9.3.4 Content
See the Honours Marking Guide.
There is no final or midsemester exam for this unit. You will have at least three assignments for this unit which count towards 70% of your total mark for the unit. The goal of the unit is that you are able to do the data analysis part of your thesis. It makes sense that this is what we are going to evaluate you on. All assignments will require you to analyse some real data.
The other 30% goes towards three activities that help you to prepare for your thesis.
In this document, I want to set out some guidelines on the assessment for the thesis, the proposal, and the proposal presentation. Most important, the weight of the proposal and the presentation mark pale in comparison to the weight of the thesis mark for your final honours mark. Don’t focus too much on the mark and the assessment criteria for the proposal and the presentation. Realise that both activities have a function: to make sure that you write an excellent thesis. The proposal forces you to work on your literature review and think about your empirical strategy. You will receive feedback on how you are progressing in terms of writing and defining your research project. The presentation requires you to present your research concisely to get feedback on your empirical strategy. This feedback should help you to write a better thesis and get a higher mark for your thesis. So, you should use the proposal and the presentation to get the most feedback as possible on how to improve your thesis.
Friday, June 18.
The number of words are guidelines and do not have to be strictly followed. Nevertheless, I do ask that you limit yourself to 5000 words in total so that I can give quick feedback on all proposals quickly. My suggestion is to limit the literature review in the proposal to papers that are directly relevant to your research question. Your literature review in your final thesis should probably be longer. It can also be fine to have a shorter measurement and methodology section, if you are mainly following existing measures and existing statistical tests.
I will mark the proposals and provide feedback in order of submission date (earlier first) and length (shorter first).
See the rubric on LMS in the “Assessment 1: Proposal” folder. It’s the “Honours Marking Guide.xlsx” file or see the last section. Obviously, you will not be evaluated based on the presentatation and discussion of results. The other four criteria will apply to the proposal.
You have 10 minutes to present your intended research project. The academic staff will give you feedback. This means that your presentation should be focused on the elements where the audience can help you.
Probably 23-24 July
In a 10 minute presentation, you should not have a slide with the outline of your presentation.
Introduction.
The introduction should make clear what your research question is, in which setting your are working, why your research question is interesting or relevant.
Key papers.
In your presentation, you do not need a long literature review. It’s better to identify which key papers you are trying to extent, base your method on, base your theory on, … It can be 1 paper, it can be 5 papers.
Hypotheses or research question
Explain the theory or arguments behind the predictions and expectations that you want to test against data.
Data and method
Describe your (expected) dataset and method. Focus on the elements that help you test your hypotheses or that or relatively new in the literature.
This structure allows the audience to figure out whether your proposed test and data is appropriate for your research question and whether there is other literature that could help you improve your empirical strategy.
Most of the focus of the presentation is on the content but this mark will be moderated for presentation style.
See the Honours Marking Guide.
| Criterium | High Performance | Good Performance | Satisfactory | Unsatisfactory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use of visual aids | The slides or other visual aids are consistent in style and, support the talk ( through graphs, pictures, and tables) without containing the whole talk. | The visual aids or consistent in style. The aids are sometimes supportive of the talk, sometimes a mere summary of the talk. The visual aids contain some small typos or they are sometimes difficult to read. | The visual aids present an adequate summary of the talk. There is a lot of information on the slides which is read out loud. The slides look sloppy and unprepared in some sections of the presentation. | The slides are incomplete, mostly sloppy and unprepared. |
| Presentation style | The presenter has good posture and makes eye contact with the audience. | The presenter makes eye contact with the audience most of the time. | The presenter tries to make eye contact with the audience. | The presenters have no eye contact with the audience and do not try. They merely look at their written preparation or the slides. |
| Speaking skills | The presenter speaks clearly with good pace and volume. They use normal speaking/conversational language, different from writing language. | The presenter speaks mostly clearly with adequate pacing and volume. The presenter uses normal conversational language. Sometimes they rely too much on jargon and abbreviations without explaining them. | The presenter are sometimes difficult to understand but pacing and volume are adequate. Overall, they rely too much on jargon and abbreviations without explaining them. | The presenter are hard to understand, talk too fast and/or to silent. |
The thesis itself is evaluated based on the aforementioned honours marking guide by two academics (who are not your supervisor). We developed the assessment criteria to break down a good empirical research project in its separate elements. The criteria are a good guideline of what to focus on if you want a high mark and a good thesis. However, even if you nominally should score good on each separate element, the overall thesis might still be less than the sum of its parts which probably will be reflected in your mark. It is a good idea to not get too focused on the criteria if that distracts from conducting and writing up a good research project.
The length of your thesis will depend a lot on your topic. In a less well studied research area your literature review may well be shorter but it becomes more important to cover all the relevant literature. A simple and well established statistical model may well require less explanation but it becomes paramount to show why this simple model is sufficient for your research question.
Monday 27 October 2021 at 5pm.
