WRITING A THESISRagnhild Balsvik

August, 2014

Agenda

1. Requirements of a master thesis

2. Application for supervisor

3. Finding a topic

4. Data sources and analysis

5. Writing tips

Requirements of a master thesis

• A larger unified piece of work

• 30 ECTS credits (workload 1 semester)

• Ca. 50-80 pages

• You have to write in groups of 2 students

http://www.nhh.no/en/student-pages/thesis/guidelines-related-to-theses-in-the-msc-programme.aspx

What to put on the application for supervisor

• Try to explain as accurately as possible what you

intend to do

• Your choice of words will decide which supervisors

are relevant

• Talk to potential supervisors

• Topic is not ‘cut in stone’

Finding and refining a topic

• Spend time on this before you apply for

supervisor

• A research question that triggers your interest- Journal articles, courses, textbooks, newspapers- On going research projects at NHH?

• Make the research question as specific as

possible- Has your exact question been answered before?- Think about what information you need to actually answer your

question, is this information available?

Reading tips:

Collect your own data?• Experiments, surveys, qualitative interviews,

observation, etc

• Software for surveys: Qualtrics

• Notification of master thesis projects to NSD:

http://www.nsd.uib.no/personvern/om/english.ht

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Use existing data?• Possible sources-Official registers (Statistics Norway, stock exchange, Brønnøysund, etc)-Surveys collected by a firm; ex. employees or customers -Data collected in research projects-Norwegian Social Science Data Service www.nsd.no - World Bank- Somewhere on the internet….

How to analyse data

• Take a methodology course- ECN 402- FIE 401E- BUS 444- STR 402/405

How much information/data do I need?

A bit more than this,…

Reading tips for writing tips

Writing tips

• Start writing early in the process

• Write out references in full from the start

• Expect to rewrite several times

• Don’t try to hand in a «perfect» first draft to your

supervisor- get it done and hand it in!

Writing tips

• Be critical to what and how your co-author writes- don’t rely on your supervisor only for that

• Aim for: Clarity, structure and flow

• Use your own words. Do not copy and paste

Writing is hard

• Try to avoid distractions while you write- Be offline and stick to it for 25 min, take a short break and write

for 25 min more

• It is not always easy to give specific advice:

Googled advice that I agree with:

• Start in the middle

“Once you have planted the seed, just start adding on

words around and over it – this builds a chunk. Don’t

worry about where it fits yet – that’s a rewriting

problem.”

• Write as fast as you can, not as well as you can

“The surest way to slow the process is to worry too

much about whether your thinking is any good. So

give yourself permission to write badly.”

• Leave it to rest… then re-write

You may still feel like this during the process:

but there is only one thing to do: