Timeline:
This blog will be updated regularly, as it will serve as a time line for my thesis project.
I'm in the process of figuring out a thesis topic. Let me start by saying what a hard process this is!! Ok so first I had at least come up with an area to look into, so I spoke to my advisor and we settled on some aspect of faking and personality.
Week 1:
- Meet with advisor to discuss a topic
- Begin preliminary research
- I sent my advisor about 12 article abstracts to review for the first week.
- Looked through 3
- Start extrapolating research ideas based on methodologies used in studies, limitations and future research suggested in articles.
Week 2:
- Reviewed the other articles
- Finding connections between articles
- Found a topic that just might work
- Of course, my advisor advised me to keep looking and don't settle on the first topic we came up with, so i continued this process of reviewing articles.
- Found more connections, so I will review these connections and research topics with my advisor next week in hopes of settling on a topic!
Week 3:
- review literature
- discuss potential proposal topics
- plan to dwindle down ideas to 2 to 3 solid proposal topics
- decide on 2 to 3 proposal topics
- by far the hardest thing I ever had to do!!
- operationally define variables, decide on methodology
- produce a one page "gray paper" executive summary
Tips along the way:
- This is just a thesis!!! It is not a dissertation so you don't have to develop a new model or discover something completely new.
- the best way to find an idea is to review past research focusing on their methods and discussion looking for limitations/future research or different ways to analyze the same study.
- Start early!! The masters program is only 2 years. The earlier you start speaking to a professor, locking in an advisor and just researching an idea will be a huge help no matter when you decide to actually write your thesis.
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