The document offers guidance on preparing for dissertation topics, emphasizing the importance of choosing a feasible topic, narrowing down ideas, and conducting preliminary literature searches. It advises students to balance their interests with available resources and participant accessibility, while also utilizing various databases for research and staying updated through alerts. Additionally, it highlights the significance of proper referencing and using software to manage citations effectively.

1. Getting started
Dissertation preparation

2. Today....
 Thinking about topics
 Narrowing your topic
 What to do with Literature at this stage? Finding
tests, extra databases you may not have used etc ...
 INFERRING – from one context to your context
 Alerts in your interest area(s)
 Where to find referencing information
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3. Preparation
3

4. Picking your topic
 What are you interested in?
 Did any essays/lectures/articles particularly spark
your interest?
 Were there ideas or aspects of the topic you’d like to explore in
more detail?
 Are there particular groups of people you would like to look at in
relation to this topic?
 Look for gaps in research (NOT voids!)
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5. Picking your topic 2
 Not interested?!
 What did you get the best grades in?
 Which subjects came easier?
 Remember this is just the planning stage – thinking like this will help
you narrow to look at topics within one area
 Still lost?
 Placements – those doing placements think about people you will work
with, any studies they may be already doing from which you could re-
use data or data you may be able to collect through organisation
TOP TIP: Keep a notebook/word file where you can
add anything which takes your interest and any ideas
which could be candidates for diss topics
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6. Be practical
 Most common mistake is that people’s ideas are too big!
 Remember this is real – not fantasy!
 The study you propose you have to carry out =
No studies interviewing battered wives or sex offenders
please!
 Remember the participant groups you will have ready
access to = students and staff at MDX, people you
encounter on your placement etc
 You can also re-use data from other studies (do a
secondary analysis) - this can come from another study
which you want to follow up on or from data your
placement organisation
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7. Be Practical 2 – find a balance
 You will need to do some literature searching for journal
articles in your area – this will help you figure out how
feasible your study is
 You need to find a balance between:
Your
Information
interest
available
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8. Just the right amount of literature
 Think how studies work and what
options are open to you and
importantly - NOT OPEN TO YOU!
 You want a GAP in literature NOT A
VOID
 What does this mean?
– Goldilocks theory!
Not too much (Too big)
Not none (Too small)
Some literature on OR AROUND
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your topic (just right!)

9. Narrowing your topic
There’s a whole pre-set of options for narrowing a large topic area or interest down
 People/participants:
 Racial/cultural/nationality groups
 Age
 Type of participant (will explain)
 Way you measure something
 Think about all the sub-factors that fall under your topic
 Example: Media effect on self esteem can be broken down into:
 Fashion and Beauty media
 Effect on body image/ effect on self worth
 Among Women / students
 Among students in UK/Dubai/Mauritius
Look at what others have done – study other studies!
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AND ask a member of staff from the Psychology department!

10. Exercise 1 - Narrowing your topic
1. “Exploring religious and cultural factors in health seeking
behaviour among Nigerian migrants in the UK”
Too specific (and too big at the same time!)
2. “Exploring religious and cultural factors in health seeking
behaviour “
WAY too big
3. “Exploring factors affecting health seeking behaviour in the
UK”
Still too big!
What are the problematic parts? Why are some impractical?
How can we make this question the right scope?
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11. Exercise 1 - Narrowing your topic
What have I done to narrow these questions/make them
more practical?
 Exploring factors affecting health seeking behaviour among
African migrants in the London Borough of ....
 Exploring factors affecting health seeking behaviour in
African migrants in the UK
 Exploring factors affecting health seeking behaviour in
Nigerians/British Nigerians in the UK
 Exploring (cultural) factors affecting health seeking
behaviour in international/migrant student populations
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12. Literature Searching
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13. Just START searching
 You only need to START searching....
 You do not need to do a full lit review now!
 You are feeling things out to see how practical and
possible your ideas are
The most important thing is to keep a record of
everything you look at/find which MAY be useful –
then if you need it later you do not need to repeat
yourself
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14. Databases
 Remember you will need to use more than one
database to see what is out there on your topic
 As well as PsycINFO .....
 Social Sciences Citation Index/Web of Knowledge is
VERY useful as you can cross search Sciences and
Social Sciences
 ScienceDirect will also be very useful for the more
health focused topics
 Remember you can personalise Google Scholar to
recognise and link to MDX library resources
14 – ask me/take handout

