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Honours thesis in psychology/Thesis preparation

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Thesis preparation

This workshop discusses the final stages of thesis preparation, including overall thesis structure, marking criteria, submission, examination, and the publication process.

Developing and carefully going through a checklist for thesis preparation is recommended before submitting. What do you think should be included?

General tips

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  • Develop the pre-pages, literature review, research article, and any thesis appendices as separate documents, then put together as a single PDF at the end. Consider:
  • Consider printing out the penultimate draft and reviewing - this will likely help to identify areas for improvement that wouldn't have been identified electronically
  • Ask the supervisor to have a look over the final package
  • Seek peer review from as many others as possible - consider providing targeted questions to reviewers to help get focused reviews. For example, some reviewers might be best used by focusing on spelling and grammar etc., others may scrutinise use of APA style, and others may be able to provide bigger picture feedback about how easy the concepts are to understand.
  • Self-examine the thesis against the marking criteria. In general, the correlation between self-marking and examiner-marking is reasonably high if you try to be objective. Chances are, if you make objective use of the marking criteria, you will be aware of the main areas of strength and weakness in the thesis.
  • Decide whether to:
    • embed Tables and Figures (involves more work in order to avoid splitting across pages and later in moving to the end of the manuscript prior to journal submission)
    • place tables and figures at the end (as per APA style, but maybe not as user friendly for a reader)
  • Submission documents - don't underestimate the time involved in preparing for what's required at the point of submission:
    • Coversheet (as a single PDF document)
    • Thesis (as a single PDF document; use your student number instead of your name; the name of the files should be the title of the thesis)
    • A word processing copy of the thesis file(s) so that the word count can be checked
    • Evidence of HREC-compliant institutional data file storage and archiving (to allow verification of analysis). This could include confirmation from the HREC that the project completion checklist has been completed or an email from the supervisor stating the data has been appropriately stored as per the HREC application description
    • Output file(s) (to allow verification of analysis, in pdf or spv or data+syntax)
  • Also:
    • Provide receipts and request for reimbursement via email to the Honours Course Convenor by the thesis due date/time. Details of this process are available on the Thesis Submission module on Canvas.
    • In addition, there are human research ethics committee requirements to finalise a project, which include ensuring your supervisor has read/write access to the ethics submission and has copies of relevant documents, removing raw data from any other locations (e.g., survey hosting sites, talk to your supervisor first), contacting any participants who wanted further information with a summary of the project, and ensuring any prize draws etc. have been completed and allocated.

Structure

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It is important to be clear about the overall thesis structure and purpose of each section:

  • Pre-pages
    • Thesis title page
    • Acknowledgements
    • Table of contents
  • Research article (an APA style manuscript)
  • Appendices (optional)

Post-submission

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  • Make an appointment with the thesis supervisor for as soon as possible after marks and feedback are released to debrief the project and plan next steps towards submitting for publication
  • Thesis marks and feedback for on-time submissions by the original due date will be provided on the official Semester 2 university results release day
  • Consider depositing the thesis into the university research repository so that it is publically available and has a permanent URL. This does not undermine or preclude journal publication.
  • Consider applying for a psychology Honours thesis publication award by submitting the research article for publication within the next six months:
    • Identify a target list of peer-reviewed academic journals and rank them
    • Revise the research article (and/or literature review) based on examiner feedback, debrief with supervisor, and target journal author requirements
    • Submit the literature review and/or research article to a journal for publication
    • Apply for a thesis publication award by 30 May in the year following thesis enrolment
  • Provide feedback about your experience of this course via the Student Experience Survey

Q & A

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  • Participant questions and answers

See also

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