The Dissertation/FYP thread 2008

Does anyone here have any experience with SPSS? It's beginning to give me a headache, all I want to do is one simple test! :(
 
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Working on mine as we speak:

Design of a Timber Footbridge to Eurocode 5

Pain in the bum max word limit is 8000 though so not all that bad. However I do have to make a model and perform structural calculations for it. Not that easy when is spans in two directions.

Good luck all.

Aero
 
V3g3tto said:
I wouldn't do a degree full stop, the amount of employers i've seen that laugh when they see:

'Graduate with excellent X skills'.

Relevant Work Experience:

-Bar work - Dealing with customers, taking orders and completing time critical tasks

"So, have you done this job before?"
"Err, no, but i can d..."
"Yeh, that's great,we'll be in touch"

:D
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Not really, if you get some relevant work experience (summer placement or year out) your pretty sorted for a job. Especially if you have a good degree from a decent uni.
 
V3g3tto said:
I wouldn't do a degree full stop, the amount of employers i've seen that laugh when they see:

'Graduate with excellent X skills'.

Relevant Work Experience:

-Bar work - Dealing with customers, taking orders and completing time critical tasks

"So, have you done this job before?"
"Err, no, but i can d..."
"Yeh, that's great,we'll be in touch"

:D
Click to expand...

I've got myself a job with £20+k a year as a graduate wage + a 2.5k welcome bonus and they'll pay for my masters and for me to get chartered. So personally I think a degree is well worth it.

Aero
 
TheOtherOption said:
We've had sessions using it, however my diss doesn't include any stats tests that would require me to use it so I have to say I wasn't paying full attention!

What you trying to do?
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Basically my methodology was two fold. I had qualitative focus groups who filled out a Likert-type five-point scale with 16 questions.

I then developed this into a quantitative questionnaire with more questions, but the first 16 remained the same.

I wanted a non-parametric test between the two to test for any sinificance within the first 16 questions, which a friend did for me in about 10 minutes on SPSS last week. Therefore, I have a one-tailed Mann-Whitney U Test looking for significance between the responses of both methodologies.

Since finding out I have more time, I decided to do more. So now what I'm trying to do, is look for correlations or significance purely within the qualitative data. Essentially, I need another Mann-Whitney (is it two-tailed I need?) just for the first set of answers. Basically, I want to see if any questions correlate with each other or have significant relationships, etc.

I've got all the numbers and things sitting here, I just haven't got a clue how to use SPSS :(
 
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I know how to use SPSS for Mann Whitney's, I have used it for my dissertation stats (all of which are not significant, ho hum!).

Not sure how easy it would be to explain though, I found just googling SPSS and Mann Whitney brought me up plenty of websites that explained how to do it.
You just have to define your variables, and the groups and input the data, and its fairly straight forward from there.
 
Title: Psychological Effects of Intense Training on Athletes: Overtraining and Mood State

Just got to finish my discussion hopefully tonight, and then its one final check through (well a few probably) before it goes off to the print shop. At last! Hoping my spss is alright too!
 
My two:

Current Word Count: 2100est.
Final Word Count: 10,000
Hand in Date: 30th April
Subject: Motorsport Engineering
Title: Air Independant Propulsion Engine Concept and Design for Competitive Use
Status: Well, just got to slog out the typing really, as it's mostly a wordy one. Debating whether to load in a pile of complex maths or not but uncertain as a) it'll complicate the hell out of it and b) I'm not sure if they're interested. Done all the work though, just a matter of putting it down.

Will try to finish it this weekend.

2nd:
Current Word Count: 4700est.
Final Word Count: 30,000 (between 8 of us)
Hand in Date: 30th April
Subject: Motorsport Engineering
Title: Nissan P35 Prototye restoration & redesign
Status: Just waiting on an email back from some driveshaft suppliers, other than that this is well sorted.

Not too bad :)
 
Bit of a random question but does anyone use the Harvard system for citations.
is it necessary to list page numbers within the citation in the main text

e.g. (author, date, pp.1-3)

or can i get away with just (author, date)

Am i right in thinking page numbers are only needed for direct quotations.

cheers
 
Dissertation aka 'Management Project' for business and management, 6000 down another 2 to go and I'm done. I hate methodology sections! qualitative/quantitative research blah blah. Now looking for grad schemes.
 
electric ant said:
Bit of a random question but does anyone use the Harvard system for citations.
is it necessary to list page numbers within the citation in the main text

e.g. (author, date, pp.1-3)

or can i get away with just (author, date)

Am i right in thinking page numbers are only needed for direct quotations.

cheers
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I think harvard referencing system is used for all dissertations. My lecturer told me that it is for only direct quotations.. simply < name of author> followed by (year of publication : page number).
 
theonebillygunn said:
I think harvard referencing system is used for all dissertations. My lecturer told me that it is for only direct quotations.. simply < name of author> followed by (year of publication : page number).
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I'm using IEEE for mine not Harvard style.
 
Hmmmm am I right in thinking that they set a word limit of 10,000 words for the work but it doesnt HAVE to be as near as possible to 10,000 words.

I'm just asking because what if you can only write so much about your chosen topic, I mean ive got up to 3300 words so far including pretty much all my Introduction, Method and Results. I dont see how i'm going to bulk it out by several thousand more words in my Discussion and Abstract.
My introduction will probably have a couple hundred more words adding to it, and the same for my method and results, so i guess it would be 4000ish when they are completely done.

Just wondering if anyone else is in the same position as me, as in they dont know if they wont have enough to write?
 
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