Doing Your Social Science Dissertation
- Judith Burnett - University of East London, UK
SAGE Study Skills Series
Judith Burnett helps students to rise to this challenge, making the most of the opportunities which a dissertation offers and overcoming the obstacles to successful completion. This book takes students through the process of doing a dissertation from turning the raw ideas into a research question, designing the research project, choosing appropriate methods, developing a research proposal, planning and executing the project, working with data, writing up, and preparing the work for presentation.
Doing A Dissertation in the Social Sciences is an invaluable guide to avoiding the pitfalls and making the most of the opportunities offered by the dissertation. It ought to be compulsory reading for undergraduate students in any social science discipline.
SAGE Study Skills are essential study guides for students of all levels. From how to write great essays and succeeding at university, to writing your undergraduate dissertation and doing postgraduate research, SAGE Study Skills help you get the best from your time at university. Visit the SAGE Study Skills hub for tips, resources and videos on study success!
Supplements
Visit the SAGE Study Skills hub for tips, resources and videos on study success!
I did not find the chapter on expectations all that useful, and I did not like the chapter on research design. By contrast the chapter on literature reviews is very good. So, we will be dipping in and out of this book.
An excellent guide for students on approaching their dissertations
I really liked the layout of this book. It is very clear and straight foreward and helps students doing each stage of the dissertation.
I think it is a good additional book guiding the students in how to plan and carry out their dissertation.
Good for third year students embarking on dissertations, covers theoretical and practical issues
This text will be useful for nurse researchers adopting a social science stance.
This will be a useful text for nursing research students adopting a social science research approach.
A good starting point for students who are at the initial stages of planning their dissertation. Covers key areas, and would make an excellent reference handbook. Students would then need to refer to other texts for further depth, but this is a good introductory text.
A good clear book appropriate to undergraduates, and helpful for them in doing dissertations, so it's on the supplemental list for our undergraduate methods course. But it's relatively entry-level and it could push students a bit further - certainly I wouldn't put this as key reading for the MA research methods courses I convene.
This is a wonderful book for graduate students who are struggling with the wide variety of conundrums, pitfalls, and uncertainties of qualitative research. It does seem to be aimed primarily at graduate students - for a PhD candidate like myself it seems a bit too generic at times. A lot of time is spent on the transition from life as a student to becoming a PhD candidate. That's fine, but that does mean the book is aimed at a particular audience at a particular time in their academic trajectories. 2 years and 9 months down the line, I personally prefer books with a more direct, no-nonsense approach, such as Dunleavey's excellent 'Authoring a PhD', but this is rather personal. The book's discussions of both quantitative and qualitative methods are rather short, but they do provide sufficient food for thought and bring the beginning PhD candidate up to speed nicely (I think). My students love the fact that this book contains so much valuable information in a compact form, which doesn't shy away from discussing more psychological dimensions of research they sometimes struggle with. A great book in a great series!
