1/24/2020

Research Master’s Starter

Guide Training
Solid Research From Start to Finish
Todd L. Bottom, Ph.D.

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Staying Organized Keeping Your Project and Literature Organized

•Save yourself a lot of trouble – develop a system

as early as possible
•Three-ring binders
•Organized electronic files – Alphabetical by
section
•Filenames: Jones 2012 – PTSD Exposure in
Military
•Physically highlight essential information on
hard copies
•Google Scholar
•Reference Management
•EndNote Examples

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Feedback
Overview
Audience
More Information

Questions
Define Problem
Consider Experience
Identify Struggles
Define Reason
General Interest
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 1/24/2020

Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Hopefully, you have been
Your Study Topic thinking about a potential
topic for quite a long time

Make it personal

Make it important to you

Make sure it’s needed – other

people should care

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Gain Writing Skills

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Literature Search and Review

SEARCH EXECUTION

Mixing
Number Manageable
terms and
returned results
parameters

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 1/24/2020

Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Literature Search and Review

FOR THEORY FOR FOR TOPIC

MEASURES
SEARCH
TERMS

FOR FOR SETTING FOR

POPULATION TREATMENT

Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
• Should DIRECTLY measure your theory of
Theoretical Foundation
interest.
• Should be well established.
Major Theories • After comprehensive search and review of
literature.
• Select and compare 2-3 that appear to have
• Behaviorism
the best psychometrics.
• Cognitivism
• Will help with justifying your selection.
• Constructivism
• May reduce the need to explain unfounded
• Structuralism expectations.
• Functionalism • Add something new to research.
• Gestalt • New population or outcome?
• Social Psych
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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 1
Preparing For Your Study
Theory and Stats

Control
Theory LoC
Demographic
Income Semesters to
Self- Complete Degree
Motivation
1st Gen. Learning or Dependent
Motivation Theory Variable

Age
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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 2
Preparing Your Proposal
Chapter 1
• Introduction
• Problem Statement
• Literature or
Research Gap
• Literature Review
• Study Rationale

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 2
Preparing Your Proposal
Chapter 2
• Methods
• Quant or Qual
• Participant Recruiting
• Data Collection
• Measures
• Psychometric Properties
• Study Procedures
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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 2
Preparing Your Proposal
Chapter 3
• Results
• Only facts
• No assumptions or
explanations
• Often a shorter chapter
• No citing

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 2
Preparing Your Proposal • Discussion
Chapter 4
• Explain findings
regarding each
hypothesis or research
question
• Loop back to lit review
• Limitations
• Future research
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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 2
Preparing Your Proposal
Chapter 5
• Conclusion
• Summarize findings
• Restate findings
• State what was learned

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Part 3
Designing Your Study
Participants and Groups
• Correlational
• Cross-sectional
• Longitudinal
• Predictive
• Participant characteristics
• Group comparisons

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 4
Handling Your Data
Data Collection
• Measures rigorously tested
• Avoid creating new measures
• Extremely formal
• IRB approval for
communication

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 4
Handling Your Data
Data Cleaning
• Highly overlooked!!!!
• Can invalidate all findings
• Missing data
• Outliers and abnormalities
• Data distribution
• Re-coding variables
• Computing subscales and
full measures
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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 4
Handling Your Data
Data Analysis Do not overcomplicate by selecting analyses that are far too
difficult for you to conduct, interpret, and explain. However, you
should push yourself to be rigorous and provide information that
is sophisticated enough to eventually publish.

Learn EVERYTHING you can about doing your analyses as early

as possible. Do not wait until you have collected and cleaned
your data to learn how to do a factorial ANOVA!!

If you are unsure about whether you have conducted your

analyses properly, have a consultant or other person check your
work. DO NOT hire someone to do your analyses for you! This
is a breach of academic integrity and will limit you when it comes
time to explain it to others, especially during your defense.

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 5 You should be a confident expert in the research area. No one should know
more about it than you.
Defending and Publishing
Remember that your committee wants you to succeed!
Preparing for Defense
30-60 Minute Presentation
30-60 Minute Question and Answer
10-20 Minute Deliberation

1. Outright Rejection. While this rarely happens, it indicates that the quality
of your work was extremely poor and likely does not add value to your field.

Most
In these instances the committee may ask you to make major changes to your
study and do it again, or they may require that you do an entirely new study.

Common 2. Complete Acceptance With No Revisions. This example is also

extremely rare. It is very unlikely that you have done EVERYTHING perfectly
and that the committee does not recognize something that can be improved.

Decisions 3. Accepted With Revisions. This is the most common determination from a
Thesis or Dissertation committee. When this happens, the committee will ask
you to make a few minor changes to your manuscript, tell you that you have
earned your doctorate degree, and you are officially Dr. Smith!
Congratulations!!!!

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Research Master’s Starter Guide

Part 5
Preparing for Defense
Publishing Your Manuscript
• Identify a journal that is a good fit
• Quality of journal
• Confidence in acceptance
• Fit the journal and reader
philosophy
• Pretty standard submission
process…follow them precisely
• Submit right after defense
• Decisions are similar to defense

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