Do you think I have a chance of making my dissertation work?

[psychstudent90]

Hi everyone,

I posted here a while ago regarding my last dissertation topic. I begun my MSc Health Psychology in September last year in the UK (I'm from Australia), and was assigned a topic by my supervisor (after being told via email I could pick my own). My dissertation was supposed to be on the lived experiences of adult childhood cancer survivors still experiencing pain as a result of that cancer. My supervisor wanted me to interview approximately 15-16 people, but unfortunately I couldn't find a single participant.

As an international student, and because of time constraints, I couldn't recruit through NHS hospitals or hospitals in general, and despite working in a hospital as a psychologist, my supervisor didn't know anyone. I contacted multiple (about 12) charities to ask if they had any patients or past patients I could get in contact with. I also posted on childhood cancer survivor Facebook pages, but no one responded. My supervisor wanted me to post a recruitment notice in a local newspaper, but I was going to be going to their homes alone, and I didn't feel safe doing that, especially because where I'm living in the UK isn't the safest of areas. She didn't have anywhere for me to interview participants at the university.

Anyway, as of two weeks ago, I have a new dissertation topic - the attitudes of young people (aged 18-35) towards cancer pain. It is a much more feasible topic, but I am still concerned that I will not find enough participants in time to write up my dissertation. It is due in early September, and my supervisor wants me to find 80-100 participants.

I still have to develop the questionnaire (online, 15-20 minutes), hopefully get some feedback on it from my supervisor, write and submit my ethics application (which usually takes approximately 2 weeks to come back) and actually make the questionnaire online using some university software. I think it will probably be late June before I can begin recruitment, so I'll have all of July to collect data, but I'll need August to write up (10 000 words). Do you think it's doable?

I'm also concerned I won't find enough participants. The undergraduates at uni have left for the Summer, so only the postgraduate research students are available. Another concern is that a classmate has been recruiting since late April for a similar project, and has only found 15 participants recruiting within the university. I have emailed some local newspapers to see if they could publish a notice, but haven't heard back yet. I've also thought of getting in touch with some youth groups (or something like that).

I just can't see myself finding 80-100 participants in a month. I asked my supervisor what will be the consequences if I find less than 80 participants and that I'm concerned I won't find enough participants/I don't have enough time, but she just replied and said that she can't predict the future, and it's all down to how dedicated I am and how much hard work I'm prepared to put in. She has also said I'm not that behind and I should be up to this as an MSc student, but I'm still worried that I'll put in lots of hard work towards my dissertation, and I then won't be able to finish because I don't have enough participants.

What do you think I should do? Do you think my project will come off? Does anyone have any suggestions? I can't get an extension, because I have flights booked to go home.

Thanks for your help!

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[cara susanna]

What compensation are you offering?

 

[psychstudent90]

Not sure yet - I'm thinking of giving them an option to put their names and numbers into a draw for a 50 pound voucher, or something like that. I don't have any funds, so it'll be out of my own money - and I don't think I'll be able to afford to pay them each individually.

 

[Ollie123]

We really have no possible way to answer that question. What compensation is being provided? Are participants required to be cancer survivors or just within that age range? Can you recruit through classes? When you say "develop the questionnaire" do you mean just make up some items or actually go through the process of rigorous scientific development of a questionnaire (which could take a year on its own).

Is this a program where most people aren't actually doing data collection for their theses or something? I can't fathom a scenario in which one doesn't even have an IRB approval 3 months before a project has to be done is "not that far behind".

 

[psychstudent90]

Sorry Ollie123, lots of unanswered questions. Responded to a question regarding compensation above. The participants are just the general population, not cancer survivors. Classes are over, so I can't recruit through classes as such, but I can email the survey link to my classmates and other research students - but as I said, my classmate has not had much success using this method. Unfortunately due to time constraints I'll just be making up items, as opposed to actually "developing" a questionnaire.

No, everyone is doing data collection - I have a feeling my supervisor might be telling me white lies. I don't have ethics approval yet, and probably won't for another few weeks :-(

I have finished the coursework, so I can take a Postgraduate Diploma, but would really like the MSc.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Would MTurk be an option if you're looking at general population recruitment?

 

[psychstudent90]

What's MTurk? Participants have to be from the UK if that's relevant.

 

[futureapppsy2]

What's MTurk? Participants have to be from the UK if that's relevant.

Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

You offer micro-compensation to survey participants.

I believe that you can limit respondents to the UK (I know you can limit them to the US, and I think I recall seeing a UK option on there as well-not 100% sure).

Btw, do UK universities have strict word requirements even for empirical theses? I've noticed a lot of emphasis on the number of words in your posts. In the US, you just write untll everything's covered/to your advisor's satisfaction.

 

[psychstudent90]

Great, thank you!! Very helpful!

 

[Tupelo Honey]

Yes - I was just going to post the same. If you are using simple self-report measures, MTurk is a great option. I envy my friends who are able to use it for their research - they often have hundreds of responses within 48 hours of posting.

 

[psychstudent90]

Fantastic, thanks!

 

[Ollie123]

Mturk is a great idea if its a very brief survey. Could probably pay folks $1 each and get it done in a day while still around the stated budget.

By the way, I'm still trying to get over the notion that anyone could actually be as bad at advising as this person's mentor seems to be. At the very least they should be the one forking over the money from a support account. This does not sound like any master's program I have ever heard of. Did Argosy open a London campus?

 

[futureapppsy2]

Mturk is a great idea if its a very brief survey. Could probably pay folks $1 each and get it done in a day while still around the stated budget.

By the way, I'm still trying to get over the notion that anyone could actually be as bad at advising as this person's mentor seems to be. At the very least they should be the one forking over the money from a support account. This does not sound like any master's program I have ever heard of. Did Argosy open a London campus?

FWIW, I've funded (minorly $200-$600 a study) my research when it wasn't funded by a specific grant or a collaborator's start-up funds (I've had very awesome, very generous assistant professor collaborators) and many grad students in my department are expected to fund their own dissertations. I had the department pay for maybe 360 photocopied pages for a survey study once (so, $20 's worth maybe), but that's the extent of financial support for research that my department has ever given me. Otoh, we tend to be fully funded for four years, so I'm not complaining.

 

[Ollie123]

Perhaps in combination with legitimate mentoring and guidance to select reasonable projects, I could see that. I've paid for minor things here and there, but otherwise my expectation has always been that we cover the research in other ways (but I've also trained in AMCs where there is way more funding in general). I can think of few projects I'd want to do badly enough I'd pay for out of pocket...I either get the funding, or I find something I can do without funding.

The OP seems to have been thrown to the wolves without any guidance. How anyone could have suggested their previous project without funding or any way to access that participant population is completely beyond me. Even if a student was pushing for it, I'd be doing everything in my power to dissuade them, when it sounds like that project was basically forced upon the OP.

 

[futureapppsy2]

I agree that the advisement sounds sketchy otherwise, though I've heard of worse advising practices from credible sources. These were even at solid, university-based, funded programs, sadly--not the one I attend, thankfully. There's a lot of horrible thesis/dissertation advising, a lot of great thesis/dissertation advising, and everything in between out there.

I agree that the timeline seems insane, especially without solid university support.

 

[Chyby]

In the past two years I've seen many students posting links on facebook groups trying to recruit people for their dissertations. They've created surveys using Google Docs. This method has been used for topics related to organizational/work psychology, personality, attitudes, marketing, sociology, etc

 

[kestrelcry]

When recruiting with a specific population, I used sub-areas of reddit that were relevant to my population and got a ton of responses. I'm not sure how international it is, due to being not super tied-in to the website, but it might be worth a shot.

 

[psychstudent90]

Thanks for the help, guys! Sorry it took me a while to respond. I tried MTurk, but it's only for people living in America. My supervisor is pretty terrible, but I'm trying to make it work!