Doing Your Masters Dissertation (Essential Study Skills series)

Looking for as much help as I can, I needed to purchase a book that gave enough guidance for me to complete my dissertation. This certainly was the book, very detailed and thorough.

I will say it is a little complicated as I read in one review. However, thinking about it, you are completing your masters dissertation, it in essence should not be easy, it might take a little bit of work!!!

Its not the type of book that you can flick to a page and find out what you need. You need to read the book from cover to cover. Mainly because the author often talks about issues that are related to previous issues you need to read etc.

Good book Mr. Hart, but please improve the research methodology section!

Cheers,

James Wilson

This isn't the simple 'how to do book' for dummies who ought not to be on a Masters level course. It's a long book yes but crammed full of good advice and knowledge. It's for the serious postgraduate student whether Masters or Doctorate. Chapters on finding a topic, developing a research proposal, sampling and research methods are invaluable. The chapter on methodological assumptions is one of the few in the literature to make sense of ‘theories’. The chapter on methodological consequences shows what we commit ourselves to when we make choices about what methodological position to take: the examples from sociology, psychology and anthropology are fascinating. The chapter on different types of dissertation made me see there are choices. This is a pedagogical textbook that refuses to ‘dumb-down’, that uses lots of diagrams to explain complex ideas, issues and debates in the social sciences. The appendices list sources on different research methods – very useful. The skills it embraces are those recommended by the UK research councils that all postgraduate students should acquire.

I don't have time to be exhaustive, but this book was for me a complete waste of money. I wanted a book that would tell me how to write my Masters Dissertation..... The title kinda fits, does it not? What I really needed was a prescriptive, write this section (in this way for most marks) and then this section.
etc. etc. This is one of the most unreadable text books out there. OK quantum mechanics for russian cosmology professors is a little trickier, but I have just totally wasted £20.

This reads more like a PhD thesis, loosely hung around the pretence of a text book. Rubbish. Nice door-stop though