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• The research design and experimental detail comes mainly from the student, but
the supervisor would be expected to comment on feasibility. This is why it is
very beneficial to have a supervisor who actually works in a relevant area.
• Managing participants is the responsibility of the student. A pilot will illustrate
for you some of the difficulties that are likely to come up once the project
moves off the drawing board.
• Ethical approval: you will need to check whether this is required, identify the
correct forms, and establish who is expected to complete and submit these.
• Running the project is up to the student, unless there is an educational or clinical
context where the supervisor’s input may be required.
• Data analysis: proposals for this come from the student, but the supervisor
would be expected to comment and offer some advice on interpreting the
results after the student has carried out the analysis.
• Feedback on a draft report: this a tricky one as the supervisor is also normally
one of the examiners, so universities often stipulate that feedback is only given
on the first draft and never on the Discussion section. Check out the rules in
your institution and plan accordingly.
5.4 Designing the project
RESEARCH PROJECTS AND DISSERTATIONS 139
Developing an answerable research question is an important and difficult first
stage. The next stage is to design your research protocol (i.e. plan exactly what you
are going to do to try to answer the question). Effectively, this means writing the
first draft of the Methods section of your final project report.
Depending on the area under investigation, you will need to decide on most of
the following.
• What participants will I be using? For example:
students
adults of a certain age range
children of a certain age group
certain categories of patients.
• Do I need a control group of a different kind of participant? For example:
children of a different age, or of the same age but a different level of
achievement
patients from a different category to control for general effects of
hospitalization
matched control group of the same age, etc.
• How will I be getting the information I need from them? For example: