8 Semester 2 Week 3
Note: In 26-27, I will combine Semester 2 Week 3 and 5, pushing things forward. This is because the dissertation deadline is earlier than normal, due to the early Easter Bank Holiday in 2027
8.1 Analysis (quant and qual)
In the previous session, I would have ended the group meeting by asking students to bring in their analysis questions. Discussing these questions takes up most of the session.
In the rest of the session, I cover the following: a) if I have some students doing qual, I cover an example of getting depth in analysis, b) I remind students doing quant about the PsyTeachR resources and c) I provide some excerpts of Results/Analysis sections from previous student work (all anonymised) and give these to the students to have a look at. The last one tends to generate a bit of discussion.
8.1.1 Expected progress
- I would be expecting all intros to be submitted by this point, plus to have had a few methods submitted
- Data collection should be wrapping up imminently if not already completed
- Students should be writing up Methods if not yet submitted
- Those doing qual projects should be working on transcripts and have a cut-off for recruitment/data collection
- Those doing quant projects should be working on setting up their .rmd and getting set up for analysis
8.1.2 Questions
Most of today’s group session will be answering questions from students on analysis. I think I had a mixture of ones that students had posted on teams (with me saying I’d answer in the group session) and others that were asked only in the session.
The students found it a useful experience, even if they hadn’t thought much about it as those who were a bit further behind got answers to questions they hadn’t thought of yet. I encourage students to submit something even if it’s not a fully-formed question, e.g. “I don’t know where to start with X” is a valid thing to bring, since a vague sense of being stuck is still worth raising rather than students feeling they need a polished question before they can ask anything.
8.1.3 Qual resource
For any qual students, I give them Activity 2 from Lab 9 in RM2, and ask them what they think about the depth. I then ask them to reflect on their own analysis so far, is it reaching a similar depth, or are there places it’s currently more surface-level?
8.1.4 Quant resource
For any quant students, I remind them about the PsyTeachR resources. Although they will be aware of the books they had in Levels 1 through 3, they will be less likely to know about the MSc resources. Over the past few years, I’ve had students find the MSc Conversion book useful, in particular.
8.1.5 Looking over excerpts of results/analysis
- Before the session, I will have prepared some results/analysis extracts from previous dissertations. I then give these out during the session and we discuss:
- what they liked/what worked well
- what they felt could be improved
- one concrete thing that they might take forward when they come to write their own analysis section
I also flag that these are not all A1 examples. The students usually say they are surprised by how different they are, and this leads to a discussion about key things being covered but it’s not ‘one size fits all’. This is the same critical-reading skill running through the whole book, spotting what’s strong and weak in someone else’s work, first with papers back in Week 5, then the zombie apocalypse intros in Week 9, then JARS in Week 11, just now applied to Results and Analysis sections.