Dissertation data analysis help

Hi,
I am a third year sociology student doing my dissertation. I had a conversation with my supervisor and discussed with him that I used contingency tables for my questionnaire data analysis. She seemed pretty shocked that I used the method and said it was a quite advanced method of data analysis (for a sociology course anyway which has no mathematical involvement). Judging from what I’ve heard in group discussions, most people are doing bar charts and pie charts to analyse their data so using contingency tables will give my work originality. I was talking to my friends and they said that using an ‘advanced method of data analysis’ as my supervisor said will get me better marks as I have gone from the norm and developed original ideas and analysis and shows my competency with data analysis. Is it true that I am likely to get more marks for original and more advanced analysis?

Reply 1

melrosepetal

I would definitely assume so! It shows that you've gone out of your way to learn more advanced methods and thus you are contributing to the world of knowledge in a more original way. This is just what I would assume though, I'd ask your supervisor for clarification.

Reply 2

Mr Wednesday

Original post by Chloeexoxo

Is it true that I am likely to get more marks for original and more advanced analysis?

Yes, absolutely, but be sure to explain the method well and include some test cases that PROVE it is doing what you want it to. Nothing worse than a badly applied complex method that gets used to draw erroneous conclusions from dodgy statistics, too small a sample etc.