University of Sussex

Applied
Economics
Dissertation
2015/16
Module Handbook

Michael Barrow
September 2015

Applied Economics Dissertation (L1002)

All Year 2015-16
1.

Aims and Expectations..................................................................................................................2

2.

Module organisation.....................................................................................................................2

3.

Organising your time....................................................................................................................4

4.

Background information and advice.............................................................................................5

5.

Suggested Dissertation Structure..................................................................................................7

6.

Style guide for writing your dissertation.......................................................................................9

7.

Guidance regarding Advisors......................................................................................................11

8.

Instructions for Preparing the poster...........................................................................................11

9.

Check-list before submitting your dissertation...........................................................................13

Module Convenor: Michael Barrow, Jubilee Building 222, e-mail: m.m.barrow@sussex.ac.uk

Office hours: TBC. Email me for appointments if you cant drop in to my office hour or post
questions on the AED Study Direct forum.
This is a 30 credit module for Final Year students on the BA and BSc Economics courses.
1. Aims and Expectations
The aim of the dissertation module is to give you experience of conducting your own economics research
project. This will help you to develop skills in organising your work and time, setting priorities, reading
about previous research on the topic and summarising this in your own words clearly. You will need to
identify interesting research questions, collect and compile suitable datasets, analyse data using statistical
and econometric methods and present and communicate your results. You already have some of these skills
of course but the dissertation will help develop them further.
These skills are really valued by employers: many of you will leave Sussex and proceed into jobs where you
are asked to analyse data, write reports for different types of audiences - and regardless of what career you
choose, being able to work to a deadline, organise your time and your work load are skills all of you will
need.
You will be allocated an advisor to provide guidance over the course of conducting your research but the
expectation is that this is your project you will not be instructed what to do. Hence it is important that you
start the dissertation with a clear understanding that you will need to show considerable independent critical
thought, time organisation, initiative as well as an interest in developing your research skills, both in terms of
reviewing literature and analysing quantitative data. If taken seriously, the dissertation can be the most
rewarding part of your whole degree.
To help you get started with your dissertation, the department has prepared a set of dissertation topics. These
cover a range of subjects macro and micro, development, trade, finance, behavioural, labour, environment,
UK policy etc - and each topic comes with a topic brief a short overview of possible areas for research. You
can decide to follow the brief very closely or use it simply as a basis to develop your own topic more
independently. Either way, your eventual research topic needs to be approved by your Advisor. The full list
of topic briefs is in a separate document on SyD.
The formal learning outcomes of the dissertation, i.e. what a student should be able to do having successfully
completed the dissertation, are as follows:

Specify a research question and related hypotheses

Conduct a review of the relevant theoretical and applied economics literature and identify
key points of agreement and debate
Understand key issues in data collection, organisation and transformation
Apply standard methods of statistics and/or introductory econometrics and apply relevant
diagnostic techniques.
Write up results in a clear manner that conveys the motivation for the research, key
methodological and conceptual issues, and the key findings from the research

2. Module organisation
Teaching and Supervision
Three lectures, in weeks 1, 2 and 7 of the Autumn term, covering organizational issues and how to
implement a research project. I will endeavour to record these lectures please ensure you attend
unless you have a very good reason like job interviews, illness, etc.

One or two STATA Workshops in the second half of TB1 on data organisation and manipulation. We
expect you to also attend the STATA workshops that are run as part of the Econometrics module this
term. Times: TBC

Two lectures in Spring term, to cover writing up a research project and preparing a poster for your
project. Times: TBC
One workshop on preparing posters and on what makes a successful poster in TB2. Times: TBC.

STATA Surgery sessions in TB2 held by a graduate student. Times TBC. These are to deal with
common data, econometric and computing problems of the type you are likely to encounter in your
research. In addition, we have a STATA query forum on the Dissertation SyD site please feel to
post queries, and to answer those of other students.

Materials for the above will be posted on SyD. Please send me suggestions of any additional material to post.

