Dissertation And Replication Study Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Most quantitative dissertations, whether carried out by academics or undergraduate, master's or doctoral level students, will involve one of three types of replication. In other words, you take a piece of published research and repeat it, typically in an identical way to see if the results that you obtain are the same as the original authors. In some cases, you don't even redo the previous study, but simply request the original data that was collected, and reanalyse it to check that the original authors were accurate in their analysis techniques. However, duplication is a very narrow view of replication, and is partly what has led some journal editors to shy away from accepting replication studies into their journals.

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The reality is that most research, whether completed by academics or dissertation students at the undergraduate, master's or doctoral level, involves either generalisation or extension. This may simply be replicating a piece of research to determine whether the findings are generalizable within a different population or setting/context. Or across treatment conditions terms we explain in more detail later in this article. Alternately, replication can involve extending existing research to take into account new research designs. As a result, we call these different types of replication study: route a: duplication.

route b: generalisation and route c: extension. We simply give them these names because a they reflect three different routes that you can follow when doing a replication based dissertation i.e. route b: generalisation and route c: extension , and b the things you need to think about when doing your dissertation differ somewhat depending on which of these routes you choose to follow. However, it's worth noting that these three routes are not mutually exclusive, which means that your dissertation could either a incorporate elements of all three types or b simply follow one of these three routes. The purpose of this article is to help you select which of these three routes you will take on. In step one: learn about route a: duplication, route b: generalisation and route c: extension. We help you to justify taking on a replication based dissertation, since this is an inevitable step in getting your topic approved.

In step three: determine whether a replication based dissertation is right for you. We highlight some of the benefits and challenges of taking on a replication based dissertation so that you know what to expect. We point to the various sections of this site where we help walk you doing a dissertation based on route a: duplication.

Replication based dissertations have the benefit of being highly extendable. In other words, you can choose to simply duplicate a study, or you have the option to make generalisations and other extensions in a wide variety of ways. In the sections that follow, we discuss some of the benefits and challenges of taking on route 1: replication. Each of these benefits is discussed in turn:

the overall difficulty and value of the contribution
unless you are a numbers nut who likes to delve into the data i.e. route 2: data driven dissertations , or you are particularly good at dealing with abstract concepts i.e. route 3: theory driven dissertations , it is likely that you will find route 1: replication based dissertations the easiest. Since the dissertation process is already challenging, most students will opt for some kind of replication based dissertation, even if in the majority of cases, they do not realise this is what they are doing.

route 1 make is not as great as route 2: data driven dissertations and route 3: theory driven dissertations. However, this does not mean that a replication based dissertation is of little value, or cannot achieve a high grade at the undergraduate and master's level note: we will be adding sections guiding you through route 2: data driven dissertations and route 3: theory driven dissertations in early 2013. You should note that high grades are not only based on the originality of your dissertation, but also its execution. Whilst the originality of replication based dissertations is often less than data driven and theory driven dissertations, the ability to execute i.e. As a result, the contribution that you can make in some dissertations based on route b: generalisation and route c: extension can still be high when well executed.

route a: duplication contributes to the literature by checking the internal validity and reliability of a study, as well as adding to the construct validity of the constructs that are studied. We explain more about the ideas of internal validity, reliability and construct validity later on. Whilst it is difficult to publish duplication based studies, you may find, even though you are doing an undergraduate or master's level dissertation, that you can submit your findings for publication to a journal in what are known as notes or letters. Which may look good on the cv! route b: generalisation can make a useful contribution to the literature by examining the external validity of the original study i.e. The generalizability of the original study in terms of other populations, treatments, settings/contexts and time. Examining the generalizability of research is an important objective of quantitative research, and can make a useful contribution to the literature. We explain more about the specific benefits of the different types of generalisation you can follow deeper in l rd dissertation site.

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route c: extension has the benefit of taking the original study further. Some aspects of route c: extension are similar to route b: generalisation because the desire to make certain types of generalisation requires greater changes to be made to the original study during replication. However, extension based dissertations often make more significant contributions to the literature because they go the furthest in showing how an original study can be developed.

choosing your topic and setting up your dissertation
one of the major benefits of replication based dissertations is that the process of a choosing a topic and b establishing what you research questions and/or hypotheses are is relatively straightforward. Most universities have extensive access to journals across a wide range of subjects, which gives you so many options when it comes to selecting a study that you want to replicate. Even if you find that the study you are interested in is too hard to replicated, whether because of the research design and data analysis techniques used, or simply because the authors have not provided detailed enough guidelines to follow, it will not take long to find another suitable study.

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