afraid to write my thesis!

Okay, I'm a little bit afraid. Our program director sent out thesis info to those of us rounding the bend and approaching proposal time. I have 1 more semester before I must submit a proposal. I'm seriously freaking out. Think back.....what do you wish someone had told you ahead of time?

Also, we have 2 options- original work or a literature review. Literature review sounds so....so....well, yawn. But I tend to get wired up easily, so maybe I'm overlooking an obvious better choice over the other?

 

Big project? Create an outline then proceed one step at a time. Don't be too linear. You'll do great.

 

Whichever one gets you out the door with the least amount of pain should be your choice. I would personally go with the Lit. Review since you are going to have to do it to some degree in either option.

 

Pick something you really want to research, not something that you think would please a future employer (not that they are mutually exclusive necessarily). Your passion for the research topic is what will sustain you in the lousier moments. Best of luck!

 

When I did my ERAU masters just about everyone in my class did a survey. I did mine on the history of a WW II weapon. My advisors thought it was great, recommended I turn it into a paper (I did), and they wondered why more students did not pick a history project.

Seems to me a thesis on the history of nutrition would be fun to research and write.

 

Fun to read too.

 

I would personally pick a lit review. It avoids all those nasty ethics submissions that research requires. The hardest part here is often with the ethics committee in respect of the research topic. I have found them having the tenacity of a pitbull with a bone.

I don't know how they are in the states but I suspect with litigation everywhere now they might not be much different.

 

To me, this is a no-brainer. Whether you do original research or a literature review you must do the research - so, why not simply do the thesis using the Literature Review. I did a disertation on an original idea and it became rather tenus. I think someone mentioned the ethics part of the disertation as being problematic; for me it certainly was. My thesis was a Literature Review on "The History of the Idea of Hell," and it was much more enjoyable.

 

The literature review is my favorite! Start by reading other published lit reviews, nurses have published millions! Observe the style/format. Identify an issue in nutrition and review the current evidenced based literature. You will do great! Have the goal of getting published in mind!

 

Q: Which?

A: Yes.

You see, the choice depends on a number of factors. How inclined are you towards one or the other? Are you more interested in generating some interesting information or on mastering your discipline? Are you more focused on practice--which would lead towards doing an experiment or survey--or scholarship, which would push you towards a literature review (to master what's been said and done in the discipline)?

The literature is not a simple thing. It's not just a laundry list of what's been done before. You'll have to come up with a thematic approach and justify it. You'll also have to document the major thinkers, lines of thinking, and significant disputes in the field.

Let's say, hypothetically of course, that you are writing a literature review on the field of Human Resource Development (HRD). (This is sometimes known as "learning and development" or "training," but it's more complicated than that.) Well, HRD is both an academic discipline and a practice, so you'll have to deal with that. Also, there is a well-documented "gap" between the two. HRD has struggled for a long time to come up with a comprehensive, core theory, so you'll have to document that and other attempts as well. Then there is the emergent discussion around workplace performance, and whether or not that is the key issue, not learning. Oh, and then there's practicing HRD at the highest organizational levels--"Strategic HRD." And then there's the relationship of HRD with human capital management.

On the other hand, if you're going to conduct research, you'll still have to provide a theoretical basis for what you're doing. You have to explain how this is something to study, why it is to be studied, why you are going test what you'll test, what your expectations are (null and alternate hypotheses), etc. You can't just take a survey and report the results. Oh, and after you do establish your subject, you'll have to justify the method(s) you chose for your research and why they're most likely to be revealing in this matter. Then there is the reporting of the results. Finally, you'll have the issue of praxis, where you'll want to take your outcomes and tie them back to the field in a way that shows how your findings fit it--or do not--with what has come before.

So, hypothetically, let's say I want to study that "Strategic HRD" (SHRD) thingy. I decide to study Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) by interviewing them and getting their takes on (a) how they became CLOs and (b) how they practice SHRD. How do they either join the top management team or how do they engage it to practice SHRD? Do they practice it at all? I would have to establish the CLOs as a group to study, propose contributing theories to the phenomenon in question (adult development, HRD, career development, executive development, structure/agency, polarity management, and others), and then conduct and analyze the interviews. I'd have to select the approach (inductive and/or deductive--this would initially be deductive, but would have room for induction), the style of interviews (semi-structured), analytical framework (grounded theory), remain open to other forms of data), coding structure (initial, in vivo, categorical, axial), and then report it all, including its meaning on the academic discipline AND practice of HRD and the CLOs as a social structure.

You know, hypothetically.

If I was interested in advancing my practice, I'd probably go for doing the research. But if I was interesting in pursuing a doctorate after the master's, I'd choose the literature review. Later, it could be shaped around the topic chosen for the doctoral dissertation.

