(Taken from ‘Academic Research in Marketing’ by Robin Croft

A key research skill is sourcing, cataloguing and manipulating data. You need to be meticulous in recording details of articles, interviews, conversations, books and so on. If you keep cuttings of newspaper articles, for example, make sure you have recorded the name of the paper, the date and the page number. If you have photocopies of journal articles, read these thoroughly – highlight particularly relevant parts which you may wish to quote – make pencil notes for yourself in the margins. Do the same with any books you read through – your notes will tend to trigger your memory of the article or chapter when you come to write up the dissertation.

The role of dissertation tutors is supervisory. They are not there to complete the project for you, but to give advice and encouragement. In particular they may be able to steer you away from unprofitable areas of research, or to give suggestions for directing a project into more fruitful areas. Tutors can be useful for discussing methodological issues, and for making the conceptual leaps into other academic areas. If you have a tutor with specialist subject knowledge, use this for supplementing your own background reading; you should also be prepared to be directed in your work.

The time your tutor has available is limited and should be used wisely. If possible, try to correspond via email as this is a more efficient way of putting busy professionals in regular contact. It also means that you have permanent records of queries, answers and suggestions. Find out when your supervisor will be unavailable – either on holiday, abroad, at conferences and so forth – plan around these dates as it can be particularly frustrating to have to wait several weeks before you receive comments back on your draft.

Your tutor will not correct your english or your terminology. Tutors will not mark your rough draft, although they will give you their constructive comments. Do not ask your tutor what mark you think your dissertation deserves. Use your meetings with your tutor to raise any questions you may have, or which you cannot get answered elsewhere. Remember: the dissertation should be regarded as a self-managed study programme. It needs to be clear that it is original, that you have taken some initial ideas and developed them yourself. Your tutor’s input should therefore be minimal. Make a list of any outstanding queries for your tutor: make an appointment and aim to run through them all within 10-15 minutes. Only see your tutor when needed. And aim to resolve problems at an early stage: most other students will leave things until the last minute when the tutor’s time will be at a premium.

At the planning stages use your tutor as a sounding board for your ideas – are they realistic, achievable, relevant? Your tutor may also be able to direct you to areas you would otherwise not be familiar with, particularly in terms of theoretical underpinning. Although the dissertation is a self-managed project you can look for tutor input in terms of specialist subject knowledge and methodology. Talk through the details of your research strategy with your tutor at the planning stage, and refine your proposal as necessary. In fact you should expect to see far more of your supervisor in the planning stages than later – a well-structured piece of research (one that has been clearly thought through) should progress smoothly with minimal supervision.

The dissertation will occupy a considerable part of your life while you prepare, read around it, research it and write it up. Make major allowances for this when planning your year ahead, and recognise that it requires regular input rather than a massive, comparatively short, concerted effort. For example, you may find that pressures of work and family mean that you can only give scant attention to your dissertation during the year, and you may perhaps hope to make up for this with a concerted 4-week full-time effort during the summer holidays. Unfortunately you may find that there is restricted library access, and having to send away for copies of journal material will hold you up even more.

Successful research is based on creative and analytical thinking – hard work alone cannot provide this. If your project is going well, avoid the temptation to broaden the study into other areas. Use the time instead to cover the original material better, to improve the presentation, to polish up the written style. As a general rule, the more pressure you are under the more the quality of your work will be compromised: you will take short cuts in terms of content, analysis and presentation. You will make careless errors which will compound an already difficult problem.

You need to allow at least 2 weeks for revising your work once you believe it is complete. You need to check and re-check your english, grammar and spellings (do not rely on a spellcheck program). More importantly, perhaps, check every statement that you have made – have you substantiated it at some point, have you referenced it? Similarly, check all your references for accuracy, and ensure that they are all given completely in your bibliography