search records found (n=700) were then downloaded, manually deduplicated (n=685 remaining unique PDFs). All PDFs were then skimmed to assess if they fit inclusion criteria (social work bachelor thesis written by HETS Valais students before 1 Sept 2020) and categorized. The following data was manually collected for all eligible works: original PDF name on RERO DOC, last name of first author, title of the thesis as found on Google Scholar, specialization of the student (social caseworker, animation staff, support worker), language of thesis, student institution, study focus is children’s homes (yes/no), names of children’s homes studied, study design. Results: Of the 685 unique PDFs found with the Google Scholar search, 436 (63.65%) were bachelors of social work and 107 (15.62%) bachelors of nursing. Supplementary searches identified a further 21 unique social work bachelor theses written by HETS Valais students which had been missed by the Google Scholar search. Of the 436 social work bachelor theses written by HETS Valais students, 383 (87.84%) were written in French. Of these 383 works, 42 (10.97%) were written by animation students, 234 (61.1%) by support work students, 91 (23.76%) by casework students, 9 (2.35%) by two or more students with heterogeneous specializations (eg. casework + animation), and the student(s) specialization(s) could not be readily identified in 7 (1.83%) theses. Ninety-four (n=94, 24.54%) bachelor theses were deemed to focus on the broad topic of children’s homes and data was found on 21 unique children’s homes. Students reported following qualitative research methods in 302 (78.85%) theses. Other designs described included cross-sectional (n=18, 4.70%), mixed-methods (n=42, 10.97%), case study (n=5, 1.31%), case series (n=2, 0.52%), before-and-after (n=1, 0.26%), narrative literature review only (n=1, 0.26%). Study designs used in 12 (3.13%) bachelor theses could not be determined. Limitations: Only bachelor theses with grades above 4.5 (out of 6, the highest grade) are reportedly included in RERO DOC and this subsample may therefore not be fully representative of all HETS Valais bachelor theses. The dataset may not be a fully exhaustive representation of HETS Valais theses included in RERO DOC. Discussion: Large variations in bachelor theses archiving policies can be found in-between HETS from the western part of Switzerland were observed. Reasons why theses from HETS Fribourg appear to be missing and only a minority of theses from HETS Geneva are found on RERO DOC whilst a substantial number of theses from HETS Valais are available may therefore be worth exploring in more detail to assess if theses availability could be improved and archiving policies better coordinated in-between HETS. In line with previous observations, students from HETS in the western part of Switzerland appear to almost exclusively conduct qualitative research. Reasons why non-qualitative designs appear so rare within bachelor theses remain unclear and could be worth exploring. Funding: No funding was received for this work. Registration and study protocol: Not undertaken. Data and materials: See https://osf.io/yjzmu/. All other data should otherwise be included within this manuscript. Keywords: Social work, study design, Switzerland, bachelor thesis, cross-sectional analysis, HES-SO, Valais