“If we don’t know who you researched, we are not interested in what you found out”. Think about it…… “we surveyed 400 people to find out where the most beautiful beaches in the world are and 98% agree that Brazil has the most fantastic shoreline”. If we don’t know who you asked, we can’t do anything with the result. How did you select who could answer the questionnaire,...

Before starting any research project, you think about it and make a plan. It’s no different with a dissertation/thesis. The thesis proposal (this plan) really matters and shouldn’t be underestimated. Forget that road trip where you get in the car and drive off into the sunset with just your wallet in your pocket, your favorite music blaring out…. Spontaneity is not the name of the...

However many weeks you have to write your thesis (whether Bachelor’s or Master’s) at the beginning it can seem a lifetime and it’s not so easy to know what to do when. If your research involves collecting primary data (interviews, surveys etc) and secondary data (literature, previous research etc), then even the order here can be problematic. The greatest stress in writing a...

All good research methods books will give you guidelines on creating appropriate questions and using appropriate question types (Bryman & Bell, 2015, Saunders et al, 2015) for in-depth qualitative interviews. However, here are a couple of practical points which often arise in supervision meetings, yet aren’t necessarily in the books. 1. Choose interviewees well. If you’re...

APA, MLA, Harvard…. If one thing can be guaranteed to drive students crazy, it is the demand that they follow an internationally recognized documentation style. To ward off the eternal ‘Do we really have to?’ questions, here’s a quick list of why the answer is ‘Yes!’. Don’t leave referencing and citations until the thesis is written, do it as you go along. It’s definitely easier...