Conducting the research and writing up the first draft

How to start

After the proposal is approved, or often during the late stage of writing the proposal, you may have already started conducting the analysis.

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 written based on the Tables and Figures. If you mention a Table (or a Figure) and discuss the Table in the main text, then the Table should stay in the main text. If you mention a Table (or a Figure) without discussing it, i.e. it is just some further information for the readers, then it can be left to the Appendix. If you never mention it, it should not stay anywhere in the thesis.

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

Finally, you need to write a Conclusion section discussing the main findings and 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

During this step, typically we will have 1-2 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 document that will be discussed during the meeting. The content of the document depends on the nature of the meeting; see potential meeting types below.

Secondly, take into account that when you request a meeting, it may only be organized in a few days, upto even 1-2 weeks. Typically, it cannot be immediately the day after your request.

Meeting type 1: Methodology discussion If you have difficulties in your methodology, then you may call for a meeting. For this meeting, you need to send in the Methodology part of your thesis in its most complete form possible. In addition, you send in a list of questions that you would like to discuss. In this meeting, we discuss your questions as well as possible ways to get the methodologies working towards reasonable results.

Meeting type 2: Result discussion Once the first set of results is ready, you may call for a 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/Figure 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.

A master thesis is your independent work. Therefore, I also track and grade the level of independence for the thesis writing procedure. It is expected that with two planned meetings (or feedback moments), you can finish the first draft. If you achieve this goal, your work is considered as "fairly independent". If you need more than two planned feedback moments, your work is regarded as "less independent".

Nevertheless, please do not deliberately reduce the number of meetings to gain grade on "independence". While independence is counted towards your grade, the quality is counted even more!

After the Result discussion meeting, you can write up the entire Results section and the Conclusion section. Then you can hand it in as the first draft of your thesis

What to expect

You will receive feedback on the first draft of the proposal. If needed, we have a final meeting to discuss the first draft and agree on the remaining modifications towards the final draft. At this stage, the suggestions are often regarding writing only.

In the meantime, I will discuss with the thesis coordinator who will be the co-reader for your thesis.

Typically, you conduct another round of minor revision based on the feedback and comments, and add the name of the co-reader. If the revised version is good, then the status of your thesis is "first draft hand-in".

Time line regarding this Step

After handing in your first draft of the thesis, it typically takes 1 weeks till receiving my feedback and having the meeting about the first draft of the thesis.

After handing in the revised version, the thesis will be passed to the co-reader for evaluation.