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Thesis Tips for Students in Psychology at East Carolina University





Dissertation proposal help


Don't Believe Everything You Hear


There has been some misinformation about theses and dissertations circulating lately (Spring, 2013). Susan has separated the myth from the fact. Thanks, Susan.


Myth # 1: The graduate school would prefer that theses and dissertations be prepared as copy manuscripts (as would be submitted to a journal for consideration for publication) rather than as final manuscripts (as they would appear in a journal). As an example of the distinction, in a copy manuscript tables and figures are placed near the end of the document. In a final manuscript they are put near the point where they are first mentioned.


Susan, Our preference is that tables and figures be embedded in the thesis, not in an appendix, as this makes it much easier for the reader to view the information in context. My recollection is that all but one or two of the theses recently submitted have followed this practice.


Paul J. Gemperline, Ph.D., Dean of Graduate Studies


Myth # 2: No committee member should sign the thesis or dissertation at the time of the defense if there are any changes still to be made before it is submitted to the Chair of Psychology (which is almost always the case). Traditionally, all members except the chair of the committee have signed at the defense (unless the thesis/dissertation was in really bad shape) and trusted the chair to assure that all needed changes were made.


I don’t know that we have a formal policy on timing of signatures. In my experience, a common practice is that the committee members sign the signature page following a successful defense of the thesis/dissertation, and the Chair withholds his/her signature until all corrections have been made and a final proofread has been done. Then the final copy goes to the Department Chair. However, if the changes requested at the thesis/dissertation are more than minor edits, committee members may request to review again before the manuscript goes forward.



Susan McCammon, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology


Much of the information in this document was copied from the online Psychology Graduate Student Handbook, which was under revision in 2005, but the revision was never completed. Currently there is a new handbook being prepared for the doctoral students in clinical health psychology. There is also a new handbook for the doctoral students in pediatric school psychology.


Forming a thesis committee. Near or at the end of the first year, the student identifies a potential chair for the thesis project based on his or her area of interest and that of the faculty member. The committee should include two additional Psychology Department Faculty and conform to Graduate School requirements. The members are selected by the student in consultation with the thesis chair. The chair is responsible for directing the student's project. The committee members should provide resource and evaluative functions during the thesis project. The student is responsible for completing the departmental form identifying the committee and likely thesis topic and submitting it to the graduate program director.


Who can serve on a thesis committee? The chair and two other members of the committee must be members of the graduate faculty, full or associate. A fourth member can be a graduate teaching faculty member who has been certified by the unit head. For more details on this, consult the document Thesis Committee Membership.


Preparing a proposal. Once a thesis/dissertation topic has been identified, the student works with the chair and committee members, as necessary, to prepare a proposal. The proposal should include an Introduction and Literature Review, Proposed Method (including research hypotheses, if appropriate), and References. The proposal should be formatted in the same way that a thesis/dissertation is. See this example title page and these example complete proposals complete proposal.


Defending the proposal. The proposal will be submitted to the committee members at least 7 calendar days prior to the proposal defense. Although our Graduate Student Handbook (2003, page 8) stipulates that a copy of the proposal be placed for public review in the graduate seminar room (Rawl 303) at least 7 calendar days prior to the proposal defense and that the student is responsible for posting a notice identifying the time and location for the proposal defense and inviting others to attend the defense, this has not been done recently. Most of our faculty have decided that the proposal meeting should be a working meeting, not a formal presentation, and that it would not be useful to have others attend. Nevertheless, you might want to announce the topic of your thesis just in case there are other interested parties who would like to talk with you about your research. See this example .


The committee will decide whether or not to approve the student's proposal. A student should not begin data collection or analysis until the thesis committee has approved the thesis. Research involving human subjects should be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and research involving animals is reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The thesis chair will submit the appropriate Thesis Topic Approval Form indicating successful defense of the thesis proposal. The form is a Word document, so your thesis director can fill out the necessary information after reading it into Word. If I (Karl Wuensch) am not directing your thesis, be sure to replace my name with your director's name on this form. For more information on the process of getting your topic approved, please consult the Graduate School's document Manual of Basic Requirements for Theses and Dissertations .


Institutional Review Board (IRB). If you are using human participants in your research, you are required to obtain IRB approval for the research prior to collecting data. Check my IRB Tips for Psychology Students page.


