Writing up your MRes thesis 9 month report.

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Writing up your MRes thesis/ 9 month report.
9-month report submission date Friday 29th June.
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Before you begin writing in earnest.
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Evaluate your work to date

• Literature review
• Can this be used for your report? Do a new
  literature search
• Methods and results sections
• Should have been written up as you go along.
• Write an abstract
• It will change radically over time!
• Make a detailed plan
• Discuss it with your supervisor develop goals
  and a timetable

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Write an abstract

• Should provide a clear story about your work.
• One or two sentences for each aspect
• Background to the work
• Research aims
• Methods (NOT DETAILS!)
• Results (NOT DETAILS!)
• What the results mean.
• 300 words maximum

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Think about format

• Intended to be flexible
• Encourage submission in journal article format
• If in doubt follow APA format
• Discuss format with supervisors
• Intended for submission to journal?
• Length?

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Writing the report itself
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Introduction Content

• May be appropriate to refer to historic material
  but concentrate on recent literature.
• Review key papers in the field
• Especially if key to research aims or methodology
• Should not rely on secondary sources
• Should be critical analysis of literature
• Not just describing papers make clear why
  important
• Evaluate method and results of key papers.

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Literature review tips

• Be selective in what you review
• Only review material relevant to your report aims
  
• Be careful not to trip yourself up
• e.g. dont say other research is fatally flawed
  because of small samples when YOUR study has a
  small sample!
• Throughout should be building logic for your
  study.
• BPS guidelines
• A good literature review will be succinct,
  penetrating, and challenging to read.

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Linking into your research aims

• Most important section of introduction
• Showing how previous research has led to your own
  research
• BPS
• Ideally, the problem to be tackled in the
  research should emerge naturally and inexorably
  from the literature review.

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Research aims and methods

• BPS A clear and succinct statement of the
  research problem should be made, together with a
  set of specific hypotheses, predictions, or
  questions which the research is designed to
  address.
• Since determination of the most appropriate
  methodology is not always a straightforward
  matter, candidates should justify the methods
  chosen, with an appropriate rationale in each
  case.

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Your hypotheses provide the backbone for the
report.

• Your experimental hypotheses should
• Be clearly stated at the end of the introduction
  to the relevant study.
• Lead clearly into the procedure described in the
  method section.
• Provide the structure for the results section.
• Clearly suggest the analysis strategy to be
  adopted.
• Provide the structure for the first portion of
  the discussion section.

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Method section

• Consult APA manual and papers in your field to
  decide how much information to put in.
• Probably not as much detail as in undergrad
  reports.
• Give conditions/groups meaningful and consistent
  names
• NOT condition 1 and condition 2..
• Think about the logical structure
• Consistent in hypotheses, procedure, results.

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Results sections

• The bulk of each results section should be spent
  addressing the hypotheses.
• Though it is also OK to include additional and
  exploratory analyses.
• You must be able to understand and justify the
  analysis strategy you use.
• Especially where non-traditional stats are used.
• Think carefully about use of text, tables and
  figures
• See the APA manual and journal articles.

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Presentation of results

• See the APA manual
• Your results sections should be similar to those
  in published papers.
• Provide all the information needed to evaluate
  your analysis e.g.
• Numbers for each analysis where these vary.
• Clear descriptions of ANOVA independent and
  dependent variables.
• Clear description of direction of effects.
• Information about non-significant analyses.

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Discussion

• Summarise results in relation to research aims
• Avoid too much repetition.
• Evaluate the results in relation to previous
  studies and theories.
• Reflect on the research process.
• Discuss limitations but dont shoot yourself in
  the foot by arguing there is some fatal flaw with
  the research!
• Provide some pointers to future work
• Identify issues that need further investigation

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Things to avoid

• Typos and carelessness of formatting.
• Difficult to follow results sections with poor
  labelling of tables.
• Lots of unnecessary repetition.
• Lack of a clear and justified analysis strategy.
• Clichéd literature reviews.
• No clear description of research aims.

