How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation

For final-year social science undergraduates, 'How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation' is the most student-led guide to confidently navigate the research process. It shares real student and supervisor experiences to help motivate you; provides advice for efficient time management; and tracks your progress through focused checklists.

How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation provides a straight-talking, easy-to-navigate, and reassuring guide to support final-year social science undergraduates. Uniquely shaped by real social science undergraduates from a range of institutions, the book includes their advice to help you through with what can be a daunting, but rewarding stage of your degree. From the look and feel of the book, to the development of the chapter content and the advice it provides, students have been involved at every stage of the book''s development to ensure it is focused on what''s important to you.Expert advice from real supervisors across the subject disciplines in the ''Working with your supervisor'' feature also helps you to make the most of research supervision, and learn from the experience of real researchers in your chosen field. By providing anecdotes, words of wisdom, scenarios, or simply reminders, hints, and tips on how best to prepare for meetings, and communicate effectively, How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation is the most complete guide to facilitate the student-supervisor working relationship.Dedicated chapters cover all the typical stages of a research project or dissertation in the social sciences, while their carefully constructed structure allows you to quickly and efficiently navigate the content. Throughout the book, you''ll focus on three key questions: ''What do I need to know?'', ''What do I need to think about?'' and ''What do I need to do?''. In so doing, each chapter gives you a clear and direct checklist of actions as you progress through your dissertation or research project, keeping you organized, motivated, and confident.The book''s online resources include a wealth of free-to-access materials, including:Author videos - Additional advice around key challenges for each chapter, including developing a research idea, managing your time, and writing up your dissertation.Supervision guidance Advice and tips on how to approach your supervision meetings, including tasks to help you plan for meetings and to build a productive relationship with your supervisor. Doing academic presentations Support with planning and delivering presentations, including tips on what a dissertation presentation might include, as well as author videos showing examples of a good and bad presentations._ Dissertation templates Templates for dissertations, showing how dissertations might look different depending on which theoretical and methodological approaches you use. This includes notes on chapter content and tips on dissertation structure. Research plan templates Templates for you to use for planning your project, including helping you to get started and complete the dissertation, and to manage your time using key milestones and recommended timescales and targets.Guidance on developing and designing your research question - A set of questions divided into categories and designed to help you formulate ideas, develop your thinking, set your research questions, help you later on in the process to consolidate your argument and consider the contribution of your work. Delve Even Deeper Even more Delve Deeper recommendations and research suggestions, including a list of freely available data sets, links and resources to help you understand SPSS and NVivo processes and tools, analysis tools and help for specific research methods, and guidance on using vlogs, blogs, and other public resources, as well as using social media for your research. Bad, better, and best examples of literature reviews, questionnaires, interview questions, and observation plans Examples of each of these key elements of your project deliberately designed to demonstrate how you can improve your work, and highlighted with annotations to help you gain a deeper understanding of how best to approach these stages of your project.Examples of research proposals Examples of research proposals for different social sciences to give you that extra support and an idea of what to expect. Here you will find tips on how to build a proposal and consider how this is useful for planning the dissertation. What do I need to think about? and What do I need to do? checklists digital versions of the end-of-chapter checklists for you to download and use.