We are told to use the biggest words that that equate to minuscule ones. We are told to use them as much as possible. We may take these core beliefs into our thesis and projects. Data Minders, however, wants to promote an old message that is new to the local landscape. We want to offer you the KISS rule. There are many versions of KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid Keep It Simple, Silly Keep It Short and Simple Keep It Simple and Straightforward. You may be pondering, “But I am at the university level, isn’t there an expectation of advanced thinking?” Our answer to you is, “Yes, there is that expectation.” But you do not have to express advanced thinking in a confounding way. You must be able to take the puzzling and present it clearly. So, we at Data Minders Student Service will like to encourage you to Keep It Stupidly Simple. Not that you will write your thesis at a lower educational level, but you will be mindful in the ways you express your thoughts, ideas and results. Here are some avenues and tips for simplicity: -KISS in your research objectives. In trying to determine what you plan to study you may get caught up in all the possibilities of your research. A theme of Tourism may extend from what government officials believe to what the public believes and the tourists think. You may then include that you want to explore the theories of choice in tourism, the theory of decision making in the public sector and the list goes on and on. You need to focus your research objectives, it is possible to analyse more than one group but make your aims consistent for each group, and every approach made with the intent to get the same area of responses from each group. - KISS in your framework. Depending on the faculty of research, you may be required to use frameworks to guide your work. In some instances, there may be multiple frameworks you can choose. Resist the allure of going with all the frameworks and using them in the assessment of any analysis. Stick to one or two crucial models or approaches. Also, highlight why they will be your focus by mentioning their benefits and confirming by the works of others. -KISS in your analysis. We at Data Minders Student Services always say; Figure out your model while creating your questionnaire and research questions. This makes sure everything you do from the start is aligned. Choose models that align with the level at which you are writing your thesis and the expectations of your faculty. Most importantly, do not complicate your analysis. Find the most straightforward but most acceptable models that answer your research questions. Organise your results by themes to keep your write up clean and ordered. In fact, make a data analysis plan to set your analysis in some orderliness even before you use SPSS or any other programme. -Kiss in your writing. Use simple words. Use simple sentence structure (though still diversified). Use bullet points to avoid wordiness. Avoid subject jargons and long words. Keep KISSING. In everything that you do try to keep it simple, from presentations to how you balance your life. Find the best and most clear ways of expressing what needs to be said and doing what needs to be done. Want to Keep It KISS, contact us: Get In Touch - Data Minders Student Services (dmss-dissertation-thesis.org) So let’s take a quiz and let’s see how you do. Tick the responses as they apply to you:
1) I write straight from articles into my thesis Yes No 2) I only start to record my references when I am done with an essay or a thesis Yes No 3) I take the words from articles word for word Yes No 4) I make notes for my Introduction with the same thinking I apply to Literature Reviews Yes No 5) I do not group concepts and ideas from different articles together Yes No So the search for articles to write your thesis can leave you a bit confused. You collected about thirty relevant papers and yet you don’t know how to start any of your sections. Another scenario may be each time you read a different article and open your Microsoft Word, you write a paragraph or two but realize that the sentences do not build each other and the paragraphs do not flow. If you, the reader of this blog, and took the mini-quiz above, you may realize that some aspects of note-taking may be missing during your thesis write up. If you answered “yes” to any of the 5 questions, then you need to make some changes in your approach. Methods of Note-taking There are a number of methods to make notes while writing your thesis. Some of these include: i) Using note cards. On cue cards, the salient points found in each article are written down. On the top, one can make a note of the reference source. These include the author name, title name, publisher (journal name etc), URL and date found. Use one cue card per article for sorting and grouping concepts. ii) Using print outs and highlighters. Articles may be printed and the attributed lines to the thesis may be highlighted. Additionally, in the margins, sentences may be coded by themes to identify overall concepts. This helps to make grouping concepts easier in the writing phase. iii) Sheets of paper. Using your pen and paper, Microsoft Word or Google Docs, individual notes can be made for each article. Leave margins on the left or right to put in the main theme or topic of each paraphrasing. Reserve spacing for making summary notes and recording the references. My Steps I have a preference for using pen and paper. Before printing any documents, however, I skim the articles I find. I make sure that they are relevant to the topic. As I collect articles I create an informal coding system for each article. Then when I think I have collected as many articles as I can, I pull notes from each article and print them out. From there, I sort themes on the print outs and then write! Create Your Own Methods It’s your choice of method of note-taking. Find a system that works for you and allows you to become highly familiar with the material. Make sure to do the following i) For any direct quotes make sure to record the page and paragraph of the used sentences. ii) Leave space to make your own