Fellow Psych students, how was your dissertation/research project organised?

I'm a 3rd year Psych student, and we have basically no choice over what we do our research dissertations on. This isn't at all what I expected - everyone I knew decided on their undergrad dissertations themselves, no two were alike and they were very self-directed. Whereas while we got to list some preferences, Psychology students here just get assigned to existing projects and have to do them, with varying but honestly very little scope for making them about something you want to do. My friends were mostly humanities students though, so I don't know if this is normal in Psychology across the board or is my university being weird.

So, people who study or studied Psychology, how was/is it done at your uni??

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Interrobang

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When I studied (a few years ago now!) It was a mixture- some people chose their topics themselves and some requested to be involved in projects that lecturers were organising

Original post by quisibfrog

I'm a 3rd year Psych student, and we have basically no choice over what we do our research dissertations on. This isn't at all what I expected - everyone I knew decided on their undergrad dissertations themselves, no two were alike and they were very self-directed. Whereas while we got to list some preferences, Psychology students here just get assigned to existing projects and have to do them, with varying but honestly very little scope for making them about something you want to do. My friends were mostly humanities students though, so I don't know if this is normal in Psychology across the board or is my university being weird.

So, people who study or studied Psychology, how was/is it done at your uni??

Hey!

For me, it was the same as above (again I did mine in 2020/21 so I don't know if it's still the same/if it was different because of COVID etc.)! So the lecturers basically advertised projects that we would sign on to and then we'd make our own dissertations unique by looking at different variables within the study :smile:

But from what I remember there was a decent amount of choice between the different studies being advertised.

I know it's frustrating when you hear of students on other courses picking their own unique topics. I think it's because, with Psychology, the dissertation is normally based on a study that is run, so it would be difficult for them to oversee every student doing a completely different study I guess. At least it means you will have a lot of support with the project! Is there a way that you could make the project you've been assigned more aligned with what you want to do by investigating a unique element? Or maybe you could request to change project?

Best of luck with everything!

Natalie
University of Kent Student Rep (PhD Psychology)

Fellow Psych students, how was your dissertation/research project organised?

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