Dissertation Supervision
You will be allocated an Advisor who will provide guidance on your research during TB1 and TB2. Your
Advisor will usually be a member of faculty who teaches or does research in the field of your dissertation
topic however we are all capable of supervising any undergraduate dissertation topic. Precise details and
timings of meetings will be given by your Advisor.
You are entitled to four meetings with your supervisor:

week 6 or 7 of TB1 to discuss your initial ideas for proceeding with the dissertation. By this time you
should have begun some of the preliminary reading on the topic brief. Ensure you have read something
before you see your Advisor. Your Advisor might recommend additional or alternative readings and
possible data sources once you have discussed what you think you might do in your research. This
meeting is crucial to help you prepare a 1000-1500 word research outline which sets out an overview of
key relevant literature, your key research question and likely hypotheses to be tested, as well as
information on what data you will use. The research outline must be submitted to your Advisor in
advance of your next meeting. See below for details on the research outline.

Week 11 or 12 of TB1 to discuss your research outline and agree on your plans for your research. It is
important that by this stage you are clear about what you will be doing in the dissertation and that your
Advisor is happy with your plans. This meeting is also useful for flagging up potential problems that
may arise as you conduct your research.

Week 4 or 5 of TB2. By now you will have done quite a lot of empirical work i.e. analysing your data
and should be able to talk about some of your key results. You should be ready to show your Advisor
some graphs, descriptive stats and other STATA output with results. Use this meeting to present to your
Advisor what you think are the most interesting findings of your research, what plans you have to refine
or extend the analysis, as well as to highlight potential problems or limitations with what you have done.
After this meeting you should be in a position to plan how you are going to finish and write up your
research and decide what is going to go into your poster.

Week 10 or 11 of TB2: Your advisor will provide feedback on your dissertation draft please liaise with
him or her how far in advance of the meeting they require the draft.

Assessment and Feedback

The module is formally assessed by two elements:
1) An A1-size Poster submitted in TB2. This is worth 20% of your grade.
2) A 6000 word dissertation submitted in AB2. This is worth 80% of your grade.
Submission dates will be visible on your assessment timetable in SxD and on your Study Direct Your
Course page. The submission date for the poster is in week 8 of TB2. The submission date for the
dissertation itself is set by the University for all dissertations, and is usually in early May. These are all
subject to confirmation: please ensure you refer to SxD for precise dates.
You will receive feedback on your progress in the following ways:

Your Dissertation Advisor will give you verbal feedback on your progress as you proceed with
your research during meetings.

He or she will give you feedback on a 1000-1500 word outline of your planned research at the
end of TB1

He or she will also read one draft of your dissertation in TB2 and give you feedback on how it
might be improved and strengthened. This is best if it is your final draft, as far as possible.

You will also have the opportunity to submit a draft of your poster for feedback from me before
you submit the final version.

You will receive further feedback on your poster from the examiners in the form of a grade and
written comments on SxD and also informal feedback from peers during the poster Exhibition in
Spring term. Feedback on your poster should help you to identify and address any weaknesses in
your research.

You will receive written feedback on your dissertation along with your grade.

I welcome feedback on how things are going. Please do feel free to post suggestions or requests on the SyD
or contact me directly. I also would encourage you to alert me to problems earlier rather than later so that I
might be able to remedy problems. You will be asked to complete a module evaluation questionnaire at the
end of the year but I will also post feedback questions on SyD from time to time.

3. Organising your time

As there are very few formal contact hours during the module, you need to make sure you allocate some time
each week to make progress on your dissertation. As a general guide think about the time you spend on other
modules in lectures, in seminars and in preparing work each week and double it since the dissertation
carries double credit. Most students will find they work on their dissertations during both term and vacation
time.
Take some time early on in TB1 to read through the topic briefs. Talk to other students, talk to potential
supervisors, talk to me. Read a little about the topic and make your informed choices on the Topic Preference

form by the start of week 3. You will hear in week 3 which topic you have been allocated and who will be
your Advisor.
You will have an initial meeting with your Advisor soon after to discuss your ideas and you should plan to
spend some time in second half of TB1 reading relevant literature, planning your research and writing your
research outline.
Most of TB2 will be spent analysing your data and writing up both the dissertation and the poster. Following
comments on the draft from your Advisor, you will almost certainly wish to make some revisions before the
final submission.
The module timetable looks approximately as follows therefore (precise details on your SxD timetable) and
you should organise your time accordingly.

Autumn term
Weeks 1-2

Lectures on organisation, how to implement a research project.

Weeks 1-2

Look through project briefs and select your top three.

