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It should be immediately obvious that anything you can get on with in the way of a literature review, or even data collection, during the summer vacation before your final year will pay huge dividends. Let us consider the process in more detail. 5.2 Choosing a topic Tips: Some questions you could use in helping you to identify a project ➢ Is there a lecture course you have particularly enjoyed? ➢ Was there anything arising from a placement that offers an opportunity for further study on a realistic scale? ➢ Is there a lecturer in the department whose work particularly interests you? ➢ Is there some issue from outside the course that would benefit from the application of a psychological research technique? Before you start RESEARCH PROJECTS AND DISSERTATIONS 135 At some point during your penultimate year you will begin the process of being allocated to a supervisor for your final-year research project. It is worth engaging with this process promptly. The detailed rules will vary from institution to institution, but the end of the process will be the identification of the person you will be working with as your supervisor in the final year. Different supervisors and, particularly, the areas they work in, will be more or less popular. Departments have to spread the teaching load across all staff, so if you opt for a popular area you may well not be successful in getting your first choice of supervisor. If this happens, treat it as a challenge. Find out as much as you can about the allocated supervisor from the web or elsewhere, and be open in your discussion with them about what you are going to do. The success or otherwise of the relationship with them will be an important factor in the overall delivery of your project. Like all relationships, there is a responsibility on both sides to work at it. We have plenty to say about managing this relationship in later sections. The pattern of student projects varies enormously both between and within institutions. You may find yourself working largely independently on a research area of your own devising. You may be given a promising but un-thought-out idea by your supervisor to try to develop into something workable as a longerterm research topic. You may be working in a group of one or two other students
136 STUDY SKILLS FOR PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS on a carefully planned programme of research mapped out for you by your supervisor. You may seem to be working as your supervisor’s research assistant running a pre-planned study that is part of their research programme, and that, if it works well, may be published as part of that programme. Academic staff often take advantage of student projects as pilots for testing out ideas and methodologies. Each of these different kinds of project has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, something of your own devising may seem more fun, but it is also higher risk: your supervisor may not be able to give you well-informed advice, an unforeseen problem in collecting the data may arise, you may end up with un-interpretable results, or you may find halfway through that someone else has already done your study. On the other hand, doing something largely pre-planned by your supervisor is safer in that you will be doing something that is likely to produce useful results and that requires a different, though very valuable, set of skills. You will be working closely with your supervisor on a shared project, so you will be operating more on the level of colleagues than supervisor and student. A group project involves yet another different set of skills. Anything involving patients or children will add an additional layer of timeabsorbing bureaucracy in arranging things like Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) registration (see page 168) or NHS ethical approval (see page 144) or Statements of Collaboration for joint projects. Using student participants may seem less exciting, but is much more straightforward, especially if your institution has some kind of credit-gaining Experiment Participation Schemes for first-year students (see page 57), and will ensure that you obtain reasonable numbers of participants. The important thing to remember is that it is possible to succeed, or fail, on any kind of project. You will just need to adjust your planning and execution to match the demands of the particular project to which you are committed. Being realistic After you have been allocated a supervisor, the next stage is to agree with them what you will be working on and to begin the process of narrowing down the question you will be addressing (your research hypothesis) to something that is both realistic and practicable. One of the most common errors we see year after year in final-year projects (and equally with PhD research) is being unrealistic about the potential scope of project that you can manage. It is no use having a fascinating and important question if there is no way in which you can generate the information needed to answer it within the resources available. If you are planning to do experimental work or elaborate fieldwork you should also consider the potential timetable very carefully – life has a way of thwarting project
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Successful Studying Study Skills fo
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For Georgina Brennan, Julia Henders
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viii CONTENTS 4.5 Preparing and pre
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222 INDEX Phenomenology, 196 Piaget
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