If you are a student in the last semester of your Psychology degree, it is likely that you will have to choose, depending on your university, between doing pre-professional internships or writing a thesis. In this article we are going to explain what it implies, what steps you have to follow and we are going to give good examples of topics so that you can do a correct investigation for your Psychology Thesis.
The first thing you should know is that you have to approach research work from an open and transparent position regarding the intentions that led you to choose a certain topic. In this point, You will have to use the appropriate research methodology for the problem posed. All this based on the knowledge that you were acquiring throughout the race.
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What does it mean to do a Psychology Thesis?
The preparation of a thesis involves following and fulfilling a series of steps and the first of them is the choosing an area of interest, thematic or curricular. The thematic area implies the choice of a field of work within the discipline of Psychology.
In general, it is classified into: educational area, clinical area, social-community area, justice area and work area. After you define the field, you will have to set some trim within it since each area is a “universe”. For example: in the clinical area carry out an analysis of consumption pathologies.
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Steps to make it
As in all academic work, the thesis genre pursues content guidelines ranging from the statement of the research problem to the delimitation of the theoretical framework. Besides background and brief review of studies on the topic chosen in your Psychology thesis, you have to define the type of study.
On the other hand, you have to make the methodology What do you intend to apply? Besides the presentation and analysis of results, comments and discussions that you define pertinent to count in the conclusions. Ultimately you will have to make the bibliographical references used in the development.
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Research question and objectives
Once you have defined the topic, you will ask yourself the research questions and consider the objectives of the research. Present the proposals that you want to achieve with your research. In order to contextualize the guiding problem, you will use the documentary search systems.
You will present the reasons and causes for which you want to carry out this investigation. To develop the justification you will have to overturn the personal interest that motivated you to choose the theme. On the other hand, you must take into account the social relevance it has, who benefits and what it is for. The theoretical value, viability and feasibility of the topic must also be included in the justification.
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Tips for preparing each section
Now we are going to give you advice and information so that you know how to approach each section of your project.
Theoretical framework of your Psychology Thesis
Within the theoretical framework, you have to review the theories and theoretical concepts that will serve as a starting point to explain the phenomena studied and validate your research. To make it, you can start with the review of primary sources (books, magazines, interviews, etc.).
Continue with secondary sources (abstracts or summaries). In the event that your work cannot be approached from a single theory that you use as support, you can resort to concepts or empirical evidence.
For the correct approach to the topic It is important that you incorporate the scientific background of the subject, where you can also mention contributions from previous research on the problem or similar or related topics.
Introduction
In the introduction You must capture the tentative hypothesis or hypotheses that you hope to prove or refute at the end of your investigation. Keep in mind that not all theses merit the production of a hypothesis, as occurs, for example, in a pedagogical proposal or in an exploratory type of investigation.
If your research is based on a hypothesis, you will have to determine the variables to be measured or observed and set the operational definition. That is, how are you going to measure each variable that you established. In addition, you must find the indicators that allow you to measure reality through various instruments, such as a questionnaire, direct observation, interviews, among others.
How to develop the methodological framework?
To develop the field work, it is necessary that you consider the following aspects to choose the methodological framework that best suits the study of your topic:
Specify the type of study: if it is an exploratory, descriptive, correlational, explanatory, retrospective, historical, etc.
Design to use: the design can be experimental or non-experimental. If it’s non-experimental, you’re just going to measure, observe, or correlate. You will need to indicate whether your study will be cross-sectional (you will observe or measure the phenomenon at a single moment) or longitudinal (if the measurements or observations will be taken at different moments). In some cases, it will be necessary for you to prepare designs from the field of psychologysuch as the “double or triple blind”, which are handled in experimental psychology, but this will not always be the case.
Delimit a sample: it is about selecting units of analysis (subjects, institutions, units, etc.) and indicating how you obtained that number, if it was through a formula or personal selection.
In addition, you must state the inclusion and/or exclusion criteria that you used on these units of analysis. It is important that you explain why they meet the desired characteristics that these units must have, “for example, when the sample is people, determine age ranges, sex, not having certain diseases, being athletes, etc.”
Keys to approach the field work of your thesis
Instruments and techniques: are the means through which you will collect the data. For example: questionnaires, interviews, psychological tests, observations, etc. Of which you must clearly state what they are and what they consist of and express whether you opt for quantitative techniques (some statistical test, for example) or qualitative techniques (content analysis, life stories, life stories, etc.).
It may also be the case that your research topic allows you to carry out a combination of both techniques.
Development: dividing your study and results into chapters, it is necessary that you turn over all the information that will allow you to arrive at the conclusions. To prove or refute your hypothesis and make recommendations based on evidence.
Bibliographic data: It is very important that during the progress of your thesis you correctly cite the sources used and do not leave this task to the last minute, with the risk of forgetting or ignoring some author. The order of these data may vary, but preferably it is recommended that psychologists use the APA format.
The bibliography is arranged alphabetically and in the cases in which it is desired to include an element that due to its length deserves to be separated, it must appear in Annexes.
Finally, keep in mind that writing your psychology thesis must be done with a perspective towards the future. That is, use the verbs in this tense (it will be done, it will be measured, it will be analyzed, etc.).
Structure of a psychology thesis
In general, any house of higher studies or University provides you with the information and instructions necessary to comply with all the parts of the Psychology Thesis that they expect to receive.
In the event that this does not happen, the “must-have” components for the presentation of the document version of your thesis will be detailed below:
Front page: Generally, it usually contains the logo of your university, the title of the research, your name and that of your colleagues in the case of research by more than one author. It includes the current year, the name of the city and the country, and in some cases, the name of the person who advised or tutored your thesis.
Dedications/optional acknowledgments.
Table of Contents numbered and index of tables, images or charts if necessary.
Abstract and abstract that include keywords.
Introduction: it must provide the reader with condensed basic data so that he/she immediately understands what problem the research addresses, through what methodology, with what theoretical support and what objectives it obeys. In addition, you must present hypotheses, variables and indicators.
It is necessary that these elements are always present in your Psychology Thesis.
Last stage of your Psychology thesis
In its last stage, the investigation must contain:
Results: corresponds to the most important chapter of the thesis. “They include the data obtained in the study, which contribute to responding to the problems and objectives of the investigation.” you shall expose in this section the most relevant information you could obtain.
Discussion: the intention of this chapter is not to repeat information already presented during the introduction and results. Its objective is that you can interpret the results in such a way that you expose new and original data and make comparisons with previous investigations and results obtained by other authors.
Conclusions: You must directly relate the research problem, the hypothesis that you inferred in the introduction and the objectives that you proposed when you began your thesis project with the results obtained. This does not mean making a summary of the results, but connecting and condensing the most important aspects of your research.
Recommendations: You can suggest to other authors that they resume your research, how to continue it, suggest forms of application, among others.
References: You must list the references cited in the research through the APA method.
Annexes: If necessary, you can include reports, interviews, among others, as information attached to your investigation.
It is necessary to clarify that there are some elements that can be optional, as is the case of the Annexes. Next, we are going to give you several examples of topics for your Psychology thesis.
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Examples of Psychology Thesis Topics
Below are some Psychology Thesis topics, obtained from the repositories of the Universidad de Palermo in Argentina and the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, to guide you in choosing your own topic.
Here some examples:
“Leadership styles in students of the Physical Education Faculty”.
Roffe, Jose Marcelo. “Time perspective, personality, learning strategies and academic performance…