Conducting the research and writing up the first draft

When to start

After the proposal is approved.

What to prepare

A first draft of the thesis that meets the general requirement, see Thesis Manual.

Guidance for preparation

To finish the first draft of the thesis, executing the proposed research and writing the draft should go forward hand in hand, rather than independently.

You start with executing the plan you have proposed. In each step of execution, document what you have done precisely and clearly. The standard is that someone else can execute the same analysis by reading your documentation without consulting you in person. Following this process, you gradually extend the Methodology part to its full version.

After the execution, the results should be collected and presented smartly in Tables and Figures. Please pay attention to the caption and notes in Tables and Figures when making them. Check the module on "Academic writing" in CANVAS.

A section discussing all the results should be consequently written. All Tables and Figures that are relevant for the main text should stay in the main text. Only those auxiliary ones that are remotely connected can be left to the Appendix.

In the discussion, do not simply state that the results support the hypothesis (even if they do). Try to make comparisons across different preliminary conditions and make further discussions about them. If your results do not support the hypothesis, discuss why, and propose some additional analysis (e,g, within a subsample) to find positive results.

Finally, you need to write a section on conclusion or concluding remarks discussing potential caveat of the thesis and what other steps can be taken as future research.

There is no specific structure for the final thesis. You may decide how to organize it.

The supervision process

After the thesis proposal is approved, you can immediately start working on executing the plan. In case the thesis proposal is prolonged, you may already have started the execution part.

During the execution, typically we will have two 30min meetings. It is at your call for organizing these meetings. However, there are two requirements for requesting a meeting.

Firstly, please send me a concrete docoment that will be discussed during the meeting. The content of the document depends on the nature of the meeting; see each meeting below.

Secondly, take into account that when you request a meeting, it may only be organized in a few days, upto even a few weeks, not immediately the day after.

First potential meeting: Once the first set of results is ready, you may call for the second meeting. For this meeting, you need to send in a document containing all your obtained results and the full Methodology part (if the Methodology part was not finished in the proposal). The results should be organized in nice tables and figures. There is no need to have perfect captions or table notes at this stage. In this meeting, we discuss the first set of results and what can be extended to make your analysis complete. Further, we discuss the writing of the Methodology part.

Second potential meeting: Once the complete set of results is ready, you should organize the results into proper Tables and/or Figures with perfect captions and table notes. Then you may call for the second meeting. For this meeting, you need to send in a draft thesis containing a complete Introduction, Data and Methodolgoy part, as well as all the Tables and/or Figures. We discuss the full set of results and the presentation of the Tables and/or Figures. After this meeting, you are ready to write up the Results part and finish a preliminary version of the thesis.

A master thesis is your independent work. Therefore, I also track and grade the level of indpendence for the thesis writing procedure. It is expected that with the two planned meetings, you can finish a preliminary draft that contains all necessary parts of the thesis. If you achieve this goal within two to three meetings, I would consider your work as "fairly independent". If you need more than three meetings, your work will be considered as "less independent".

Nevertheless, please do not try to reduce meetings to gain "indepedence". I count independence for your grade, but the quality is counted even more!

When the preliminary draft is ready, you can send me an email (via Sin-online) with the draft attached. I will arrange a 45mins meeting with you as soon as possible (usually within one week). During this meeting, I will give you detailed feedback on the preliminary draft.

A typical interval in between aforementioned meetings is two weeks.

After the last meeting, you can give a careful editing for the preliminary draft addressing all my comments. The revised version is considered to be the first draft of your thesis and should be submitted via Sin-Online. Then we move on to the next Step.

In the meantime, I will discuss with the thesis coordinator who will be the co-reader for your thesis. The co-reader reads your first draft and provide comments on it.

Time line regarding this Step

On average, this step takes six weeks or upto two months. Again, the progress is largely depending on you. After finishing this step, it usually takes one month before you can hand in your final thesis. For example, if you intend to hand in your thesis before the end of July, this Step must be finished before the end of June. You may also have to count for the fact that faculty members (thesis coordinator, co-reader, and I) may take holidays in the July-Aug period.