Honours thesis in psychology/Marking criteria guidelines
Marking criteria guidelines
[edit | edit source]Examiners are asked to award a mark for each section, taking into account the dot points below.
Presentation /10
- Appropriate title
- APA format
- Expression, spelling, punctuation & grammar
- References in text in APA format
- Reference list in APA format
- Appropriate Appendices (e.g., questionnaire, detailed instructions to subjects)
- Overall impression
Abstract /4
- Concise summary of: problem, participants, method, results, conclusions
Introduction - Set up of problem /22
- Importance, relevance & context of issue established
- Theoretical or conceptual framework established
- Breadth of literature review
- Appropriateness of citations (current, major, original)
- Consideration of alternative perspectives
- Logic and clarity of argument leading up to hypotheses
- Appropriate formulation and clear presentation of hypotheses or statement of aim (for qualitative research)
Method /18
- Participants: appropriate and adequate sample on which to undertake research/test hypotheses; recruitment procedure and sample characteristics adequately described
- Materials/Measures: appropriate operationalisation of constructs; adequately described (format, measurement scale, reliability, etc)
- Procedure: appropriateness of method to address research question/test hypotheses, procedure fully described
- Design (optional): You may need to include a description of the overall design – this can be especially useful in experimental or complex studies)
Results - appropriate analysis approach and explanation /22 This section needs to be appropriate to research question/type of hypotheses, but is likely to include:
- Justification of approach (if necessary) and appropriate analysis for research question/hypotheses and participant group
- Depth of analysis adequate to fully test hypotheses / address research question
- Understanding of assumptions demonstrated
- Descriptive/preliminary statistics: full written description and appropriate graphs and tables in APA format
- Predictive or explanatory relationships: full written description and appropriate graphs and tables in APA format
Discussion - argumentation of results /24
- Summary of results
- Related back to research question/support for hypotheses
- Related back to theory
- Implications of findings
- Discussion of possible alternative interpretations of results
- Discussion of issues arising (explanation of unusual findings)
- Problems with current study
- Generalisation of results
- Implications for future research
- Logic, clarity, focus and expression