I’m beginning a thesis and after looking through volumes of professional journals, I find that I can write very little without having to give credit for it. Subsequently, I’m going to have several pages of references by the time it's completed in a year and a half. My paper thus far is only 12 pages long (double spaced), but I’ve already got eight pages of references (single spaced). The references are not pedantic by any means. However, by the time I’m done with this paper, there may be 30 to 50 pages in references. Is this common or uncommon?
Not uncommon at all... Several years ago, I took a course with a professor who limited his students to ten pages of text for a paper. You could have as many pages of notes as you wished, just ten pages of text. In theory, one could write a 10-page paper and add 20 pages of notes, but no one did. Anecdotal note: The professor also had a habit of opening papers up to the notes first. If your notes were not correct, he would not even read the text; he would simply throw the paper back to you with a flourish and give you one shot at revising it. And yes, I got that treatment (along with a subtle suggestion to add a quote from one of his books), as I had repeated used ibed. instead of the correct ibid. On revision, fortunately, I got an A. Trivia note: As some of you who know me might recall, the professor was the distinguished Lutheran apologist John Warwick Montgomery. Monty would alientate himself from so many people here in the States that he ended up a a lecturer at Luton College in London, ultimately becoming the so-called V.P. of European Operations for one of everyone's favorite theological degree mills, Trinity of Newburgh. The guy was a presumputuous, pompous, priggish putz (I love alliteration), but I have to give him credit - he did turn me into a better writer. We now return to our regular size type . . . For what it's worth, your query got me to check my own major papers. My master's thesis was 116 pages, of which 22 pages were back matter (notes and bibliography). In my doctoral dissertation of 318 pages, 55 pages were back matter. _________________ (Stuff it back in your pants, kids. I don't play cocksmanship games and don't care how short or long your thesis or dissertation was, I'm just providing my numbers as an example for me again.)
While thirty to fifty pages of cited references are not unheard at the doctroal level it is a great amount for a thesis. It sounds as if you might want to reevaluate your seminal texts or reserch and focus on only on that original material. Also I would use extreme caution and avoid at any cost using information found only on the internet. I see a great number of people working on dissertations and thesis' who feel like they can do it all from home. In fact you can do a great deal from home beause you can access so much these days, however these people tend to cite everything because so much is avaliable. These days if you look hard enough you can probably find material to support any hypothesis that one might have. I don't know you sistuation, or topic I just put this out on the table as a general warning. This is a pitfall that more and more people seem to stumble into. If you have 8 ss pages of references when you only have 12 pages ds of material I would, without having looked at you paper, say that this is most likely excessive. Keep in mind you should only use only the highest quality material avaliable in your thesis, just because something is out there does not mean that it deserves to be cited in you paper. Best of luck! Jeff Whetzel
Typo: Paper is about 20 pages thus far (not 12) Thanks levicoff... Now I have another question: After completing a masters thesis, is it acceptable to do a doctoral dissertation on the exact same topic (just expanding on it more)??? We have a search engine that can locate almost any article from any journal. If the journal is three states over, it will be scanned for us and sent to our terminal. Thus, we can do everything from the internet. Is this acceptable in your opinion? Also, from what I understand, all professional journals are now online. And within the next 10 years, I predict that most books will also be online. With our modern ”search engine,” it will be impossible to hide information. This is truly the ”information age” as there has never been such a mass transfer of information within such a short period of time between so many people. Very good point!
As to the question of turning a masters thesis into a doctoral dissertation, I think it can be done with some careful planning. Masters program was completed on campus in under a year, it was an intensive program. I knew going into my thesis that I would only be able to scratch the suface of the subject I had choosen. I also knew that I wanted a doctorate at that point which helped. I will take what I learned from my initial for forray and turn that into a larger research project that would take at least two years to complete. So the short of it is you can, however most people let the big one sneak upon them and then they feel stuck re-doing their thesis. That never works out as you might suspect. On the issue of information avaliable online you were quick to point out that things are ever changing and thats true. In the not so distent future we will be able to do research from the comfort of our home office or den, but for now there is still leg work required. Thats not to say that you can not produce a quality paper/project from home but iit is difficult and not to be recommended. If you plan to get things published and use your work as an extension of yourself you need quality, well used materials in your paper. You were right, one day we will be able to truely desktop publish scholalry materials, but we are not there yet. Good luck with that paper I remeber what it took to get mine compiled, reviewed, corrected, and finally bound and graded. The pain and lost sleep now is worth the feeling down the road, trust me! Jeff Whetzel
Another pitfall that I stumbled into is only citing a specific material once. If you cite a reference that cites a reference which you also cite, this is too much. Pick one (often the more scholarly source) as your reference (if a cite is to a professional paper that cites a magazine, do not cite the magazine (my view)).