Week 3

Submit your topic preference form. Deadline: 4pm, Monday 5th

October.

Week 4

Projects and supervisors allocated

Week 6 or 7

Meet supervisor to discuss initial ideas and research outline

Week 7

Lecture and workshops on data organisation and manipulation.

(You should also attend the Stata workshops which are part of the
Introduction to Econometrics module.)

Week 11 or 12

Submit research outline (1000-1500 words) to advisor and meet

to discuss. (Advisor to provide precise deadline.)

Spring term
Week 4 or 5

Meet supervisor to discuss initial results

Week 7

Submit draft poster (via SyD forum) for my comments.

Deadline: 4pm Monday 14th March 2016. Comments will be
returned on a first come, first served basis. All comments will be
back by Friday 24th March, so everyone will have at least a week
to tweak their poster.

Week 8 (after Submit final version of poster.

Easter
break, April 2016.
note)
Week 9 or 10

Deadline: 4pm Monday 4th

Submit draft dissertation to advisor (advisor to provide date)

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Week 10 or 11

Advisor to provide feedback on draft of dissertation.

Week 11

Poster exhibition

Early May

Submit dissertation (deadline set by university)

4. Background information and advice

Choosing your research topic
The full list of topics will be available on SyD. If you wish to discuss a particular topic you should contact
me, your Academic Advisor or a faculty member who teaches in this area, in one of our office hours.
You should choose three topics from the list and enter them on your preference form (on SyD). The form
should then be uploaded to SyD by 12 noon on Monday 5 th October (week 3). Forms will be drawn at
random and topics assigned. Many of the topics can be done by more than one student but if your first
preference is already full when your form is drawn, you will be given your second choice (or third, if the
first two have gone). If you do not express a second or third preference you will go to the back of the queue,
so there is no advantage to be gained by not making three choices. The topic allocations, and Advisors, will
be announced later that same week.

Writing an outline of your research

After you have had your initial meeting with your Advisor, you must then start planning your research in
detail. You should submit your 1000-1500 word research outline in advance of your week 11 or 12 meetings.
This will form the basis of that meeting.
Your outline should include:

a brief review of the main literature: identify key papers that establish what we know or that question the
conventional wisdom and summarise what they do and what they find.
a description of how you intend to conduct the research (data sources to use, how you may have to
organise your data and variables, hypotheses to test, equations to estimate, etc.)
a list of any problems you foresee in your research (e.g. not very long time series available).

You will find it helpful, when writing the outline, to have already collected some data and examined it (a few
graphs, etc.) since this will inevitably reveal problems and/or give you ideas. Written well, your outline can
form the basis of the introduction and literature review of your dissertation, saving you time in TB2.

Conducting your research

You should use your literature review to identify what the key debates are amongst economists, what are the
points of agreement and disagreement, and what are the range of methods used to test ideas. You may find
that there is a chronological order, with initial studies being thrown into doubt by improvements in data
quality and econometric methods. Or you may find that evidence that applied for a particular time period no
longer holds because of changes in the economic, political or social environment, or because of
improvements in data and methodologies for empirically analysing data. Aim to make significant progress on
this during TB1, but be prepared to add to your literature review, or go back to papers again, during TB2 as
you go further with your own analysis.
Most of your statistical and econometric analysis will be conducted during TB2. You will need to take
responsibility for ensuring you proceed at a good pace: dont leave everything till the end of term. Prioritise

getting your data ready and start by exploring your data: what trends emerge over time? What are the key
summary stats for your observations? Is there much variation across observations? Get to know your data in
detail. Draw some graphs what do they suggest about interesting hypotheses to test?
We do not expect students to apply techniques that are not covered in our undergraduate courses. Some of
the literature you will read will undoubtedly use more advanced econometric techniques but the emphasis in
our assessment will be on doing something relatively simple and doing it well. Be prepared to go a little
outside of your comfort zone but not too far. Of course, we cannot stop you from applying more
sophisticated techniques but you should only attempt these after you have already explored your topic using
simpler methods.
You should aim to have completed the statistical and econometric analysis before the end of TB2, allowing
yourself enough time to write up a draft and to get feedback from your Advisor. Use your Advisor sessions to
set your own milestones.