comments or thoughts and to create links to other articles. Remember that your thesis is supposed to represent your thought process as well, so look for the links and disconnects and make a note of it. iii) Before saving any document to make notes, skim the article to make sure that it is relevant to your thesis topic. What not to do! There are a number of approaches that you must avoid: 1) Never rewrite any sentences or phrases ad verbatim from source articles. This will result in plagiarism. For most tertiary institutions plagiarism is not tolerated. Some schools offer Turn-it-In to evaluate your essays before submission. If Turn-it-In is not accessible, there are many free online plagiarism checkers. The free services, however, may not be as efficient as the paid services. Given that Turn-it-In does not offer their product to single users, a very good alternative is Write Check. See their website: http://en.writecheck.com/ 2) Do not write your notes excessively. The objective of note-taking is to reduce the vast literature you collected into a summarized and clear story. So practice your summarisation skills. 3) Do not make notes for concepts not relevant to your topic. 4) Do not use notes for the Literature in the same way you use notes for Literature Review or Discussion. Remember the intention of each section when writing from notes. If you want to know more about my informal coding system and anything more about note taking, Message! .So you got to the Results section of your Thesis. You are proud of yourself because you leaped over the hill of doubts, re-dos and statistical programme shut-downs that come with the running your model. You gleefully write up your results satisfied with what you accomplished. Then you get to your Discussion section. You find yourself rewriting what you wrote in the Results section. You are rubbing your temples because you swore you had this down. Relax. The Discussion is the hardest part of your Thesis believe it or not. Why, because you have to prove that you can think analytically.
To think analytically you have to be creative. You must have the need to see something not before seen, to make links that have never been connected and to draw potential outcomes by being futuristic in thinking. Today’s blog will look at how this can be done in the Discussion. Your Options So you have an option. You can either merge the Results and Discussion sections. Or you can keep it separately. Either way, you must have the core elements of a Discussion. What is the purpose?To give your results value and meaning. It is easy to say that two variables are correlated and associated. The real question is “So what?” Why is it even important? The discussion addresses these questions. Tools to get your order clear. There are so many ways and tools. There isn’t enough space here to discuss them all. These links are great resources for your Discussion writing journey: Compare and Contrast tools: http://www.thethinkerbuilder.com/2014/02/tools-to-compare-and-contrast-some.html http://www.enchantedlearning.com/graphicorganizers/compareandcontrast/ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-write-comparative-analysis Mind mapping: http://www.mindmapping.com/ http://www.tonybuzan.com/about/mind-mapping/ Aspects and Considerations So to make it clear as to what you should have and include in the discussion, the following is listed: 1) Make sure that you say why this research and the results are important to the field. Did your findings contradict conventional theory? Was it a first for your country? 2) You can offer recommendations in this section as to future research. Really think critically about this. If you could have addressed the offering of future research in your Thesis, do not mention it. The purpose of recommending future research is to propose research questions of higher-value and high analytic expectations. So for example, if you found the correlation and association between two variables in your Thesis, you can suggest a deeper analysis of what type of relationship: is it causal? What is the direction of causality? You can use regression analysis or granger causality for time series data. If you notice a difference in initial group frequency responses, you can suggest group analyses. The options are endless. 3) You must mention the consequences. What will your results mean for the country or organization you are studying in the future? For businesses, will your results affect a business’s profit line? Will it affect a countries debt? Think down the line of events and variables. 4) Limitations and weaknesses must be mentioned. Discuss how it affects the validity of your results. 5) Did you discover something you did not expect? Talk about it. Support it with similar or contrasting studies. Apply the other points in this section to this new findings. If it was a less than positive result that goes against your hypothesis, do not despair and do not IGNORE it. Talk about what the results mean to the country or organization or object. What did the literature or theory say? 6) Rewrite the hypotheses you mentioned in the Introduction. Use them to lead your discussion. 7) Remember to compare your results to other research and core theories. TIPS TO CONSISTENCY Use the same verb tense as the Introduction, preferably present tense. Make sure that you are always trying to answer your research questions. Even if the results are not supportive of your hypothesis, keep trying to address the research questions. Keep in mind the context with which you wrote your literature review. Caution: It is not a reiteration of Results. It is an explanation of meaning and importance. So be careful. So imagine this. You are just about to start writing your Thesis. You got a structure of the Thesis Sections and though you have just collected some articles to get your Introduction going, you decide to begin filling out precursory sections. You get to the Abstract. You say to yourself “I already kind of have an idea of what I am going to do and what results I want, let me do the Abstract” Stop! Doing the Abstract at this stage will get you in trouble!