meagain asks: "Is this common or uncommon?" Un(1)commo(2)n(3) _____________ 1 Prefix typically meaning "not" or negating that which follows. See Katz and Lazarsfeld, "Use of prefixes in Inca, Wishram, and English Bulb Catalogs," Journal of This & That, 1949, XVI, 23-25. Not to be confused with the abbreviation for the United Nations, or the standard abbreviation in cookbooks for Uneeda Biscuits. 2 Perry Como (alternate spelling, "Commo") popular American singer of Italian heritage. Born 1887, died 1994. 3 Fourteenth letter of English alphabet. Third letter of Inuit alphabet. Used in Inuit language to negate all that has come before, except on Wednesday.
pay attention class! Now that’s pedantic! Our esteemed and notable colleague, Dr. John Bear, has paid us a magnanimous visit and has demonstrated a case-in-point on how not to provide references for our research papers! Thank you John for your insightful and witty way of making light of academia’s requirements.
We're amongst friends... We can share... While I don’t want to talk about the thesis itself, here is a sampling of 7 (out of 94) references that have been compiled so far (and this is just for chapter two): Kazdin, A. E. (1992). Child and adolescent dysfunction and paths toward maladjustment: Targets for intervention. Clinical Psychology Review, 12, 795-817. Kearney, C. A., and Silverman, W. K. (1995). Family environment of youngsters with school refusal behavior: A synopsis with implications for assessment and treatment. Am. J. Family Ther. 23: 59-72. Kenney MC, Staskowski M, Naylor MW (1992), Language and learning disabilities in adolescent school refusers: a collaborative model toward school reentry. Presented at the 70th Annual Convention of the Council for Exceptional Children. Baltimore, MD Kupersmidt, J. B., & Coie, J. D. (1990). Preadolescent peer status, aggression, and school adjustment as predictors of externalizing problems in adolescence. Child Development, 61, 1350-1362. Lahey BB, Goodman SH, Waldman ID, Bird H, Canino G, Jensen P, Regier D, Leaf PJ, Gordon R, Applegate B. (1999 August). Relation of Age of Onset to the Type and Severity of Child and Adolescent Conduct Problems. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology v27 i4 p247. Levine, R. (1984). An assessment tool for early intervention in cases of truancy. Social Work Educat. 6: 133-150. Love AJ, Thompson MG (1988), Language disorders and attention deficit disorders in young children referred for psychiatric services: analysis of prevalence and a conceptual synthesis. Am J Orthopsychiatry 58:52-64 Constructive criticism is always welcomed. If I were to pursue a doctorate, I’d pursue a dissertation on a juvenile topic because there is so much literature on it. It’s unbelievable. It’s a very interesting topic too.
Re: We're amongst friends... We can share... In brief, yes - you can do a dissertation that follows up on your thesis, but it should be a self-standing document. In other words, you might reference the thesis, but the dissertation should be able to stand on its own. Helpful guideline: The traditional function of a doctoral dissertation is to serve as [/i]an original contribution to the scholarly body of literature in your field.[/i] Thus, you can regurgitate out the gazoo on a master's thesis, but you should be more original in a doctoral dissertation. At the same time, you can still do a conglamoration of others' work - the compilation is your original contribution. If you have not done your master's thesis yet, I will presume to make one suggestion. Think minimally. Don't try to do a magnum opus, since (1) no one will give a shit but you, and (2) you don't want to blow everything on the master's - you want to leave both inspiration and energy for the doctorate. A good friend of mine knocked out his M.A. coursework in less than a year, then spent almost ten years writing his M.A. thesis. Finally, he got frustrated, burned out, and took two more courses just to get the damn degree. For what it's worth, my 116-page M.A. thesis was written in a whopping three days. (Obviously, the research took longer, but when it came to throwing the final product together, I did it over the course of a weekend.) If you know what you're doing, you don't want to take a lifetime just for an M.A. thesis. Life is a beach, and you should be laying on one. Now, take a second and look at the two references above, which I pulled from those you cited. They are inconsistent in style. You have abbreviated J. Family Therapy, but spelled out Journal of Child and . . . That makes it look like you pulled it from web pages, and it could trip you up big time. If you have not yet done so, choose one style manual and stick to it. If you are a psych major, obviously you'll use the APA manual. If you are in another field, you might use the Chicago Manual of Style. At the master's level, you can usually get away with the shorter Turabian manual. But be consistent in your references.