Writing up your research

You should prepare a first draft of your dissertation during TB2. Guidelines on how to structure your
dissertation are provided below and we will have a lecture on this in TB2. If you submit it to your Advisor in
advance of your final meeting with him or her, then you will receive comments and suggestions on where it
needs improving. Do not expect corrections of spelling and grammar (or indications of whether it will get a
first class mark that is decided by the examiners).
These notes provide a guide to writing up your dissertation to supplement the lecture. You need not follow
this guide to the letter, different projects might demand different structures, but this should give you a good
idea.
It is a good idea to read some of the guides to writing dissertations that are available on Study Success at
Sussex (S3). There is a really good transcript of a lecture from the Royal Literary Fund, with especially good
tips on working on different sections of the dissertation. Read these early.
Remember that the word limit is 6000 words. The official regulation on what is included in the word limit is
contained in the exam regulations handbook, available at:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/adqe/standards/examsandassessment

5. Suggested Dissertation Structure

What follows is a suggested structure, with suggestions of how long each section should be. You do not
have to use these section headings be a little more imaginative. Different topics warrant different
emphasis on lit review vs methods. Your advisor will advise you if your draft needs balancing. A good tip is
look at how Economics papers in journals are structured. You will be reading these for your other options as
well as for the dissertation so look at HOW they are written: structure, language, presentation etc even if
you dont understand everything in the paper you should be able to see a logical flow from the introduction
through to the conclusions.
Abstract (guide 100-300 words, not included in word count)
A short, concise summary of your dissertation, so that the reader has a good idea what your research is about
and your main findings.

Introduction: statement of the Problem and Motivation (guide 5% of the dissertation word length)
An outline of what you're going to do and why, so examiners can find their way through it. You need to give
directions, sign-post the dissertation, by explaining what the dissertation is about, why this is interesting (e.g.
contested evidence, policy relevance, new evidence) and how you are doing the research (eg using data from
source X and estimating a model of Y, for country, time period.). You might include a reference to a news
story that highlights the issue(s) you are studying in your dissertation or refer to a hotly disputed piece of
evidence.
Review of the Literature (guide: 20% of length)
You need to show that you have identified some of the most relevant articles or studies in the area of your
dissertation, and that you understand the existing evidence, or why the evidence is contested (or
contestable). You do not need to provide an exhaustive synthesis but it should be a credible attempt to
identify the key authors and what they argue and in doing so set out some of the hypotheses or questions you
will be addressing and some of the existing evidence from other studies.
For example, there may be opposing camps for and against a hypothesis. Or a result might be very sensitive
to assumptions made in the methodology. There may be shortcomings in the way other studies have
addressed the question that you think you can address. You may have even identified a gap in the literature,
[perhaps no-one has studied this particular issue, in this particular way, or included a particular focus, for
your country/time period etc. Think about how to set out your literature review clearly and succinctly. Do not
just have a list of paragraphs saying Jones (1982) did this..; Smith (1984) did that ..and Bloggs (1993)
did this.. This is quite boring to read and doesnt show the reader that you have been able to extract the
main facts, debates, choices in methods etc, and synthesise them.
For some projects, it might be appropriate to summarise results found from earlier studies in a table or graph,
and elaborate on whether you expect to find the same. If using a different data period or country, you might
expect different results.
Methods (10%)
Again, clarity is very helpful. Explain clearly what your analysis is explain what model(s) you will
actually estimate (you may have derived various equations with different specifications, restrictions etc).
Your estimating equation may be slightly different from the ideal (set out in the model) for some valid
reason, so explain this.
For a demand model for margarine, we might have:
(1)

Dt d Pm , Ps , Y , Z Z = other variables.

as the theoretical model, while the actual estimating equation is

(2)

Dt a bPmt cPst dYt fZ t et where e is the error term.