Good luck in your decision. And take Delta's advice seriously. (Actually, all the advice in this thread seems good.)

I would add to it that there are many fine books out there on doing a literature review. My favorite is "Doing a Literature Review" by Christopher Hart.

 

Are you kidding me? I'll take that as a complement!

Here is a link I found summarizing the Literature review:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGAQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.mtaloy.edu%2Ffind_articles%2FHowtoWriteaLiteratureReviewnofooter.pdf&ei=RW9YUfieNMHhygGPy4CoCA&usg=AFQjCNGjxz81xg32jYJryxBF46Ax2zsRKQ&sig2=hWLOs0ONMSvDlN_1Vc443Q&bvm=bv.44442042,d.aWc

 

Great observation and advice.

 

You may find this link helpful.
https://www.lib.umn.edu/help/disscalc/index.phtml
Also I recommend
PhinisheD - Links - Dissertation: Proposal and Writing
There is a wealth of information.

 

No, I am not kidding.

 

Jen,

I'm just going to say good luck in whatever you decide!

Shawn

 

Thanks everyone! We have out of town guests staying with us for the holidays, so it's eating into my online time lol. I want to reply and I have a few questions too, but just for now, let me say one of my classes this term is a research class that allows us to submit mock proposals. I'll be doing one this month. I've already been approved on my idea, and besides psychdoc looking right into my mind (yes, I wanted to pick something a future employer would love) my super simple summary is to measure the effectiveness of nutrition education in culinary programs. In other words, do students in culinary school cook differently whether or not they take nutrition class? I know it's a bit edu focused, but it's very relevant to my profession, my interests, and my future, so I'm trying to see how realistic it would be do conduct. My professor is good at poking holes and has pointed out a few potential issues, but I wanted to throw that out there because I have given this a bit of thought. It just seems so, so big!! Thanks everyone so far, and hope you had a great Easter!!

 

As usual, Rich has solid advice.

 

You should get paid for this sort of thing, working one on one with phd candidates. I also like your piece on inductive and deductive reasoning. On phinished.org there are many phd students who seek guidance beyond their institutions.

 

I am and I do. I also have another reason to me so immersed.

Thank you for the kind words.

 

I wanted to revisit this thread, since my classes are starting up again in 2 weeks, and I'll be required to submit a proposal. My previous comment was about our "mock proposal" that we did in our research course. My instructor had us create a summary power point and post it in our forum for peer review. Simply, I wanted to find out if the type of nutrition education course taught in a culinary program made a difference in the outcome of that chef's ability to apply that knowledge in the workplace.

A culinary program either offers no nutrition courses, a theory nutrition course, a lab nutrition course, or a hybrid-variant of a theory/lab. The part that was very hard, and the most common critique, was in how I would measure the outcome. I didn't do a good job explaining this in my power point, because more than half of the students didn't understand that I wouldn't be measuring IF they are cooking healthy, but rather if they COULD. CAN a chef create a healthier version of xyz recipe? My hypothesis is that chefs who have a class in applied nutrition (lab) do this very well, and that the chefs who only attend the theory class (>70% of culinary programs) are not gaining this competency even thought they are meeting chef certification requirements.

So, the measurement is a huge roadblock as it stands, mainly because it would be very difficult for me to design the proper tool and reach the proper sample. There are also so many variables within the labs, that I can't automatically generalize the results (though the nutrition theory courses ARE pretty consistent from school to school as long as I identify the 2 sub categories of biology based nutrition vs culinary based nutrition).

Okay.... so I need to re-think how I approach this question/problem. I AM very enthusiastic about this topic, and it is VERY relevant to my career (teaching culinary nutrition and potentially serving on a culinary nutrition curriculum committee). My instructor did not suggest ways around my challenges, he only pointed them out, which is fine- keeps my juices flowing. I'm thinking that in reality, this problem is 2 problems or at least 2 research projects. Perhaps the first is to do an analysis of the entire culinary education industry (not as daunting as that sounds, there are only about 400 programs in the USA) which identifies all of the culinary nutrition education options, how many schools use this or that, who teaches this or that (chefs or dietitians) and essentially collect data. This would be a data collection of the entire population, literally, and then later (maybe by someone else or by me funded by my university) an outcome project could be done.

If you've hung in thus far, thank you. I am trying to be concise and in doing so am leaving out a lot of details. Do any of you have thoughts on if this sounds like a better approach of breaking it into 2 projects, project 1 would be used for my thesis while project 2 would be on my own later? Initially, since I thought I could do both, I feel like doing only the first part might not be "enough," however, it would certainly be valuable and it's never been done.