INFO-B 691 Thesis/Project in Health Informatics

What to expect

By the end of the first year, the student will select a master’s project/thesis committee chair who is a member of the graduate faculty, has an appointment in our school and is authorized to chair a master’s project/thesis. This individual will assume responsibility for advising the student about course selection, graduation requirements, and master’s project procedures.

• Project/thesis possibilities include, but are not limited to:
• Developing a project that fits into a larger framework
• Conducting a Systematic Review
• Designing and implementing a piece of an ongoing research project
• Conducting a substantial background literature review

You will be responsible for understanding how to perform all required components of your project/ thesis, which may require you to independently pursue additional learnings outside of the standard course materials. You will need to keep your Committee chair informed of any specific areas requiring additional learnings.

If a master’s project or thesis is related in any way to your professional work, you must describe for your advisor how that topic and your job are distinct. You must be able to explain how the work you’re doing as a part of your master’s project or thesis goes above and beyond what you ordinarily do for your job.

The Characteristics of a Good Thesis or Project Report

It is important when writing a thesis or project to consider those who will eventually read it.  In the immediate future these may be the examiners, but later, when the document is bound and in a library, many future students may read it.  A thesis or project report is a long and complex work, and it is helpful if it can be written and structured so that readers are able to navigate their way through it reasonably easily.

It should be written in a clear style which, while doing justice to the academic requirements of the subject, does not use unnecessary jargon.  It often helps if the document is subdivided into chapters and sections so that the reader can readily follow the developing argument.  There should be an easily followed thread of argument running through the document, so that readers never reach a point where they are unsure how one section has led to another.  To sum up, the document should be coherent.

The document should have clear aims/goals which are enumerated near the beginning and which provide a rationale and framework for the remainder of the work.  The document then sets out to explain the way in which the research/project meets those aims/goals.  If some aims/goals are only met partially, then this also is explained.  Finally, the conclusion reviews those aims/goals, and discusses the ways in which they have been addressed.  In a sense, the aims act as an integrating link throughout a good research/project, setting out the intentions of the research/project at the beginning and providing a focus for the results and conclusion at the end.

The aims are also very important in influencing the choice of theoretical perspective and methodology.  The overall research/project design should be appropriate to the aims/goals.  For example:

• If the aims/goals of the study are to examine/address broad trends across a number of different locations, then the research design needs to use survey techniques (possibly questionnaires).
• If the project intends to provide an assessment tool of the social context of a group of respondents in a single setting, then a case study, ethnographic, or interactionist perspective may be more appropriate.

Unstructured or semi-structured interviews may be selected as the data collection procedures or evaluation tool. In terms of writing the thesis/ project report, it is important to make these connections clear, and to demonstrate the way in which the design has evolved from the need to address the aims/goals.

Within the document, there should be an adequate review of the relevant literature.  The literature selected should be sufficiently contemporary to demonstrate the way in which the study/project is building upon recent research.  While there will undoubtedly be extracts from different studies and articles, these should not be so numerous that they obscure the prose you write. You need to achieve a balance between the number and length of quotations, and the main objectives of the thesis/project.  Quotations and extracts should supplement the arguments of the work.

While these macro issues in writing are important, you also should pay careful attention to detail.  Small errors can be very noticeable. Proofread the document carefully, to keep typographical, punctuation, and grammatical errors to a minimum.  Check referencing carefully, so that details of works cited match in different parts of the thesis.  Consistency is very important.  In a good thesis, there will be consistency in the way the thesis is written and structured.  This applies, for example, to the spelling of technical terms, to the use of acronyms, and to the way in which subsections are set out and numbered.

Start the document with a clear and well-written abstract.  Many readers in a library will read the abstract before deciding whether or not to read the whole document.  The abstract should provide succinct overview of the whole research project described in the thesis.  It should summarize the context of the research, the aims/goals and design, the results and the conclusion.

Finally, it is important not to forget the title.  Rather like the abstract, this encapsulates the nature of the study.  Writing a good title is almost an art form in itself. The title should not be excessively long, but it should describe precisely the nature of the thesis, and ideally include some of the key words associated with the subject of the research/project.

Although we will revisit many of these issues later, it does help at this stage to have an idea of some of the broad features of a well-written thesis.