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 »
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 …
Are the results of your study non-significant? If you’ve experienced disappointing non-significant results in your research, you may wish to refer to the excellent statistics note by Altman and Bland (BMJ, 1995; 311: 485) that considers that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. In their note, these authors explain that …
Over the past few weeks, I’ve read a few dissertations in their draft forms. They had several challenges in common. Let’s examine five mistakes they made, and how to fix them. 1. The dissertations took several pages to describe the characteristics of their participants. Each demographic was described in detail with an accompanying table and …
5 Essentials to GET RIGHT in your Dissertation or Thesis Read More »
If you’re writing the methods section of your research, you will need to describe your sample. (I’m dealing here with the sample description, rather than the sampling method.) So, how should you describe your sample? According to APA guidelines, you should refer to people as ‘participants’, not as ‘subjects’. The term ‘subjects’ is used in …