Thesis Preparation (Research Project IV)

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. The Problem Statement
   • Introduction
   • What is a problem
   • Selecting a topic
   • Structure of a problem statement
   • How does a problem statement relate to quantitative and qualitative research
   • Referencing and reference types
2. The Literature Review Part One
   • What is a literature review
   • Relating your literature review to the problem statement
   • Types of literature
   • Collecting information
   • Finding literature: text books, journal articles, indexes, abstracts, internet
3. The Literature Review Part Two
   • Critical reading
   • Literature review structure
   • Writing
   • Verbs
   • Quotations
   • Presentation of work
4. The Hypothesis
   • What is a hypothesis
   • Definitions
   • Scientific method
   • Structuring a hypothesis
   • What is not a hypothesis
   • Null hypothesis
   • Correlation vs cause and effect
   • Occam's razor
5. The Method
   • Introduction
   • Structuring your research method
   • Research strategy
   • Data collection
   • Quantitative data
   • Qualitative data
   • Data sampling
   • Sampling methods
   • Research integrity
6. Data Collection
   • Introduction
   • Primary and secondary sources of data
   • Quantitative data
   • Qualutative data
   • Data collection
   • Literature review
   • Key informants
   • Experimental
   • Correlation
   • What is correlation
   • Questionnaires, Surveys and Tests
   • Interviews
   • Documentation
   • Observation
   • Focus groups
   • Case studies
   • Combination and triangulation
7. Research Proposal
   • Introduction
   • Outline
   • Cover Page, abstract, introduction, problem statement, hypothesis, context background, literature survey, research methodology
   • Time schedule, budget, terminology, resource list, appendix
   • Academic writing
8. Thesis Writing
   • Nature of thesis structure
   • Thesis structure guidelines: different types
9. Ethics
   • Ethics of collecting data
   • Human research
   • Non human research
   • Ethics committee
   • Categories of research
10. Where To From Here
    • Pitfalls
    • Finalising a thesis submission

Aims

• Construct a problem statement
• Identify related literature resources which correspond to ‘the problem statement’
• Understand nature of hypotheses and methods of hypothesis development
• Develop initial method for your research project
• Identify the data sources for the research project
• Complete a Research Proposal
• Understand how to structure a thesis
• Complete an Ethics Form to gain approval for research
• Write a thesis draft.