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Description: Abstract Background and rationale: The Haute Ecole de Travail Social Lausanne (HETSL, previously EESP) is a Swiss higher education institution found in Lausanne, in the Canton of Vaud. From 2009 to 2017 over 1300+ students have obtained a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) at this institution, for a total of about 948 Bachelor Theses. Due to changes in the ECTS credit system the HETSL administration decided in 2018 that it would no longer store new Bachelor theses or enter their records in the cantonal electronic database called Renouvaud. Limited research and data is available about these Bachelor Theses and the research projects conducted by students. Objective: To investigate which study designs were used by Swiss social work Bachelor students from HETSL in their respective Bachelor Theses. Methods: On March 4, 2020 I used a random number generator once to generate a list of 100 random integers ranging from 1-948. This list contained two (2) duplicate integers which were dismissed. I then went to the HETSL (previously EESP) library in Lausanne, Switzerland and manually browsed each physical copy of each Bachelor thesis with a unique identifier corresponding to the randomly generated numbers. I manually assessed which study design was used in each Bachelor thesis and entered assessments along with supporting comments in a table. Results: A total of 98 social work Bachelor theses done by HETSL students from 2009 to 2018 were randomly selected for assessment. 55 (56.1%) Bachelor theses were written by students intending to become educators, 20 (20.4%) by future sociocultural social workers, 15 (15.3%) by future caseworkers and this information could not be readily determined for a further 8 (8.2%) theses. 94 (96%) bachelor Theses included qualitative study designs, 7 (7%) involved a cross-sectional study, 3 (3%) included a cohort study design and 1 (1%) included a before-and-after study design. 27 (27%) bachelor Theses involved use of multiple study designs (mixed-methods). Study designs used in 3 (3%) bachelor theses could not be determined and remain unknown. There were no systematic reviews, no randomized controlled trials and no other designs. 3 Bachelor theses out of 98 (3.1%) (Theses 578, 703 and 924) were not available as physical copies at HETSL. Limitations: Some assessments were subjective; for instance I had to decide at which level of detail an examination of a particular case constitutes a case study. Similarly, some students did measure a few quantitative outcomes at a single time-point (such as number of people making a statement of some kind) although the focus of their research was qualitative data collected from open-ended questions. In this last scenario some could argue the study used mixed methods (qualitative + cross-sectional) instead of being qualitative-only. When entering assessments in the data collection tables I could have mistakenly entered data in the incorrect row; such a problem happened once when assessing theses 404, 425, 433 and 438. Given their number, this is unlikely to have meaningfully affected the prevalence of qualitative study designs used. Conclusions: Most social work bachelor students from HETSL undertake qualitative research, usually in the form of interviews to complete their bachelor theses. Very few students make use of quantitative study designs such as cross-sectional (7 students), cohort designs (3 students) and only one (1) student made use of an experimental before-and-after design. No systematic reviews or randomised controlled trials were found. Although an error was found in a thesis there was no known system in place to correct it. Use of appendixes appeared to be relatively random and unstandardized. Funding: No funding was received for this work. Registration: See https://osf.io/re5cz/files/ (version 3/4). Data and materials: Included within the report. Keywords: Social work, study design, Switzerland, bachelor thesis, cross-sectional analysis, HES-SO