psychology masters

Hi!
I was wondering if there is anybody on here who is either studying a masters or post graduate psychology course, or considering it?
I have aspirations to do a PhD but I feel I'd benefit from the extra experience the masters can give. One thing is putting me off though; how much of a challenge is obtaining participants for the dissertation? I can imagine it being quite tricky over the summer months.
If you did it by research, would the research being in, say, October and end in round about March time? Then you have 4months or so to write it up?

Reply 1

llacerta

Most universities have some kind of an online participant database which should make recruitment of participants easier. Actually when you run the project depends on the length of the Master's; some finish in June, in which case all data collection will be during term time when students are around. Some, such as my own, finish in September, but even so I've done a lot of data collection over the past few months- and I actually tend not to recruit students due to the nature of my study; instead, I try and recruit non-student individuals, and have managed to test around 40 so far.

In short, recruitment shouldn't be something you should worry about, as most universities have a system to get around the problem. It certainly shouldn't be something putting you off applying for a Master's.

Reply 2

Liv1204

Just to agree with the above, don't let participant recruitment let you put off doing a Masters definitely. The participants you recruit will obviously depend on the type of Masters you choose, but there are always options.

For our course, our dissertations are due in the middle of August. So the typical dissertation timeline is to think of the research proposal, ideal, rationale, method, etc etc just after Christmas, most of us are starting to work properly on rationales and ethics around now (I am putting mine on hold until September, but that's another issue...), and then data collection will begin after that, with the write-up being over the summer months. Students are obviously easier to recruit before the summer months, but depending on subject you might not want to use students anyway - it might be that you recruit online, as Ilacerta said, or for example, on my course people tend to recruit through sports clubs, some are recruiting through their work, or through voluntary work settings and the NHS.

Reply 3

o-glez

Thanks for your advice everyone.
I've already got an idea of what I'd like to do for a research project. I'm planning to do an MRes, so perhaps that would mean working towards and agreed title and/or ethics application even before the course begins.

Reply 4

Sakura-Chan

Original post by o-glez

I wouldn't have thought so.

I'm doing an MRes at the moment, and the course runs from September 2013 to September 2014. It's split into three semesters. The first two semesters are 'research experience' where I work on two independent projects for a professor within my department, that have already received ethical clearance. The third semester is where you do your own research and write it up as a thesis. For my course, you start thinking about your ethics as soon as you can in semester two, have a full research proposal due in at the start of March, have assessed poster presentations based on your research proposal and are expected to submit your ethics application asap after that. Most people on my course have submitted their ethics application in the last week :smile:

At the uni I'm at, the MRes course is set out in such a way that you should be ready to start testing in April, when the students are all still around. I wouldn't worry about hte logistics of participant recruitment before you even start the course :tongue:

there's always something in place to make sure people can get it done.

Reply 5

o-glez

The first two semesters are 'research experience' where I work on two independent projects for a professor within my department, that have already received ethical clearance.

I see, that's interesting. So essentially you act as an intern, but you do a write up for the study? Forgive my ignorance if I've misinterpreted that. That's basically how my 3rd year major project has worked; collecting data with a 'pre-designed' study for my supervisor, and being assessed on a 6000 word write up.
Because of that I feel I'd need to gain more experience at designing studies as opposed to going straight into a PhD.

Which university are you at, if you don't mind me asking?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 6

Sakura-Chan

Original post by o-glez

I see, that's interesting. So essentially you act as an intern, but you do a write up for the study? Forgive my ignorance if I've misinterpreted that. That's basically how my 3rd year major project has worked; collecting data with a 'pre-designed' study for my supervisor, and being assessed on a 6000 word write up.
Because of that I feel I'd need to gain more experience at designing studies as opposed to going straight into a PhD.

Which university are you at, if you don't mind me asking?

Yep, that's pretty much it :smile:

we produce a 4000 word lab report for each one. Along side that, we have two other modules; statistics (same kind of stuff from undergrad, just super detailed), and a 'practical research skills and techniques' module where you learn about all the kit in our department, e.g. EEG, TMS, NIRS, TDCS, the Vicon motion capture lab etc.

With our third semester, you get to chose a supervisor and you work on a project you design yourself. So I guess that part would be of most use to you if you didn't get to design your own dissertation :yep: