How To Do a Dissertation in Record Time with Government Data: A Primer is written to help students in the social sciences and education do their dissertations in as few as four years from start to finish. Its purpose is to show doctoral students how to conceptualize, formulate and investigate a research problem using government data. Two data sets are used. One is the General Social Survey (GSS), which is used by social scientists and contains some of the best information available on American society. The other data used in this book is from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the gold standard for data on U.S. K-12 education. Both sets of data are free and available online.
Your dissertation is not a hurdle to jump or a battle to fight; as this handbook makes clear, your dissertation is the first of many destinations on the path of your professional career. Destination Dissertation guides you to the successful completion of your dissertation by framing the process as a stimulating and exciting trip—one that can be completed in fewer than nine months and by following twenty-nine specific steps. Sonja Foss and William Waters—your guides on this trip—explain concrete and efficient processes for completing the parts of the dissertation that tend to cause the most delays: conceptualizing a topic, developing a pre-proposal, writing a literature review, writing a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, and writing the last chapter. This guidebook is crafted for use by students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations, and incorporates a wealth of real-life examples from every step of the journey.
Augmented with a new bibliography and streamlined appendices, the Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation, Fifth Edition views the valuable addition of references to university research libraries and advanced information on websites, online searches, electronic literature, and other modern computer methods as crucial for the successful completion of any T/D. This popular text guide features new references and computer-oriented resources for every stage in the creation of honors and master's theses and dissertations and refers to current T/D statistics, federal regulations, ethical codes, and copyright issues and legalities involved in information gathering and study conduct.
Aimed specifically at students on BSc and taught Masters programmes who are embarking on research for the first time, this book is clear with explanatory text supported by numerous examples illustrating good practice.
A doctoral dissertation is arguably the most important journey that students will embark upon in their professional careers, so smart travelers will want E. Alana James and Tracesea H. Slater’s Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster: A Proven Map to Success at their fingertips. James and Slater identify the key places and challenges that create extra stress during the dissertation process, and offer effective strategies and tools to address those challenges and ensure academic success. Their map walks readers through each step of the process, including: • determining the research topic, • choosing appropriate methods, • turning a hypothesis into a study, • completing a literature review, • writing and defending a proposal, • collecting and analyzing data, • writing up the study, and • ultimately defending the dissertation. Building on years of experience with doctoral students, the authors provide a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use tool that encourages student reflection; includes student stories, hints, and writing tips; and provides end-of-chapter checklists and ideas for incorporating social media. With the proven techniques and guidance of this indispensable and applied book, doctoral students will finish their thesis or dissertation—faster!
The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.
Electronic health records (EHRs) have become commonplace in the medical profession. Health data are readily captured and permanently stored in a digital fashion, and consequently, are increasingly being utilized in health research. The quality of this research depends upon the investigator’s ability to obtain the correct data to answer the correct question. It is easy to churn out poor quality research from the EHR; it is much harder to produce meaningful results that influence the population’s health. Improving Population Health Using Electronic Health Records takes the reader through the process of conducting meaningful research from data in the EHR. It de-mystifies the entire research process, from how to ask the right kind of research questions, to obtaining data with particular emphasis on data management and manipulation, to performing a valid statistical analyses, and interpreting and presenting the results in a clear, concise fashion that has the potential to improve population health. This book can be used as a hands-on how-to guide of performing research from EHR data in either a piece-meal fashion, selecting only the topics of greatest interest, or a complete guide to the entire research process. Readers will benefit from the intuitive presentation of complex methods with a multitude of examples. It is invaluable reading for researchers and clinicians who are not otherwise familiar with the complexities of working with large data sets.
Risk, Reliability and Safety contains papers describing innovations in theory and practice contributed to the scientific programme of the European Safety and Reliability conference (ESREL 2016), held at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland (25—29 September 2016). Authors include scientists, academics, practitioners, regulators and other key individuals with expertise and experience relevant to specific areas. Papers include domain specific applications as well as general modelling methods. Papers cover evaluation of contemporary solutions, exploration of future challenges, and exposition of concepts, methods and processes. Topics include human factors, occupational health and safety, dynamic and systems reliability modelling, maintenance optimisation, uncertainty analysis, resilience assessment, risk and crisis management.
