General arrangements
* You are doing a four-thousand word dissertation (ie a long essay.) This is done by private study, plus a series of (optional) discussions with me.
* Please note the big empirical study you also do in the third year is called a PROJECT, NOT a dissertation. Recently a lot of students have started using the word 'dissertation' when they are talking about their project, and it causes a lot of confusion.
* If you write too much, the marker stops reading at 4K, so you cannot get more marks by writing more stuff. There is not - as some people seem to think - a 10% allowance for 'over-run'. The word limit really IS 4,000 words, not 4,400! This word count includes quotations in the body of the text, but not the title, contents or references. At the risk of seeming flippant, those of you who really want some flexibility in these matters can have a word limit of 3,636 words (and then you get a 10 percent leeway if you want it)!
* 10 credits is notionally about 100 hours of your study time. That is about one full day per week (9-6 or the equivalent) for the rest of the semester.
* Meetings occur in a regular 2-hour timetabled slot every week. Book a place when you want to come by signing up on my door (bottom sheet, left hand side).
* There will (probably) be some bookable slots in the Easter vacation, too. I can also respond to ad hoc e-mail inquires throughout Easter, as long as they only need fairly brief replies. Otherwise we can use e-mail to arrange a phone conversation. There will be continuous supervisory support right up until hand-in day.
* Until the Easter vacation, please bring all your inquiries to a regular meeting, if at all possible. Email should only be used for C83PAD queries during Easter Vacation, or in an emergency, for instance if you are away ill.
* When should you come? About once every two weeks at first, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING. I will not be cross, and I will try to help get you going. DO NOT THINK 'I have nothing to report, I had better not go'.
* Ideas for how the discussions might go are at http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ddc/c8cxpa/Dissertation_meetings.htm
* If you have pals who are doing similar topics, book to come to together and we can discuss as a group. BUT THE END PRODUCT MUST BE DISTINCTIVE and must not register on Turnitin as plagiarised.
* You do not have to stay for the whole hour each time, but DO try to come at the start, not half-way through.
* More information will keep appearing on my 'Notices' webpage, including if necessary notice of meetings being canceled or re-scheduled. Please check before coming: http://sites.google.com/site/nottinghamddc/notices
* Do not forget my 'virtual book' at https://sites.google.com/site/nottinghamddc/vb
* There are good models from previous years at http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ddc/c8cxpa/further/Dissertation_examples DO read some. Do not copy them, they are in Turnitin!
* Lecture handouts can be accessed from my general students webpage, and via Moodle. See https://sites.google.com/site/nottinghamddc/students.
* Your dissertation CAN be the same as one of your exam questions, but of course will need to be MUCH more detailed.
* Divide your time until the hand-in date into three equal parts: Firstly - read around the subject broadly and generally, collect and make notes on more material than you will eventually use; secondly - be selective, pick the key items, put them into a sequence, and choose the main story-line; thirdly 'craft' the final product - think about style, wording, presentation, and readability.
* Format: Double or 1.5 line spacing. Reasonable sized font. Single sided. Some kind of cover / comb binding etc looks professional, but not essential. Left margin wide enough for binding if used.
* Please don't expect me to tell you if an outline (consisting of a list of section headings) is good or not. It is impossible to tell without more detail. It is rather like saying to someone "I have written a song. Do you like it? It goes VERSE 1, VERSE 2, VERSE 3 -- the words and melody will be decided later."
Content
* What makes something a 'Patterns of Action' topic? Probably some mix of the following: real world behaviour / case study (not only lab tasks / phenomena); a diachronic / sequential / time-line aspect; systematic scientific analysis, which is at least partly rooted in psychology.
* You do not have to stick with the set topics of the Patterns of Action lecture series, although some overlap is probably advisable. Try for one foot in and one foot out of that familiar territory.
* What you need to do to do well is read a lot and think a lot. Do not imagine that when you have done your reading, the thinking will take care of itself. Plan it and organise it as a quite distinct and vital activity.
* Suggested strategy. Think of your task in two parts. 2/3 of your effort and your dissertation is about finding a suitable area of the literature and mastering it (get to know it inside out, so you can summarise it, clearly, accurately and insightfully). 1/3 of the task is about 'value added'. DO SOMETHING with the material you have found: challenge it, critique it, modify it, compare it with something else, combine it with something else, apply it, extend it, propose new hypotheses or new studies. (One of those is probably enough, not all of them at once!) The two aspects of your dissertation should be fully integrated, NOT 2,700 words of straight reporting, then a loud bang followed by 1,300 words of innovative ideas!
* Generally speaking, a narrow and deep dissertation is good; broad and shallow is bad. At the risk of over-stating for the sake of clarity, no focus is too narrow or too specialised, unless you cannot fill four thousand words with relevant material, in which case you need to broaden out. These are all matters we should discuss with specific examples of what you are doing, in our regular meetings.
* Follow the trail, not your targets. That means if you find a good line of literature while you are looking for something else, follow it. If is plentiful, interesting, and you understand it and can work with it, do not overlook it because you are intent on writing about something else. (That advice becomes less appropriate as you get further into the process, and nearer to hand-in day).
* Analyse and critique the studies you use; do not just 'name drop'. Do not just list the authors' conclusions, but say how they came to them. "Smith found this, and Jones found that" will simply raise the question of HOW? Do we believe them? Were their conclusions justified?
* Organise the material you read systematically using suitable software (eg Endnote), or if you prefer, file cards, or box files full of photocopies. But have do have some system that allows you go back to key references later and to check the key points and the citation details.
* Consider using a 'literature review table' for part of your material, to supplement the more conventional ways of making your point. An example is here.
* For certain topics, you may want to use some relatively 'popular' material together with the more rigorous scientific journal articles. This is all right, up to a point, but it should be reported in a suitably cautious way. It should not be regarded as providing the same standards of evidence as the scientific literature. Suitable phrases can be used to distance yourself from the conclusions, such as 'It has been suggested that . . .' or 'It is widely held in the popular literature that . . .' One feature of a first-rate 'Patterns' dissertation will be the skill with which the writer uses different kinds of material appropriately, which includes making it clear - without being too heavy handed - that some sources are more reliable than others.
* The key to success is 'forward searching' the literature. As me if you do not know how to do this. Examples of one method are at http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/ddc/c8cxpa/further/Citation%20searching.htm
* The quality of your dissertation will be limited by the quality of the material you use. This may affect your choice of topic, too. Try to base your work on academically rigorous articles in high-quality, refereed journal articles, in the main.
* If you are faced with too many papers to read, start with the most recent and work backwards. This is because (a) the recent ones will be the most up to date, of course; and also (b) the recent ones will tend to cite the earlier ones, so as you work backwards you will start to hit things you already know about, which can save a lot of time.
Ideas for topics
The following are just to get you thinking. In some cases they are probably a bit (but only a bit) more 'way out' than you would want to choose for your actual topic. Once you have some possibilities in mind, come and talk about them.
* Would you marry a robot?
* Is your mind inside your head? (This is not about dualism.)
* Why is there so much trouble in the world? (Psychological answers, please.)
* [Try taking two of the lecture topics, especially two that seem unrelated, and try putting them together.] Forecasting emotions. The role of attribution in social feedback systems. Sequences of attributions.
* Is the brain interesting?
* Are experiments appropriate in social psychology?
* Is the brain a machine?