Completing the thesis. Following the proposal, completion of the thesis itself usually takes at least one semester. During that period, the student is responsible for keeping the thesis chair informed on his or her progress and, if necessary, should discuss the thesis with any of the other committee members. Once the project has been completed, the student will begin preparing the thesis manuscript. Early drafts of the manuscript should be developed by the student in close consultation with the thesis chair. These early drafts are usually not shared with other committee members unless so requested or unless the student needs specific advice or help on portions of the manuscript. Once a draft manuscript has been completed to the satisfaction of the thesis chair, it may be circulated among committee members prior to its submission for defense. Refer to the Graduate School Thesis Handbook for specific guidance on manuscript requirements.


Defending the thesis. Once a final draft has been approved by the thesis chair, the student will provide each committee member with the draft at least 7 calendar days prior to the thesis defense and oral examination. A copy will also be placed in the graduate seminar room for public review. The thesis defense and oral examination may not be scheduled until the final draft has been distributed and must be at least 7 calendar days after its submission. The student is responsible for posting on ECUPSY-L (ECUPSY-L@Listserv.ecu.edu) a notice identifying the time and location for the thesis defense. This notice should be sent at least 7 calendar days prior to the thesis defense and should include the title of the thesis, the name of the student, the name of the chair of the thesis committee, and the names of all other thesis committee members. See this example.


The thesis defense and oral examination is open to students and faculty. A student is expected to make a formal presentation of approximately 30 minutes. The presentation should focus on the research problem, hypothesis, methodology, analysis and interpretation of the data, and implications of the findings. Following the presentation, the committee chair will entertain questions of the student, first, from the committee and then, from other individuals in attendance. The committee will then deliberate in private regarding the approval of the student's thesis. If approved, the student will make any requested changes and submit the final thesis for appropriate signatures.


Depositing the thesis. Following the defense the student should complete any corrections or additions that are indicated by the thesis director. Once the final draft of the thesis is completed the student should obtain the appropriate signatures from the committee and submit the thesis to the Department Chair for a signature. You should allow at least 7 days for the Chair to read and return the thesis. Following approval of the thesis by our chair, you submit it electronically to the Graduate School, at least 10 days prior to the last day of classes for the semester in which you wish to graduate. The Graduate School may demand that you make changes in the thesis prior to their approving it. If so, they will contact you by email. You would then make those changes and resubmit the thesis. Notification of final approval of your thesis will also be done by email. The electronic submission process is explained here. Do note the following:


 


  • In addition to submitting the thesis electronically, you will need to deliver to the Graduate School the signed signature page and the completed ECU Non-Exclusive Distribution Agreement.
  • You will need a copy of your abstract in a separate text file.
  • The thesis must be in pdf format.


Question: What happens if I cannot meet the deadline Spring semester but will be completing the thesis soon thereafter -- can I still walk at the graduation ceremonies? Answer (from Interim Chair Larry Bolen, April, 2005): "There is considerable precedent. Any student, graduate or undergraduate, that will complete all requirements for the degree – prior to Fall semester – may walk in May. These students, then, should contact the president of Psi Chi to have their names added on the list for the Psychology graduation ceremony. If a student, in order to complete the degree, must attend Fall semester (i.e. be enrolled), then he or she may not walk in the May graduation.


Since it is a requirement that all research involving human subjects be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and all research involving animals be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), students are required to include a copy of the committees' approval as an appendix in their thesis. The Graduate School's review of all theses and dissertations will look for the documentation of the Committees' review and approval of research projects. Your IRB approval form will have been given to you in pdf format, not Word format (how inconvenient). This may make it difficult for you to incorporate it into your thesis or dissertation Word document. One method that has worked well for me is to bring the pdf into Photoshop and then save it as an image. The image can then be pasted into Word. It would be nice if the IRB would prepare the form in Word format in the first place.


See my document Thesis End-Game for information on what is required from the defense of the thesis onwards.


Tips on Using Microsoft Word


When I prepared my thesis, back in the dark ages, students usually hired a professional to type their theses. These days many students word process their own theses, and many of them use Microsoft Word. Word processing some of the typical components of a master's thesis is difficult for the novice user of Word. The trouble spots include: Pagination, Preparing tables with proper column spanners and proper alignment of the contents of the columns; and Properly aligning the page numbers that appear along the right side of the page in a Table of Contents, List of Figures, or List of Tables I have prepared documents, with some tips on how to handle such problems. See: Th-Word. If you are not already an expert at using Word, you might also find useful Damian Counsell's document, Word for the Wise.


If your thesis chair and other committee members are Word-wise, you can save a lot of time and effort by exchanging drafts of the thesis electronically, and using the Track Changes feature in Word. Read my Tracking Changes document: Word-TrackChanges&Comments.