Use simple and obvious variable names where possible: P is a good choice for price, Q is not! Make it clear
if variables are in logs or not, whether they are in real or nominal terms, etc. Use appropriate subscripts t
for time, i for countries or households or individuals.
Data Sources and Description (15%):
Again, be clear. State clearly where you have obtained the data from you may have to describe a number of
sources. This might be easier to do in a table if you have had to compile data from lots of different sources.
Highlight any shortcomings of the data. Show clearly what data transformations you have done. Again, try

to use obvious variable names and try to make them the same or similar to the model section above. For
example, LP or LPRICE would be a good choice for the log of price.
Some charts may be appropriate to illustrate main features of the data (you should have prepared these while
collecting and checking the data). This will help both you and the examiners. Briefly describe the relevant
features. Dont say "... X goes up till 83 then down before rising again in 89 followed by..." The graph
should show that instead pick out what you want the reader to take away from the graph.
Put the data itself into an appendix. This is important so your research can be validated. Clearly distinguish
(a) the original data collected (including deflators) (b) transformed data used for estimation. A
straightforward printout will do if the dataset is small. Use a disk or memory stick if the dataset is too large
to realistically print out. Make sure variable names are the same as in text or that it is obvious which variable
is which.
Model Estimation and Hypothesis Testing (40%)
Explain what techniques you have used and why. You should usually start off with a model that you estimate
with OLS regression, find it is not completely satisfactory, then start adapting it (transformed data, revised
specification, and possibly a different method of estimation etc.). Eventually you should arrive at a decent
model. Use this to test hypotheses of interest.
You may find you end up estimating dozens of slightly different models. Give an outline of how you got
from your first attempt to your final model, but do not describe every step, every regression. Pick a few of
the relevant highlights. You can present the results from several different regressions in a single table for
example to show how a coefficient changes when you add in additional control variables or change your
method of estimation.
Don't go into obvious statistical details: e.g. how OLS estimates are derived, what a hypothesis test is and
how it's calculated. This is repeating stuff from lectures or books.
You will probably need to discuss the following issues:
Are the results what you expected, from theory or compared to other studies? Highlight any unusual findings
and results at variance to the findings of others. Pay attention to sizes of coefficients as well as signs and
significance. You may have the wrong result: don't do silly things to try to get rid of it. This is what the data
tell you. Try to explain it, if possible. If not, it's an avenue for further research you might mention in your
conclusions.
Limitations of Study and/or Possible Agenda for Future Research (5%)
There may be many shortcomings of your study. It is helpful if you are aware of these as much as the
examiner! Some possibilities are:

data limitations: data on X is not available, or missing for some years/countries; or is not
available for the precise definition you need.
study limited to one country or time period - others might be different
unusual results obtained that you cannot fully explain
unusual time period or observation(s)
econometric issues that you have not been able to resolve.

You could suggest how these problems might be addressed with more time and resources.
You will not be unduly penalised for shortcomings that are beyond your control or of which you are aware
and indicate. Much real life research is abandoned when results do not emerge.

Conclusions (5%)
Summarise what you've said draw out the key findings and what they mean. Imagine being given 3
minutes to tell someone what your dissertation is about and what you found. Think about any policy
implications that might arise. Think about your conclusions as you proceed with your research, keep
discussing these with your Advisor.
Acknowledgements (<0.1%)
This is polite but not essential. If you have had help on a particularly difficult technique you should
acknowledge this. This will not be held against you.
References
Include full references to books, articles mentioned in text, also data sources.
E.g.
Deaton, A.S, (1975) The measurement of income and price elasticities. European Economic Review vol 6,
261-73.
See Study Success at Sussex online for examples.

6. Style guide for writing your dissertation

This brief guide gives you a number of handy hints about how to write your dissertation in a suitable
academic style. The points are not in order of importance and some may not be relevant to your dissertation,
but they will help you write something that is clear and relevant. You might like to look at one of the
economics journals (e.g. Applied Economics) to use as a model, though your own work is likely to be more
straightforward.

It is usually a good idea to graph some of the main variables of interest and include these in your
dissertation. You, your Advisor and the examiners can learn quite a lot from these, before any
regressions, etc. are performed.

If you do present a graph, you do not need to follow it with a long description of the variable. As a rule
of thumb, make two brief points (at most) about the data series. As examples:
Do say: Notice from the graph the strong seasonal component and the break in the series in 1985.
Do not say: The series goes up until 1977 when it reaches a maximum then falls until 1988 due to the
rise in interest rates, followed by (and so on for a paragraph or two).

Give your variables names which are easy to remember, both for you and the examiners. Remember that
the examiners reads lots of dissertations and it is difficult to keep track of what you are doing if it is not
clear. Good variable names are: WAGE, LOGINC, REALINC, EDUC, GROWTH, etc. Even without
knowing what the project is, you can have a pretty good guess at what these mean. Bad variable names
are RR2L and especially X1, X2, etc! Even if your wage variable (for example) has been manipulated (so
that it is the real wage per hour at 1990 prices) you can still call it WAGE (or perhaps REALWAGE) since
that is the essential aspect of the variable. The fact it is at 1990 prices (rather than 1991 prices, say) is of
lesser importance.