April 2, 2021
The pitching document is based on the continuously updated paper by Robert Faff on ssrn. The aim of the document is to provide a concise way of summarising a research idea so that an experienced researcher can assess the feasibility of the idea. The original idea of the pitching document is also to assess the popularity or potential publishing options for the paper. I will not take this into account in the assessment.
The document should be concise. Aim for less than 1000 words in total. It consists of 3 main sections. I will give some more information for some (but not all!) of the sections.
Research question. For a quantitative study, you want to have a research questions or at least a part of the research question that can be answered with “yes” or “no.”
Motivation: Give a motivation for you research question, not for your research topic. So, don’t say that your thesis is relevant just because you study CSR but why would other researchers, investors, regulators, or managers be interested your specific research question.
In this section, I also ask you to generate simulated data. Use the assignments as an example. The simulated data is not required however, it will make your core idea more specific to me.
Core idea: There is overlap with the research question. Here, you explain a little bit more what makes your study worthwhile doing from a research point of view. How are you going to measure the key variables? Is there something in your setting/data that makes it possible to study your research question that was not possible in other studies? Do you have a unique theoretical perspective?
Data: This helps me assess to what extent you have already thought about the data availability.
I pay less attention to this because I think this is more important if you aim for a top publication which I think is near impossible to do in less than 3 years. A study should not necessary be new to be a good honours topic. The So What? question helps me to assess whether you have a realistic assessment of what a single study can do.
The least important part. This is speculation anyway.
There is going to be some trial-and-error and debugging. That is fine. Carefully read the errors you get and use the resouces for help. Don’t be afraid to ask me or each other for help.
Answer in RMarkdown format.
File > New File > R Markdown > ...
Give a name to your document and give your name as the author.
Use R code chunks with backticks to do the following tasks.
Use the examples in 4.4 to figure out how to do this.
Knit the report. Click on the knit button in Rstudio.
Upload the Rmarkdown and HTML version to LMS. You will have to make .zip file to be able to upload it.
Deadline: March 5
Deadline: March 12
| Unsatisfactory (0 - 10) | Pass (10 - 14) | Distinction (14-17) | High Distinction (17 - 20) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motivation and Significance | - The thesis is mainly motivated by data availability. - The thesis is mainly motivated as “others have investigated something similar” | The thesis identifies a gap in the existing literature without further explanation why the study is relevant. | The thesis identifies the main audience the results will speak to. It is clear that academics, practitioners, and/or policy makers care about the topic. It is not clear how the audience should use the information in the thesis. | The thesis clearly identifies the main audience the results will speak to. It is clear to an informed, non-specialist reader how the thesis will update the beliefs of academics, practitioners, and/or policy makers. |
| Literature Review, Research Questions, and Expectations | The literature review is a list of article summaries and the connection with the research questions and expectations is lost The literature review is complete but lacks integration. | The literature review focuses only on empirical results not on the underlying theory. There is a connection between the literature review and the research question and expectations. | The literature review is a fair overview of the current literature. The literature review discusses theory and empirical results. The research question(s) and expections follow directly from the literature review. | The literature review is a fair overview of the current literature and integrates the different studies in a coherent ‘story.’ The research question(s) and expectations follow logically from the literature review and the underlying ‘story’/theory. |
| Description of Sample, Variables, and Method | - Measurement of key variables is difficult to understand. - It is not clear which observations are in the sample and which are omitted - Descriptive statistics of key variables make no sense or they are inconsistent with prior studies | A well-informed researcher is able to replicate the key parts of the study and assess the quality of the empirical work. The descriptive statistics largely confirm the sample and measures are appropriate. | A well-informed researcher is able to replicate the study and assess the quality of the empirical work. There are some references back to the literature review. The descriptive statistics confirm the sample and measures are appropriate. | A well-informed researcher is able to replicate the study and assess the quality of the empirical work. It is clear for an informed reader why the sample, variables, and method are appropriate to investigate the resarch question. The descriptive statistics confirm the sample and measures are appropriate. |
| Presentation and discussion of results | The thesis merely presents the results without much discussion or interpretation. | The discussion of the results refers back to the research question. It is clear whether the results support or reject the expectations | The discussion of the different results refers back to the research question. It is clear how the different results support or reject the expectations. The thesis reports the common robustness tests in the literature. | The discussion of the different results refers back to the research question and the underlying theory. It is clear how the different results support or reject the expectations. The thesis discusses and/or tests for the most important alternative explanations to the results. |
| Writing and Style | There are many grammatical and spelling errors. The organisation of writing lacks logic and coherence. Sentences are difficult to understand and word choice is inappropriate. The thesis style is unclear. | There are minor grammatical and spelling errors. The organisation of writing lacks logic and coherence. Most sentences are easy to understand and word choice is appropriate. The thesis style is almost clear and easy to follow. | There are minor grammatical and spelling errors. The organisation of writing is almost logical and coherent. Most sentences are easy to understand and word choice is appropriate. Thesis style is always clear and easy to follow. | There are no grammatical errors. The organisation of writing is logical and coherent. Fluent sentences are easy to understand and word choice is appropriate. The thesis style is clear and easy to follow. |
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