Dissertations and final year projects

This page has useful fact sheets and guides for students undertaking large projects or dissertations.

Dissertation glossary

Students starting a dissertation or large project, often meet a barrier early on because of the terminology involved in producing one. This fact sheet provides a guide to the meanings of the most important terminology, along with extra guidance on the procedure. It covers what is meant by such terms as:

• A dissertation
• The supervisor
• A proposal
• The literature review
• Methodology
• Secondary and primary data
• Quantitative and qualitative data

Download more detailed information at the bottom of this page

Writing a literature review

This guide gives you an introduction to the literature review and covers:

1. Why we write them
2. Being critical
3. Getting started and narrowing the topic
4. Where to look for literature
5. Reading skills, taking notes and keeping records
6. Writing up your review
7. Producing a final draft

Download more detailed information at the bottom of this page

Literature review checklist

This checklist will help you keep your literature review on track. A literature review must:

• Show a clear understanding and of the topic and the major research to date
• Show a gap in the existing knowledge
• Develop paragraph by paragraph to a clear research problem
• Be structured around themes (rather than source by source)
• State clear conclusions about previous research which discuss the pros and cons in relation to the developing research question
• Mention (and discuss some of) all the key studies
• Show the variety of approaches that have been made to the topic area
• Reach well researched and argued recommendations for further research  

Download more detailed information at the bottom of this page

Ethical considerations for research projects and dissertations

All those carrying out research involving living subjects should carefully think about any ethical issues that might arise. This fact sheet will introduce you to some common ethical considerations which you should then discuss with your supervisor/tutor:

• The informed consent of participants
• Debriefing
• The right for participants to withdraw
• Confidentiality and anonymity
• The researcher's safety and protection
• Respect for subjects

Download more detailed information at the bottom of this page

You must check with your school as to which referencing style you are required to use.

The main styles used in the University of Greenwich are Harvard, Harvard APA and British Standard (Numeric - also known as footnoting).

Below are some useful resources to help you reference correctly.

Harvard Guide

This is a brief guide to the Harvard system of referencing used in many parts of the university. It covers how to reference:

• How to do in-text references and reference lists
• How to paraphrase and quote
• How to reference books...
• Chapters from edited books
• Journal articles
• Electronic journal articles
• Web sites
• Newspaper articles
• Government publications and more

Harvard APA and OSCALA online interactive referencing guides

These interactive referencing tools are provided by the the University of Portsmouth. Please ensure that you know exactly which referencing system you are required to use in your assignments!

• Harvard APA. This is a version of Harvard devised by the American Psychologist Association and may be used by students doing psychology courses (check first!). This is not the same as the Harvard system in general use.
• OSCALA ;- this is a legal referencing system

Referencing checklist

When using sources to make notes of material be included in an assignment, it is important to record the information for an in-text citation and the reference list entry. This will save a lot of work later on, when you may find yourself trying to find the information you need. You can carry this checklist with you as a reminder. It covers the six most common sources and can be used in conjuction with all the the main referencing styles:

• Books
• Chapters from books
• Journal articles
• Electronic journal articles
• Websites
• Newspaper articles

iPROGRESS

The Library offers an online course designed to help you develop your Information Skills. There is a very useful section on Bibliographic Citation (referencing) and Avoiding Plagiarism with a quiz to test your skills.

Find this course by logging on to the Portal and going to the My Learning page. 

Recommended reading

An excellent and comprehensive guide to Harvard referencing can be found in:

Pears R. and Shields G. (2016) Cite them right. Macmillan Education; Palgrave.