Tips on ECU/APA Style for the Master's Thesis


I have encouraged my colleagues to adopt a set of stylistic guidelines that students can use for all theses in the department of Psychology. I believe the Graduate School would appreciate our doing so. The current document is part of my effort to encourage such. I solicit comments and suggestions for this document and the standardization process. Comments from both faculty and students would be appreciated. Some of the information in this document is appropriate for professors and students involved in our undergraduate Research Methods class.


See the Graduate School's document Manual of Basic Requirements for Theses and Dissertations for information on the basics of what should be in a thesis and how it should be presented. I have, below, repeated and expanded upon some of the information that can be found in that Graduate School document. You should, however, keep this in mind: The Graduate School has a long tradition of changing their minds, frequently, about how this and that should be formatted. No matter how carefully you have tried to format it in the prescribed manner, you should expect them to find something that needs to be changed. Like the reviewer of a scholarly manuscript, they might feel like they have not done their job if they don't find something wrong. They also have a long tradition of moving pages from one url to another without leaving any forwarding, so don't be at all surprised if some of the links in this document no longer work.


The abstract is the first typed page in the thesis, but it is not counted or paginated as prefatory or otherwise. Despite what it says on the Graduate School pages, you do NOT need IRB approval for the final title of your thesis or dissertation. The remaining prefatory pages are counted, but page numbers appear on none of them.


Look at this example signature page. Note that I have aligned the signature lines rather than having them ragged. Also note that the length of the phrase "CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY" pushes the signature lines far to the right on each line. I think it would look better if we could shorten that phrase to "CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY" or "CHAIR, DEPT. OF PSYCHOLOGY?" I asked both chairman Ron Nowaczyk and Dean Paul Tschetter about this early in 2003 and both said that would be just fine.


There has been much confusion about what sorts of headings The Graduate School wants. I recommend that you use APA style. See this document on APA Style Headings


Most theses in Psychology have used all upper case for chapter titles, even though the APA style manual would usually indicate otherwise for the top-level heading. If you choose to use all upper case for your chapter titles in the body of your thesis, do so in the table of contents as well. Most of our theses have included CHAPTER # as part of the chapter headings, with the chapter title below, like this:


Sometimes this has caused confusion in the Graduate School. For example, for one thesis (D. Adams, 1996), the Graduate School treated "CHAPTER I" as being one level of heading and "INTRODUCTION" as being a lower level of heading. It seems clear to me that "CHAPTER I" and "INTRODUCTION" should be together in one level of heading. Perhaps it would be less confusing if we put them together on one line, like this:


CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION


Another alternative, which has been accepted by the Graduate School for theses directed by Larry Means (see E. Clayton, 1996), is to leave out chapter numbers all together (including in the table of contents), for example:


Here is an example of headings for thesis with only TWO LEVELS:


Chapter II: Method


Participants were 205 female and 79 male undergraduate students enrolled in psychology classes .


Attitudes towards human-nonhuman similarity and animal consciousness were measured
by .


Here is an example of headings for a thesis with THREE LEVELS:


Chapter II: Method


Participants were 205 female and 79 male undergraduate students enrolled in psychology classes .


Attitudes towards human-nonhuman similarity and animal consciousness were measured
by .


The similarity items. Seven items were used to measure participants' beliefs regarding .


The rights items. Four items were used to measure participants' attitudes about animal research and rights .


Please note that in Chapter 6 of the 4 th edition of the APA Publication Manual there is made a distinction between "final manuscripts" and "copy manuscripts." COPY MANUSCRIPTS are those submitted to a journal and prepared in a way to facilitate their use by reviewers, editors, and other journal staff. Before being published in the journal the copy manuscript is converted into a final manuscript. Theses and dissertations are to be prepared in final manuscript form by the student. FINAL MANUSCRIPT copy must be as readable as possible. To make the final manuscript readable it should NOT be prepared in exactly the same fashion as would be a copy manuscript. For example, TABLES may be more readable if they are single spaced rather than double spaced, they may be inserted in the text (as was done on Cham Trowell's thesis, Spring 98, which was accepted by the Graduate School) or on the next page rather than towards the end of the document, two tables may be put on a single page, etc.


If https://problemsolutionessay.com have only one appendix, call it "Appendix," not "Appendix A."


See this example of a perfectly formatted thesis (under the rules at the time): Seth Miller, April, 2007.


Got a question about APA style, go to my APA-Style Page.