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Common problems

• And some possible solutions

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Problem 1. Difficulty getting started.

• Solutions
• If you think getting started is scary work out
  how much time you have and how much you still
  have to do that is scarier.
• Dont allow yourself to become paralysed doing
  ANYTHING is better than doing nothing.
• Allow your first attempt to be pretty ropey!

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Problem 2. Feelings of being swamped.

• Solutions
• Separate the project into smaller chunks
• Do one bit at a time
• Provide milestones and rewards
• Work out what you have still to do.
• Make a realistic plan of how long it will take to
  achieve it.
• Try to set aside whole days to work on thesis
  rather than an hour here or there.

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Problem 3. Not providing sufficiently clear
argument in your thesis

• Solutions
• Use your theory of mind
• Other people do not know your work already
• You need to be explicit about your arguments
• Take your time to write the key parts of your
  thesis especially the research aims.
• Ask peers to read it and comment
• If they dont understand it you are not being
  clear enough.
• Keep checking your abstract/story.

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Problem 4. Fear of having your work criticised

• Solutions
• Being criticised is a key feature of academic
  life
• Essential to improve your writing skills and
  inform your research ideas
• Develop a thick skin now!
• Find a way to fight perfectionism.
• Psychology is messy.
• Think about criticisms objectively and find ways
  to fight them or incorporate them into your
  report.

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Problem 5.I dont have any data yet!

• Solutions
• Introduction and method should be the same anyway
• Describe any preliminary results or pilot work
  you do have available.
• Describe your analysis strategy and how you
  intend to interpret the results

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Administrative issues
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Sources

• BPS guidelines for assessment of PhD
• Link from postgraduate website pages
• American Psychological Association (APA)
• Publication manual
• available in library
• APA checklist
• http//www.apa.org/journals/authors/manuscript_che
  ck.html
• Wilkinson (1999)
• Statistical Methods in Psychology Journals
  Guidelines and explanations. American
  Psychologist, 54, 594-604.

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Cover sheet for 9-month report

• Name of student
• Supervisors..
• Title of report
• Thesis/journal article format?
• If journal which one.
• If you have any other comments (e.g. on
  particular aspects of journal style, problems
  that arose with the data or write up,
  clarification of any aspects of the article, why
  you decided to submit an article already
  submitted for publication) please add them here.

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Supervisor form specifying contribution

• Contribution by Supervisor
• The idea
• Theoretical content
• Experimental design
• Data analysis
• Interpretation of results
• Writing up

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Supervisor form specifying contribution

• Workload of Student
• Development of experimental procedures
• Recruitment process (e.g. how many, recruited
  from workforce, clinical population,
  undergraduates?)
• Testing protocols (e.g. length of testing period,
  number of participants tested)
• Analysis (e.g. how many data points, what type of
  analysis)

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9-month report submission date Friday 29th June.

• Supervisor and examiner read thesis and run a
  viva on the report.
• Report not given formal mark, but feedback given
• Viva marked and feedback given
• Students graduating with MRes
• Revise and complete MRes thesis for 12th
  September
• Marked by supervisor and examiner
• Students continuing to PhD
• Supervisor and examiner complete progress report
  for postgraduate committee.

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Viva

• Supervisor and examiner will run viva
• Between mid-July and early August
• You need to defend your thesis
• Answer questions on theoretical background,
  research aims, methodology, analyses,
  interpretation of data.

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MRes thesis (University regulations)

• All candidates shall present a thesis embodying
  the results of their research, which must be
  accompanied by a declaration signed by the
  candidates that it has been composed by
  themselves, that it has not been accepted in any
  previous submission for a higher degree, that the
  work of which it is the record has been done by
  themselves, that any personal data have been
  processed in accordance with the provisions of
  the Data Protection Act 1998, and that all
  quotations have been distinguished by quotation
  marks and the sources of information specifically
  acknowledged. If any results were obtained
  partly in association with other workers,
  assistants or students, the nature and extent of
  this help, if substantial, must be specifically
  acknowledged in the declaration.