Honours thesis in psychology/Thesis preparation

Thesis preparation

This page provides suggestions for the final stages of thesis preparation, including thesis structure, preparation for submission, and publication.

Developing and carefully going through a checklist for thesis preparation is recommended before submitting. Consider using the Journal Article Reporting Standards.

Structure

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

  • Pre-pages (pp. i, ii, etc.)
    • Thesis title page
    • Acknowledgements
    • Table of contents
    • Table of tables
    • Table of figures
  • Research article (an APA style manuscript) (pp. 1 - ...)
  • Appendices

Decide whether to:

  • embed Tables and Figures (involves more work to avoid splitting across pages and then later in moving them 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)

Reviewing and improving

  • 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 for proofreading 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.

PDF merge

  • Develop the pre-pages, manuscript, and any appendices as separate documents, then put together as a single PDF at the end. Consider:
    • What PDF merging software are you going to use? Practice using it, if you're not familiar with merging PDFs, so you don't have last minute technical problems. Options:
  • 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 PDF package

Submission

  • 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 supervisor acknowledgement that data has been appropriately stored as per the HREC application
    • Output file(s) (to allow verification of analysis, in pdf or spv or data+syntax)
  • In addition, there are HREC 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.

Post-submission

  • 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 publicly 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 manuscript based on examiner feedback, debrief with supervisor, and target journal author requirements
    • Submit to a journal for publication
    • Apply for a thesis publication award by 30 May in the year following thesis enrolment

See also

This article is issued from Wikiversity. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.