Graduate Students are required to be enrolled during every semester (except summer sessions) from the time they start to work on their degree until the time they graduate. So far, the Graduate School has not been enforcing this requirement except for during the semester of graduation. For example, suppose that a student finishes all of her degree requirements except for the thesis. She gets a job and does not finish the thesis until several semesters later. Technically this student should have been enrolled every semester, but in practice the Graduate School has only been requiring that such a student be enrolled during the semester of her graduation. For students in Psychology, the course used to maintain continuous enrollment is PSYC 7000, Thesis (1 - 6 hours), even if the student has already completed the required six thesis hours or PSYC 9000, Dissertation (3 - 12 hours). Thesis hours in excess of six do not, however, count towards graduation -- they are just used to maintain continuous enrollment.


See what the graduate catalog says about continuous enrollment.


Two Semester Requirement


I was told, by acting chair Dr. Larry Bolen, that when the student is required (or elects) to take PSYC 7000 twice, such registrations must be in two different semesters. One of my students intended to take all 6 of her thesis hours in Fall semester, 2005, but was told that she could only register for 3 thesis hours per semester. When I suggested to Dr. Bolen that this is moronic, he replied "the graduate school generally and Tschetter specifically see the thesis as a body of work that requires at least two semesters to complete." Heaven and Earth may have been created in one week, but a thesis takes at least two semesters.


Do note that PSYC 7000 need be taken only once (but may be repeated once for credit), with the possible exception of in the General-Theoretic program, but most students will elect to take it twice. See Thesis Hours.


You will probably be allowed to do so, if it is nearly certain that you will, in fact, complete the thesis before the deadline for summer graduation, but students sometimes grossly underestimate how long it will take to complete a thesis. For example, during the last week of March one year a student asked me she could walk in the Spring graduation. She had just submitted a first draft of her thesis proposal and it still needed a lot of work before I would ever consider allowing it to go to the committee. I felt I needed to give this student a "reality check." I suggested that she had greatly underestimated how long it takes to complete a thesis. Dr. Cope added the following:


You can technically participate in the graduation if you are going out in the summer. However; if you have not already defended a proposal, the chances of getting through the proposal, IRB, subject acquisition, data gathering, analysis, write-up, and subsequent defense prior to the end of summer is a long shot. Also given that many of the faculty are not here (or are here sporadically) and/or are teaching every day, the reality that subjects are much harder to get, and the fact that there will be a lot of competition (others in a similar boat) this summer, the problem will become that much harder. Karl and I as well as the I/O and Research faculty have been prompting, nudging, pushing and etc to little avail. So please let me summarize the situation.


Unless you have already proposed and collected data and become very spiritual, Spring 2007 is out.


  • Unless you get started with the afore mentioned list yesterday, summer is fast becoming undoable.
  • Unless you get started with the afore mentioned list soon, fall is getting iffy
  • Waiting until summer/fall to propose etc will lead to the largest graduating class in General history for May 2008


From: Aziz, Shahnaz
Sent: Tue 4/1/2008 9:21 PM
Subject: Commencement


Some of you have been wondering if there are any contingences to walk at the commencement ceremony in May. It is the opinion of our Department Chair that “students should walk AFTER their thesis has been defended/accepted by their committee.” To clarify, you can still walk at May graduation as long as your thesis is signed off by Dr. Row and your committee members by May 9 th .


When is the Deadline For Turning the Thesis in to the Graduate School


The official deadline can be found in the university calendar, but it appears that it is not set in stone. For example, look at this email:


From: Cathey, Brook Lee


Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 10:42 AM


FYI, I found out today from the graduate school that the April 13th deadline is not set in stone. As a matter of fact, as long as you have your thesis defended, approved, and turned into the graduate school before the 10th day of summer I classes you will officially graduate in May.


Advice From a Former Graduate Student


Links to Forms and Other Documents About Theses


 


  • Probation and Termination Policy
  • Thesis Topic Approval Form -- to be completed when you have successfully defended your thesis proposal
  • Thesis Orals/Completion Form -- to be completed when you have successfully completed the thesis, including the oral defense
  • Thesis-Requirements.doc -- What our Department of Psychology will expect of the graduate student preparing a thesis.
  • Thesis Authorship - When the thesis is converted to a manuscript to be submitted for consideration for publication in a scholarly journal, whose names appear on the manuscript and in what order?
  • The End-Game - Defending the thesis & various other tasks that must be completed before you can graduate.
  • Thesis Humor -Rules for writers and other humor.
  • Thesis Errors - Examples of what not to do in your thesis.
  • Lasting Value of the Thesis - So, what good is the thesis other than being a necessary part of getting my degree?


This page most recently revised on 11-August-2017.