Call the coefficients in your equation(s) 1, 2 etc. Using Greek symbols distinguishes the coefficients
from the variables themselves. Use Insert - Symbol in Word for placing s in text, and for equations use
the Equation Editor.

If you do need to compare coefficients across equations, then you should use 1, 2 etc (or another Greek
letter) for the second equation, and then compare 1 with 1 etc.

10

Do not write down a long sentence about how you carried out a data transformation when a simple
formula will do. For example:
The real exchange rate was calculated as

REALEXCH EXCH

PG
PF

where PG and PF are the German and French price levels, respectively.
is clear and simple, whereas:
To calculate the real exchange rate I took the nominal exchange rate which is variable EXCH and then I
multiplied by the price variable which I had obtained for Germany. I then divided this by the price level
in France which is given by PF.
is pretty terrible.

Avoid excessive use of I did this and I then calculated (see previous point for an example). It is
better to use the passive tense:
The results obtained were satisfactory, apart from a problem of autocorrelation of the residuals.
is better than
I ran the regression and got the following results. I have a problem of autocorrelation but the rest of the
results seem satisfactory.

Dont go into laborious detail explaining the rudiments of econometrics. The coefficient 1 measures
the slope of the regression line and gives the response of y to a unit change in x, etc is unnecessary. The
same goes for t-tests, F-tests, etc.

Second hand references sometimes give trouble when the examiner doubts that you read an
unpublished D Phil thesis from the University of Melbourne, for example, which you have put in your
bibliography. The problem is that you have read someone who quotes the D Phil thesis, so you have a
second hand quote. In this case you should write, after your quote: (Bloggs, 1987, as quoted in Doe,
1990). Bloggs is the author of the original quote, but you have actually read about it in Doe. This is
perfectly acceptable practice. See Study Success at Sussex for more on referencing and on how to avoid
plagiarism.

7. Guidance regarding Advisors

Your Advisors role is to provide advice and guidance to you they are not there to provide instructions or to
manage your research. This is your dissertation and you have responsibility for the direction and
implementation of the research.
You are entitled to four meetings with your Advisor as detailed above, and these meetings should be arranged
between you and your Advisor. You should be pro-active in requesting these meetings: contact them to
arrange a meeting, do not wait for them to contact you. If you cannot make one of the meetings because of
e.g. a timetable clash, contact your Advisor to arrange another time. It may at times be necessary for your
Advisor to hold meetings in an alternative week if for example they are ill, attending a conference or on a
research trip.

11

Each meeting should last about 20-30 minutes, perhaps a little longer if you have something substantive to
discuss. No one (I hope!) will be keeping time with a stop-watch however, so don't worry if you use a little
more or a little less time. Don't be surprised however, if your Advisor objects to you using up lots of time
with trivial queries especially those that are general queries that are covered in the module handbook,
FAQs or on Study Direct.
You will generally find that Advisors will not object to giving more time if you are making good progress, or
genuinely making an effort to resolve a tricky issue, and would genuinely benefit from extra guidance. You
can also make use of your Advisors office hour from time to time if you have a short query that is holding
up your progress so make sure you know when his or her office hours are or email them.
You should make good use of your Advisors time by having your questions and queries well prepared.
Have a list of questions ready, have a list of the papers you have read, take some print-out of graphs or
tables, or regression output to discuss. Don't go along expecting to be taught - it is up to you to ask for advice
and for comments on what you have read and done.
You cannot 'save up' your allowance by doing nothing for ten weeks and then expecting lots of help at the
end of term. It is up to you to request and attend meetings in the appropriate weeks.
Remember that you can go to the drop in STATA sessions in TB2, and use the STATA forum on SyD to sort
out straightforward computing and statistical problems.

