Official Dissertation Thread - 2011-2012

guys and gals, I still have my literature review to do as well as one chapter and a half!
I WILL NEVER MANAGE!

When's it due in?

officially: end of april.
first draft: within 2 weeks

asdfghjkl.

Written 3,800 words for one chapter and I was aiming for 2,600. It's not a really bad thing that I have too many words but now I have to consider whether to edit this chapter severely or just cut another chapter/analysis entirely. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

I have a question, or a query for you lovely dissertationers (not a word )

How many words have you written/planning to write for your introduction/conclusion? I'm just wondering about the average really. I was thinking 1,500 for both but I don't know if that's too few.

Hm, and approx. how many words do you left to write? Are you quite quick when it comes to writing things up? Is your supervisor quite flexible with your first draft hand in date? (Sorry - bombarding you with questions but yeah would be useful to know these things to give you any useful advice )



I've got one rather long chapter too - and I've already cut out 2000 words from it

My intro/concl will be about 1500 words each too Might even have to be a little shorter for me just because I've got to cut down on words somewhere So you should be fine

Thanks for replying! At least I know what others are doing now, makes me feel better and that I'm doing okay

Will have to see supervisor about chapter issues, just gotta keep chugging along until May 14th! Roll on then :P

Hello everyone, just found out about this thread now so thought i'd join in Writing my dissertation (Law) at the moment. It's about reforming the law for negligently caused psychiatric injury (surprisingly interesting, but technically difficult). 15-20,000 words but I think mine will probably end up like 18/19k.

I'm currently sitting at 11k (left the two hardest chapters until last, bad idea in hindsight lol) and moving nowhere fast. Hand in is the 29th of March so I really need to start motivating myself! Sunday night is the worst though!

That sounds really interesting! (Not being sarcastic, that genuinely sounds interesting ) Do you mind expanding a little on what exactly you're doing? You get such a high word count though! Lucky bastard

Just go all Hitler on yourself for motivation (the, er, general dictatorial part not the genocidal, bloodthirsty, fascist part )

Ok So to say I'm panicking is a mild understatement. My Dissertation is due in mid April - I have an invisible dissertation supervisor who as well as managing to make himself invisible also lacks the ability to respond to emails.

My Dissertation is 12000 words and I was wondering if anybody had been given any guidance as to how many words should be in each section - I.E Intro, abstract, lit review etc? I am worried that I will write too much in the wrong sections.

I would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

I have a slightly lower word limit to you (10 - 12k) but have seperated it out

Abstract 250
Acknowledgements 100
Introduction 3000
Materials and Methods 1000
Results 3000
Discussion 3000
Conclusion 350

I did a lit review before which was 2 pages full sized and came to about 2000words.

Quick question if you don't mind. Does the abstract count towards the word count?

Haha of course! Talking about it generally helps me see the bigger picture.

So basically, my dissertation involves giving a brief history of the law, stating the law as it currently stands, critiquing it, offering an international comparison (Australian Law) and offering suggestions for reform (those are my chapter headings )

The law itself concerns people claiming compensation for a psychiatric injury they have developed (most commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but there are others too like anxiety neurosis etc). The law used to be particularly strict. PTSD has only recently been given recognition as a psychiatric illness and courts/people in general have always been skeptical about psychiatric injury.

Claims broadly fall under two heads; from primary victims - these are people who suffer Psychiatric as a consequence from physical injuries they have sustained at the same time (e.g. they get hit by a car and then develop PTSD). The second type of victim is a secondary victim - these are slightly different in that they only suffer psychiatric injury, usually as a result of witnessing someone else get injured (e.g. seeing your child get hit by a car - terrible examples lol).

This area of law was very much in the public eye after the Hillsborough Disaster (lots of relatives of the victims sustained psychiatric injuries when they were told about/saw their loved ones dying).

Very basically, the law is pretty kind to primary victims (the leading decision says that you can recover for psychiatric injury, even if psychiatric injury is not foreseeable, as long as PERSONAL injury is foreseeable). On the other hand, the law is extremely harsh towards secondary victims - they have to satisfy 3 distinct control mechanisms, in addition to foreseeability of psychiatric injury (they must prove very close ties of love and affection to the victim- one case they didn't let a brother in law recover as they didn't think he was close enough to the victim!; they have to be at the scene of the disaster/at the immediate aftermath and they have to witness the disaster with their own unaided senses (i.e. if they are told by someone else about it, e.g. through radio like some at the Hillsborough Disaster, they are barred from recovering). These are extremely harsh control mechanisms and most agree that they are pretty arbitrary.

This is a very brief summary lol, there are all sorts of technicalities that I won't bore you with. Anyway, i'm arguing that primary victims should not be treated so favourably, and secondary victims should be treated more favourably. Not exactly sure what my reform proposals are yet I think I will have a better idea when i've finished my critique chapter (doing that now). Australia have a much, much fairer system than us! Overall, i've really enjoyed it, though it is very technical and at some points difficult (certain parts of the law just are not all that clear and you have just got to accept that and interpret it how you think it should look). I've loved the medical aspect to it as well, it's allowed me to research psychiatric illnesses, how they are diagnosed, how they develop etc, which I love. The worst part has probably been stating the current law if i'm honest (it;s all over the place and there are so many different types of claim - like rescuers, bystanders, people who are stressed at work etc etc)

I hope this has not confused the hell out of you lol, it's hard to describe it to someone that isn't from a legal background, simply because of the terminology etc lol. I've tried to keep it as non-legal as possible.

Oh and TOMORROW I WILL GET 1000 words done (I hope )

I see Wow secondary victims are treated so unfairly! I suppose I can understand why the law is a bit strict because it's (arguably) easier for secondary victims to make all sorts of claims whereas with primary victims the evidence is right there. I don't know maybe I'm just a bit cynical but I feel that the majority of laws in place just make things easier for the people in charge and don't actually prioritise the individual - and what you're writing about, to me, seems like a prime example of this, even more so as you've mentioned the ambiguity of the current law.

In all fairness, I'm probably missing some key aspects here but you can let me off for not being a Law student

Now did you get your 1000 words done?

Ok So to say I'm panicking is a mild understatement. My Dissertation is due in mid April - I have an invisible dissertation supervisor who as well as managing to make himself invisible also lacks the ability to respond to emails.

My Dissertation is 12000 words and I was wondering if anybody had been given any guidance as to how many words should be in each section - I.E Intro, abstract, lit review etc? I am worried that I will write too much in the wrong sections.

I would appreciate any advice. Thanks.