If you’re involved in research, you’ve likely come across the notation ‘p < .05’ in journal articles or elsewhere, or you’re using this notation in your writing to indicate a statistically significant result. It is used pretty much everywhere, almost as a mantra across studies. But do you know what p < .05 actually means? …
Many students approach their literature reviews by emphasising who (i.e., the authors of each reference) is saying what. Each paragraph begins with the authors’ names. This approach is not advisable as it shifts the focus to the authors rather than the content of their statements. Consider the following paragraph as an example of this unfortunate …
The problem statement of your dissertation or proposal is very important. It is a go-to section for your supervisors and examiners. So, why not grade your problem statement yourself? Here are 7 criteria. Score 1 point for each criterion if your problem statement deserves it, ½ a point if you’re undecided, and no point if it …
7 Criteria for Grading Your own Problem Statement Read More »
There are always those dissertations that stand out at submission time, those that simply have to be submitted as the students are genuinely out of time but are nowhere near ready. As you can imagine, the pressure on a student in this situation is immense with bursaries, job opportunities, and self-esteem under threat. To …
This week, I reviewed a dissertation that was well researched, well conceptualised, and well designed but did not answer its main research question. The student had described its design, delimitations, and sampling method incorrectly which made the conclusions incorrect. Luckily it was fixable. Let me tell you about the study, with its details all changed …
Does Your Dissertation Answer Your Research Question? Read More »
If you use an old bathroom scale to weigh yourself and step on and off it a few times, you’ll probably get different readings, even within seconds. These measurements of your weight (more correctly, your mass, but I’ll stay with weight) vary randomly. But they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, old bathroom scales produce weights that are not …
Lessons from an old bathroom scale on measurement reliability Read More »
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? In a previous post, I spoke about what a significant result means and doesn’t mean. A significant result may mean very little, not necessarily anything to inspire you to throw a party or make a supportive parent proud. What it doesn’t tell …
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? Read More »
If you’re involved in research, you’ve likely come across the notation ‘p < .05’ in journal articles or elsewhere, or you’re using this notation in your own writing to indicate a statistically significant result. It is used pretty much everywhere, almost as a mantra across research studies. But do you know what p < …
Sometimes, despite all your efforts, the sample size of your quantitative study turns out to be smaller than you planned. Maybe you received a low response rate to your online survey, your database search for patient records returned many unusable or missing records, or you found yourself in another scenario with a similar outcome. And …
In our next webinar on Thursday 5th October @ 7 pm (GMT + 2:00), Professor Linda Bloomberg and I will be discussing analysing your qualitative and quantitative data. In this post, I discuss the step before the analysis of quantitative data. This is where you inspect and clean the errors in your data before starting …