What kind of trouble? You will be wasting time. And time is a crucial thing when it comes to Thesis writing. If you write your Abstract before your Introduction, you may find the articles that you found changed the discussion and direction of the Thesis. Then you have to redo the Abstract. This applies to other sections as well; your methodology that you thought was genius may need to be redesigned, the recommendations you hoped for may be not relevant because your results were not the same as what was expected. Every time you have to go back to make a change, you waste crucial time. Be efficient! Don’t waste time! What is an Abstract? It’s a summarized version of your Thesis. It brings out the core and most crucial elements of your Introduction, Methodology and Results in a concise way. Why is it important? Think about a Novel or Fiction Book. When you visit the library or bookstore, or even search for books online, there is always a summary. When you read this summary, you judge whether this book is worth reading or not, you judge if it looks boring or whether the writing is engaging. This one short summary determines your expectations and therefore determines your behaviour. If to you it seems like the book will make you doze off, you don’t buy or borrow the book. It’s the same for your Thesis but with one big difference: your supervisor or examiner has no choice but to continue reading. So if your supervisor has a poor judgment of your Abstract, it will take a lot for him or her to change his/her opinions about the rest of the document. Be impressive from the get go – Do your Abstract right! Where is it located? Check your university’s Thesis Guide as it may differ. In the University of the West Indies, the rules of the Abstract may also differ by faculty, so be observant. How to compile Do your Abstract last. Once you have a draft of your thesis: 1) Go through each section and get the main points and findings. For your Introduction, focus on the objectives of the study, for your Methodology, simply state what model or procedure was used. Never forget to include your results. Details, however, are not required. 2) Put your notes into one paragraph. 3) Read through the paragraph for errors and repeated words. Also, adjust for sentence to sentence flow. 4) Read again for any points that are not crucial and remove them. Length See your university’s Master Guide on this as each school varies. Criteria of a good Abstract Ask yourself these questions to ensure your Abstract is of quality. If you answer “Yes”, your Abstract can help you in your attempt at getting a great grade, if not, you have to do some revisions. 1) Does it follow the chronology of the Thesis? 2) Does the Abstract flow from sentence to sentence? 3) Does the Abstract contain only crucial information? 4) Did you remove “space wasters” such as the following statements “The paper looks at..” or “Chapter 2 examines”? 5) Did you make sure to describe what you did, why it is important, how you did it and what was discovered? 6) Was your Abstract not repetitive? Got 6 out of 6 “Yesses”? Then you are on your way to an awesome Thesis! Did not get a great score? Contact us: https://www.dmss-dissertation-thesis.org/calldataminders.html Ethics is hard but worth it.
Ethics covers a range of societal norms and practices that involves doing what is right. At Data Minders I want to talk about doing what is best, best for you the client. It is important that students embrace working hard and thinking cleverly about their assignments. I have been asked whether or not I do entire projects. In the rush of finishing assignments students become desperate. The outcome becomes more important than the quality of work and the lessons learnt from the process of research. I cannot do an entire project for you or run a model you do not understand. The ethics of Data Minders requires you the client to possess great work ethics. I cannot do the work for you but I can show you how to be better. I can only help reduce your errors and create knowledge. I can give you awesome skills that will make your future and current work so much easier. The success of Data Minders depends on your success. At Data Minders, keeping to our ethics will depend on your work ethics. Teaching yourself or getting help -Any method to continue learning.
