Thesis Editing and Statistics Café for Students

Please refer the diagram below on types and severity of plagiarism violations.

I am currently evaluating a Master's thesis and found that the organization and presentation from a paragraph is not the student's creation and that it mimics the style and layout of the original author. The student did not at all credit the author. The student did change few words with its synonym, yet the flow of sentences in the paragraph is similar to the original author. This is a clear violation of the plagiarism standards.

thevisualcommunicationguy.com

I have been evaluating thesis of students from many universities. I found that most students have problem differentiating what they should write for the "Introduction" and "Statement of Problem". They tend to write SOP like an introduction. Make sure you are not making the same mistakes.

Plagiarism is not just copy-paste the exact text that belongs to someone else; taking ideas that are not originally yours and not giving credit to the owner is also considered as plagiarism. Similarly, if you took someone's text and chance position of its wording with the same sequence of ideas is an academic crime.

Never cheat, it will be like cancer in your system, it will do you more harm if left 'untreated'.

Plagiarism is a serious crime in academia. Never ever try to do it. Not even a single sentence in our writing should duplicate another authors' writing or ideas. Today, we have programs that can help us check on this issue. For example, we can use Turnitin but, make sure upon checking parameters are not restricted so much so that the results of the checking showed low similarity when in actual fact it is beyond the permissible percentage. How do examiners know that it is beyond because they would do the checking too. A candidate would not be allowed to do any oral presentation during a VIVA if his/her thesis was found to commit plagiarism, and immediately be given a straight 'F'. What is weird with candidates who commit this crime is they never admit that they did it, although there were clear evidence on such unethical act.

Students, please take note that most School of Graduate Studies only accept theses that are free from basic errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Your supervisor cannot be held responsible for the grammatical errors in the your thesis. Their main responsibility is to check the content of the thesis, and not the language used.

Students, I strongly suggest that you use the MS Word Auto TOC creation. It provides you with an easy management and reference of the sequences in your writing.

MS Word - How to make Table of Contents Automatically A short tutorial on how to get a nice table of content in MS Word easily. It can really help your reports look clean and tidy. The software is MS Word 2010. ...

Salam all, please take note on the name change of SPSS to PASW. We still find it being used by some.

SPSS is now PASW Yes, it’s true. SPSS has changed its name to PASW. It stands for Predictive Analytics Software. The company has not changed its name–it’s still SPSS, Inc. And the software itself has not changed. Only the name of the software has […]

Salam everyone, our posting on Feb 8th listed words that you can use when writing RO; these are called 'measurable words'. We must use only measurable words in writing our objectives.

Words that are not measurable or non-verbs must never be used in writing RO.

Here are some examples of words that should not be used in writing RO:

* acquire
* appreciate
* know
* learn
* recommend
* recognize
* see
* suggest
* tell
* understand
* value

Unmeasurable words are broad, vague and intangible terms. RO must contain words that allow you to observe in concrete terms the behaviour you wish to measure. It is difficult to observe someone knowing or understanding but, you can do so when someone is doing the behaviour.

Before submitting to your SV (Supervisor) make sure you check your ROs, if there are vague words; change those words to verbs that actually describe the intended behaviour you wish to observe

TES cafe :)

When writing RO, make sure you use action words to address it. Action words are active words or verbs. For e.g.:
*assess
*classify
*compare
*describe
*determine
*develop
*examine
*evaluate
*identify
**investigate
***validate

Note:
**more appropriate for Main Objective because it's not specific enough;
*** esp. if you are developing a new measure/instrument.

Why do you think we need to use active words and not passive? :)

okay, let's try to write one example of a SMART RO.

"To determine the level of psychological health of adolescents across s*x."

SPECIFIC- Yes.
Clearly stating the desired result (i.e., level of psy hlth).
MEASURABLE - Yes.
Can score adolescents' psy hlth using a valid & reliable scale.
ACHIEVABLE: Yes.
Can administer the scale on identified male and female adolescents.
REALISTICS: Yes
The scale is available; Researcher is competent to administer the scale.
TIMELY: Not clearly stated; but, can assume that it is possible to complete the administration of the scale (i.e, data collection) according to specified time.

So, what do you think?

We need to use SMART when writing Research Objective, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

Specific = state clearly based on desired result.
Measurable = systematic measure possible to generate evidence.
Achievable = possible to get the evidence
Realistic = resources available (e.g., skills, funding).
Timely = deadline set for completion

KEEP PUSHING GUYS....BE POSITIVE & LOOK AT THE BIGGER PICTURE :)

The Illustrated Guide To A Ph.D. A Ph.D. is hard to describe it in words. So, here it is in pictures.