A Senior Thesis is one option for the Psychology major's "capstone" requirement. As described in the catalogue, students write an empirical paper with an American Psychological Association (APA) format.

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Why Do a Thesis?

It's an opportunity to explore a topic of your own choosing in depth, honing skills that you've learned in many previous classes and learning new skills as well. Unlike a term paper for a class, the thesis is a substantive work that you'll have created over an extended period of time. As such, you will have special feelings of ownership and pride for going through the process of preparing a thesis and for the written thesis. The department recognizes the value of your experience by binding a copy of all senior theses and keeping them in a special collection.

Who Should Consider Doing a Thesis?

Anyone who is considering applying to a graduate program that has a research requirement (Ph.D., Psy.D., Ed.D., etc.) should do a thesis. It will give you valuable experience (in a more supportive environment than many graduate schools), it will enhance your candidacy for admittance to the schools, and it may even help you decide whether to pursue graduate studies.

Anyone who is intrigued by a psychological question and wishes to seek an answer through individualized research rather than through the formal structure of a senior-level class should do a thesis. It's not for graduate-school-bound students only!  Especially if you chafe at the limitations of teacher-created syllabi and tests, the thesis is a chance for you to set your own learning objectives and be creative.

Where Do Thesis Ideas Come From?

Frequently, students feel they'd like to do a thesis but they don't have confidence that they will have a "researchable" idea. How do you get an idea?  Besides lightning bolts striking from the Heavens, ideas can grow out of previous courses, especially the 301-319, 323 series and the department seminars. Many of these courses require a "research proposal" or mini-experiment during the class. Expansion on one of these may be a perfect thesis idea. Some students get ideas after working with a faculty member on a research project or by helping an older student conduct her or his thesis research. These opportunities are often publicized by word of mouth, so ask around. 

Sometimes students are interested in a topic but no formal course is offered in it. You can design your own tutorial (PSY 330-349 course numbers) to explore the topic, doing extensive journal reading (both review articles and research reports). You will not have made a firm commitment to do a thesis but you will have given yourself a large chunk of time to come up with an idea, and all the background reading will be useful for writing your thesis, should you decide to go ahead with it.

Thesis Process: Overview
 
The student decides upon a topic of interest and asks two faculty members to serve as the thesis committee (see section below on selecting a committee). The student prepares a proposal (with some substantive basis, such as a literature review). With advice from the committee chair, the student schedules a colloquium, where the proposal is reviewed and critiqued by the Committee. The purpose of the colloquium is for the student and Committee to arrive at a contract to determine the parameters and expectations for the finished project. Should it be necessary, the student would then go through Davidson's Human Subjects (IRB) or Animal Subjects (IACUC) Research Committee for an ethical review and approval of the proposed work. The student would then gather data, analyze them, and write up the appropriate report as the Thesis. The student submits this write-up to the committee for review. At the discretion of the committee, the student may also be required to orally defend the thesis to the committee. Through the committee chair, the committee may ask for final revisions of the thesis. Upon completion of the final draft, the thesis will be bound and placed in the Psychology Department’s permanent collection. Additionally, students must also create a poster presentation of their thesis. Posters allow a brief, visual presentation of the thesis project and highlight the most interesting findings--providing a springboard for discussion among various individuals. The posters are presented at the annual Science Poster Party (typically held on Reading day of spring semester) to allow the students to share their results with fellow psychology majors, faculty who are not members of the committee, and the community at large. The committee chair determines the student’s final grade after soliciting advice from other members of the committee. For an Honors candidacy, the committee chair will review the student’s academic record with the committee and other faculty members, and poll the faculty for a vote.

Thesis Formats
 
Most students opt to conduct an empirical study and write a report consistent with those found in APA research journals (For models, see Developmental Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, any of the four journals that begin with Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience, or other APA journals reporting the conduct and analysis of experiments or quasi-experiments). Students may, with the permission and guidance of the Thesis Committee, write an extensive paper reviewing what is known about a given content area, deriving some conclusion or developing some critical framework for evaluating that work (For models, see Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Review).

The Publication manual of the American Psychological Association provides the most comprehensive and complete set of guidelines for a document. There are copies available for review at the Psychology Department office or you can purchase one at the college bookstore. Usually you will learn this format in the 301-305 and 311-319 course sequences.

A student's thesis committee negotiates expectations with an eye toward the amount of work required for a project. For example, a student who will recruit and run subjects, as well as record and analyze data, will experience a different set of expectations for scholarship and thoroughness than a student who asks a question of a data set collected by a faculty member. Faculty committees base their expectations on the interests and goals of the student, standards derived from their professional work, precedents created by earlier generations of students, and a sense of what is equitable. Stated differently, students should not make a decision about a thesis format based on an assumption that a particular format would be more or less work than another.