8. Instructions for preparing the poster

During TB2 you should also plan your poster. A good way to plan for this is to set out the what, why and
how of your research: what is your research about? why is this interesting and how have you done the
research. You should try to select a small number of key findings and present these. You can be as creative as
you wish in designing your poster but make sure your presentation is clear for the viewer dont clutter it up
too much, make sure text is large enough to read, use graphs and diagrams to illustrate key ideas or findings.
The poster should be A1 portrait size only. You can use any software (eg Powerpoint or Word) to prepare the
poster, as long as you are able to save the file as a PDF. To get the correct size in Powerpoint follow these
instructions:

You need to set up a new document in PowerPoint. Then go to

File , Page Setup or Design, Page Setup (depending on which version of PowerPoint you have)
For the size of paper you need 'custom' then type in 59.4cm width, 84cm height and you must
choose portrait orientation.

This should then give you the page size necessary for an A1 poster.
PLEASE NOTE: You should prepare a poster showing the most important parts of your dissertation which
would enable the reader to understand your dissertation topic AT A GLANCE!
By far the most common comments from previous years posters were Far Too Many Words or Too Much
Information. The posters should be readable at a reasonable distance. It should be a summary of questions,
issues, methodology ideally as a series of bullet points or short statements rather than long paragraphs of
text. The information should hit the reader almost immediately; people should not be spending 10 minutes
trying to discover the important points.

12

BE IMAGINATIVE: Not too much colour but enough to be interesting. Large enough text to be readable at
a distance. Use different size and shape text boxes and make them interact with pictures but not too many,
the poster should not be confusing. One text box/picture should relate to and flow into the next.
This poster must be submitted, electronically *ONLY* to the BMEC school office. Detail of when and how
will be confirmed early in TB2. We will then forward all the files direct to the print unit to print off
photographic quality posters for display in the Jubilee Building.
Some reminders:
Make sure your candidate number (but not your name) is displayed clearly on the poster, in the top
right hand corner.
In your poster, you should capture the purpose, method and findings of your research. If you are still
completing the research, the results will emphasis preliminary findings and conclusions.
You will normally want these to cover (though this is a suggestion, not a formal requirement) the following:

any relevant project background

overall aims and objectives
key literatures or methodologies used
research design
your findings and conclusions

Some Hints:

Use a mix of diagrams and text

Choose font sizes and styles so they are readable at a reasonable distance absolute minimum at
arms length. Choose standard fonts that are available on Sussex pcs Arial, Times Roman etc.
Review the overall effect of your poster is your story easy to understand by the reader test it out
on a friend.

Poster Assessment Criteria

The posters will be marked by faculty and candidates will be anonymous. Please ensure you only put your
candidate number on your poster not your name.
The posters will be assessed against four criteria (although only one overall mark will be given)

Composition (30%)
Achievement (30%
Poster Presentation (30%)
Overall Quality (10%)

We will discuss the assessment criteria in more detail during TB2 but the emphasis is on communication.
The best posters are rarely those that use sophisticated graphics, striking photographs etc, but rather present
their research question clearly, explain clearly what the research is about, present clearly the results and how
they have been obtained.
The actual posters will be displayed TB2 and we will invite all Economics students to a private view, with
refreshments.

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9. Check-list before submitting your dissertation

Before you submit your dissertation it would be wise for you to read through the following check list. Some
of the items may not be relevant for your topic, but most of them will be. You can print out this list and tick
off the items once you have checked your draft. The items are not in any particular order.

Have you run your draft through the spell-checker? You might also want to give the grammar checker a
try, if youre not too hot on punctuation, sentence structure, etc.

Have you numbered all graphs and figures appropriately?

Have you got an introduction and conclusion?

Have you read the style notes above and the advice about writing a dissertation on S3?

Have you examined the diagnostic statistics (for serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, normality, etc.) for
your regression results, and made appropriate comments or adjustments?

Have you presented figures to the appropriate number of decimal places? 1.93 is acceptable as a
regression coefficient, 1.92744532 is not! You might need to edit your Stata output.

Have you attached to your dissertation a memory stick or disk with your data set on, distinguishing
between the raw data collected and the transformed data? Do the variables have the same names as used
in the text?

Have you included a list of the data sources?

Have you checked the number of words?

Have you checked all the references? Have you included them all and are they accurate?

Have you numbered the pages? (Page ordering is not always obvious in some dissertations)

Have you included the appropriate cover sheet, etc?

Have you checked the rules concerning dissertations in the Undergraduate Exam and Assessment
Handbook?

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