LOL, point well taken! Another excellent point. A thousand thanks again. Also, I did not know that a doctoral dissertation should be a stand alone document. This ups the ante considerably.
Read again John & Steve's posts, they are both saying that you have enough references for starting a doctorial dissertation, and way more than you need for a master's thesis. My thesis had six half pages double spaced of references. Also if the references you gave are for one chapter they are pretty scattered, from adolescent dysfunction to ADD in one chapter is rather broad. Whole doctorial work has been done on how ADD makes for good pilots especially fighter pilots. You probably have enough research in this one chapter to do a typical master's thesis.
This is especially the case if you do your master's and doctorate at different institutions or with different academic committees. You should not expect your doctoral committee to have to read your master's thesis in order to understand your doctoral dissertation. If you have not done so yet, read a guide of some type to find out how to do a dissertation, especially with regard to the specific "ingredients" you need to include. Also, in terms of topic, Mike Albrecht makes a good point regarding your diverse references. Make sure you choose a very focused dissertation topic. Why? Because one of the things you will have to do is a literature search - a search of all previous literature in your field or topic area. Example: A friend of mind was dumb enough to do his doctoral dissertation on Saint Augustine (the dude, not the city). Ultimately, then he had to do a search of almost 2000 years of literature. Bad move. And way too broad a subject. I did my dissertation on a very specific, very focused topic, and covered the literature search in just a few pages. Remember, a doctoral dissertation is more important than a master's thesis - it must be more scholarly and more original, whether it is quantitative or qualitative in nature. (Remember, it only took me three days to put my M.A. thesis together. For my dissertation, it took a whopping 30 days. And many pounds of coffee.) But even a doctoral dissertation is a small piece of the big picture, so don't get too hung up on it. In most cases, once you pull off a doctorate, all the dissertation will do is sit on your shelf and gather dust. Yeah, it's fun dust, but it's still dust.
Re: Re: We're amongst friends... We can share... Steve, How did the multidisciplinarity (I think that is a word) of your topic affect the amount of research required? Since you had two disciplines, did your literature search take twice as long? Or did you find that each discipline served as a scope-limiting filter in the other discipline, resulting in about the same amount of work as single-discipline research? I'm keenly interested in this since I'm looking at three disciplines. Bill Highsmith
Re: Re: Re: We're amongst friends... We can share... Not at all. I simply chose a topic that was multidisciplinary, in and of itself.l My doctoral major was Religion and Law, and the title of my dissertation was The New Song of Shiloh: An Historical, Legal, and Theological Exploration of an Indigenous Prison Church. Three clean parts: The first summarized the group's history, the second explored their legal cases in the federal court system, and the third explored their purporte theological system. The fourth part was the integrative factor, pulling the second and third apart and analyzing/critiquing them. By nature, the legal cases included notes on their theology, and their theological works included some of their legal history, so the research itself was integrative. Thus, the end result was able to be cross-indexed with UMI under three broad areas: religion, law, and criminology.
I would think the length of a thesis and its associated references would be dependent upon the subject matter. If one were doing a psychological thesis where there is some type of experiment, then there would likely be more references, an instrument, and several pages of statistics. Other subjects may require less volume. I checked my MBA thesis (actually it was a strategic business plan). It was 167 pages with about 55 references. But then, this covered nearly all aspects of the particular business, and included a number of financial pages.