15. Key reminders for searching
 Watch out for spellings US/UK =
behavior / behaviour
Counselor / counselling
 Truncate your term* =
Offend* = will find offending, offender, offenders
Counsel* = will find
counselling, counsellor, counsellors
 Keep phrases together with speech marks
“substance abuse”
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16. Follow the trail – citations and
references online
 In SSCI records look for (right hand side)
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17. Finding Tests you could use
 You need to consult the department test library
 UniHub > PSY subject area folder > there’s a word doc with all tests and
subject areas they relate to
(use ctrl+ f or cmd +f on a mac to search the document)
 I am hoping to have PsycTESTS (an online database of
Psychological tests) for you for next academic year
 Finding tests from previous studies in journal articles:
1. Do a lit search on your topic
2. Find articles similar enough to your interest area and kind of study you’d
like to do
3. Look at the abstract/methodology section (if we have full article)
4. Make a list of different methods and tests used
5. Assess how practical they are and whether you could replicate on a
smaller scale
6. Find the test – department tests library OR Google (make sure
17 legitimate!) OR emailing academics who designed test

18. INFERRING! Or how to infer ....
 There may be no research on your very specific diss
topic
 DON’T PANIC – keep calm and ask the librarian!
 But there may be studies which are similar but with a
different participant group or
 And there may be studies which address each element
of your topic separately
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19. Example: The effectiveness of mentoring on young
homeless people
 There were a NO articles for this so the student had to infer from
the contexts below:
 Mentoring and young people
 Mentors and homeless people
 Studies of homeless people /support for homeless people getting out
of homelessness
SO – don’t panic if there’s nothing matching your question exactly
– you just need enough around the elements of your topic to
construct a lit review and discussion of your results
TOP MARKS! This also gives you room to say something original!
Joining the dots between different research or pointing out areas
19 for further exploration in the field.

20. Example: Peer, media and family influences among African
and Afro-Caribbean women and the effects on self esteem
and body image
 There were a few articles for this but mostly this student had to infer
from the contexts below:
 Media influences on women and their self image
 Peer/family/cultural influences on women and their self image
 Media influences on Black/Afro Caribbean populations and their
confidence/self image
 Peer/family/cultural on Black/Afro Caribbean populations and their
confidence/self image
 Media influences on people’s self worth and body image
So you widen your searches and take a little bit of information from
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each context to construct a research-jigsaw-puzzle

21. Cutting Edge?
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22. Staying up to date in your area
 In Social Sciences Citation Index or PsycINFO
you can set up an account and then set up alerts or
RSS feeds for searches you’ve done
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23. Staying up to date – citation alerts
• In Web of Science databases (SSCI and SCI)
• For articles particularly significant to your work/dissertation
get an alert every time it is cited in new research

24. Zetoc alerts service – get info as it’s published
24 • Access as you would any of the other databases (MyUnihub)

25. 25
• Create an alert and name it

26. • Now add searches or journals to the alert
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27. • You can build a list of searches – by keywords or author
• You can also add searches by journals and be emailed every
27 time a journal is released

28. Excercise 2 - Zetoc
 Set up some alerts and add searches relevant to your
log books for this module
 Remember you can add multiple searches for each of
the synonyms for your search term to your alert
 Grab me if you need a hand or help picking search
terms.
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29. Attribution
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30. Referencing
 Is very important
 Acknowledges other people’s work (avoids plagiarism)
 Shows you’ve read around the subject
 Supports your discussion and arguments
 Gets you better marks!
 Enables others to find your references
 As dissertation students it would be useful to use a
referencing software like RefWorks or Mendeley as
you go along

31. Referencing tools
 Refworks is an online
site to manage your
references subscribed to
by the University – you
access it like any other
database through
logging into MyUniHub
> My Study > scroll
down to ‘My library’ >
databases
 Mendeley is a free to use Open access website to
which you can sign up and store and organise all your
31 references http://www.mendeley.com/

32. Referencing guide
http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/plagiarismreferencing

33. Psychology Library subject guide
 This and other powerpoints and helpsheets
 My contact details – please make appointments with me!
33 Access via MyUniHub > My study > My library > library subject guides