Selecting a Committee

First students should ask a faculty member to chair the thesis committee. This person should be selected for her or his expertise with a thesis topic or have an area focus coming closest to matching the topic. It is not necessary for this person to be your academic advisor. With the guidance of the chair of your committee, one other individual should be asked to be a committee member. This member should complement the contributions of the chair. He or she might have expertise in the computation of statistics if the project includes the collection and analysis of data. Some studies require the use or development of specialized equipment or technical sophistication, and this expertise would be another good reason for recruiting a committee member. Some faculty members make distinctive contributions with their editing skills.

Students should recognize that faculty members take on extracurricular obligations when they agree to serve as committee members. Students will likely meet with greater success in recruiting faculty committee members if they present a coherent formulation of an idea that matches the interests and expertise of the faculty, if they can sketch out some rationale for contributions from the faculty member, and if the request is made in a timely fashion. To be responsible contributing members to student thesis committees, faculty members must limit the number of committees they can effectively serve.

Course Credit

Students should register for Psychology 400, Senior Thesis, the semester they intend to complete the Thesis and conduct the oral defense. The chair of the thesis committee is responsible for assigning the grade in this course.

Some students prepare themselves for the thesis project by registering for a Tutorial (PSY 330-349). This tutorial can be designed to credit the student for a literature review, developing a sophisticated expertise necessary for the conduct of the thesis research, or both. The student must negotiate the Tutorial course credit with the chair of the committee.

Timeline

Thesis timeline, checklist, and prospectus form

1. Thesis students must submit an annotated bibliography or suitable alternative as negotiated with your thesis chair related to the thesis by October 21, 2006. The student should include a summary paragraph that describes some hypotheses derived from the literature review.

2. Students must formally present their thesis proposal to their committee by December 5, 2006.  This formal presentation will require that the student convene the committee, and orally present the proposed work. The committee will usually require a week to review a written draft of the students proposal before the meeting.

3. A rough draft of the Senior Thesis must be submitted to the thesis committee chair by March 23, 2007. The rough draft should include material from Results and Discussion portions of the manuscript, even if all the data have not been collected.

The faculty assumes that a project guided by sound hypotheses and meeting reasonable completion plans should yield enough pilot data (or sense of trends) to project Results and Discussion prose for a draft. A student is well advised to complete a draft sketched in preliminary fashion, even if it must be substantially edited, rather than wait for the completion of data collection and analysis.

Having acknowledged that not all projects will allow students to meet these recommended guidelines, the Faculty strongly encourages students to have completed their data collection by mid-February.

4. Students must have a completed draft submitted to their Thesis Committee by April 16, 2007. This draft serves as the basis for the student’s Oral Defense.

5. Students should prepare a poster presentation for the Student Research Symposium typically held the day before Reading Day in the spring semester. Students should send their posters to their course instructor for review and printing approval. When you determine a poster(s) is ready for printing, send the poster(s) to an Instructional Technology Group (ITG) assistant on a zip disk, CD-ROM, or network space, whichever is accessible to both student and ITG assistant. Allow plenty of time, preferably 7 days, during the anticipated rush ahead of the spring poster session. Click here for tips, hints, and pointers that should be helpful in creating your poster. Send an electronic copy of your poster's final version to Mrs. Duncan for archival purposes.

6. Students should prepare a final copy of their thesis, suitable for binding and for placement in the department.

a.        Title page must include: STUDENT’S NAME, TITLE OF PAPER, DEPARTMENT, COMMITTEE FACULTY, and DATE.

            b.        Left margin must be 1.5 inches, carefully checking margins of pages containing figures or graphics.

            c.        The copy for the department should be on acid free paper (students will find this available at Central Services). Photocopying is at the expense of the student. The Library currently charges $10 per copy for the cover and binding. The Psychology Department will pay for its copy to be bound and the students may have personal copies bound at $10 per copy. Please leave an address where personal copies can be sent once you leave school.

            d.        DO NOT BIND or place any holes in the left margins.

Caveats and Advice

The Senior Thesis project requires maturity, independence, and autonomy. Students must schedule their own  (and with research assistants or subjects, others') time. Students must often seek hospitality and/or resources in professional settings, and will often feel they are the only ones motivated to see the project finished. 

The needs of Thesis work often require students to extend themselves well beyond what is necessary for classroom work. For example, the sophistication of some topics might require a student to conduct a literature review at another library.

As opposed to the timed structure of classroom work, with its constant deadlines and frequent evaluation, students must impose evaluative structure on their own work. Thesis candidates will quickly learn that "things take longer than they take." Tasks cannot always be constrained by a schedule.  Subjects may not show up, equipment might malfunction, or the computer may go down. Researchers are obligated to do things right, rather than work under limits imposed by the most realistic time schedules.

Our faculty have experienced these frustrations in our training and professional lives, and you should be assured that the resulting empathy, our respect for the enterprise, and our own professional satisfactions in conducting our own research will lead to our sustaining your work. We are gratified by the commitments to research made by students, and we have the highest regard for those who undertake the Senior Thesis. You can depend on our encouragement and support.