SPSS, Eviews, STATA, and even Excel are all programmes that can be used for data analysis. With analysis, whether it is as simple as a correlation or as complex as a Vector Autoregressive Analysis, as present or past students, you may not have all the knowledge or experience in understanding concepts. Not always what is taught by teachers at the university level is adequate. So what is your next step? -For those with limited time, a service such as Data Minders- Student Services is just what you need. I have helped students with little time to do their thesis or analysis with some students achieving ‘A’ grades, -For those persons who have time, do not be afraid to learn on your own. Yes, Data Minders will and has provided awesome resources, there are other sources all over the internet offering a variety of skill training. Currently, I am studying Python programming. I looked for videos on YouTube, downloaded PDF books and even making attempts to make time to learn. I also took a similar approach to learning SPSS and STATA. To become a semi-expert in any, and I mean ANY topic, check out these sites: Coursera edX Open Culture Open2Study Alison.com OpenLearn MIT Opencourseware As a final word, I want you to know that practice makes perfect. Though this is a common saying, it holds true for anything you will do. Running models repeatedly is the only way to become great. Moreover, even in the absence of that opportunity to practice, the ability to read any new material and apply it, even for the first time, requires persistence and an open mind. Accessibility may not always be easy when it comes to data. As modern day students, it is expected that all your project and thesis needs will be available online. This may not necessarily be true or sufficient. Google search while useful does not contain all the answers, and can be restrictive in its historical perspective.
The library is a great source of complex information. In your search, journals and books are not the only sources of statistics or data (which are two different terms, by the way, but are still used interchangeably). Newspapers, from as far back as the 1950s, thesis projects of other students and institutional reports not found online, can shape the form and context of your paper or thesis. I remember researching for a paper on education in Trinidad and Tobago and felt stuck by the shallow angles I found online. I visited the University of the West Indies West Indiana floor and spent weeks going through newspaper articles from the 1960s to present and government reports on education published in the 1970s. I also found studies hidden away in the nooks of the aisles on the progress of education in Trinidad and Tobago, for example, “Education in Trinidad and Tobago. Report of the Working Party. 1954”. The librarian was my anchor in my search and pulled books I could not find myself, but for which I had references. Obviously, I love the search and visiting the library is part of the search. I love flipping through pages, I love analysing numbers, I love learning history and, most of all, I love creating a story of my own. There are other aspects of the search that doesn’t involve the library, books or computers. The search is a wide range of activities that one must love. Hence, you too must love the search, for it is crucial that any document you write must be deep and engaging so that you can achieve that A grade. Starting. It is the hardest part of a journey. It’s always hardest to start school after a long July-August break. It’s the hardest to go to work on a Monday after a beach weekend. It’s the beginning of a marriage that flaws fly out of nowhere and sit at the ends of our patience. Starting is hard, and so is starting any school assignment. From the rush of possibilities in picking topics to the scary programmes that no one takes the time to teach you, doing a project can, from the start, be daunting.
I can help you get started. My name is Tishana Simon. I am a researcher and a thesis coach for students. I have more than seven years experience in writing, tutoring, statistical analysis, document editing and research. I started this blog and my Facebook page with the intention of helping students get where they need to be. I have many stories about many students I have helped over the years. But one that has always stood out to me was my first statistics student. He had failed his course three times and needed to pass to graduate from a school in the West Trinidad. I hadn’t even finished my first degree as yet, but helping him made me realize that I have a skill and a drive; the good expression of knowledge. It wasn’t that the student didn’t try, it was that the situation was trying for him. Big classrooms, rushing through material, books and books of information did not help him. He needed someone to teach him how to think about the course, think about each exam question no matter the topic. Of course, my student passed his exam, and from then many students I helped, free or paid was able to learn how to think. “Data” is a Latin noun that means “something given”. Data Minders intends to “give” students the tools to think through any aspect of a project, essay or thesis while, offering products to make the work a little easier. So join up! Become a Data Minder. Let’s get started! |