For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s Spring! At last, it’s warm and there are blossoms all around.
For post-grad students, Spring also brings expectations of serious progress on theses, dissertations, and proposals (sure you know the feeling). So too does the Fall for students in the Northern Hemisphere.
So, why not spring clean your own work? Clean it up, and make sure it’s ready to move ahead.
One excellent way to do this is to ensure that you state exactly what data or information you will get to answer each of your research (sub) questions.
This sounds obvious, right? But often it isn’t.
At the analysis stage, some students simply haven’t obtained data that lines up with their research (sub) questions. And that can be awfully problematic 🙁
So, I suggest you consider each of your research (sub) questions and make sure you know where the required data will come from to answer these questions.
With quantitative research, it could come from responses to certain items of a closed-ended questionnaire; with qualitative research, it could evolve from certain questions of a semi-structured questionnaire or focus group discussion; in document analysis, it could come from specific parts of a document.
A great way to display this in your thesis is to construct a Consistency Matrix.
Use one row of the matrix for each research (sub) question.
Then, in the first column of each row, specify the research (sub) questions.
In the second column, specify the research tools (questionnaire/ interview/ focus group/ document etc.) that you’ll use to address the research (sub) questions.
In the third column, specify the specific items, questions, sections etc. that will provide the data of these tools.
The main point here is that you need to check that you’ve set up your methods and measurement instruments so that your research can potentially provide the data/information required to answer all the research (sub) questions.
I would place the consistency matrix in the methodology section of a proposal, and as an appendix when writing up a thesis or dissertation.
By the way, you can also use a consistency matrix to check that you’ve gathered the required data for testing your hypotheses (if you have such).
The consistency matrix is really very useful to clean out some of the ambiguities or unaddressed aspects essential to the delivery of your thesis.
So, happy spring cleaning your thesis. You’ll love yourself for doing it!
Would you like help with the measurement aspects of your thesis or dissertation?
Contact [email protected]