英语论文网

Strengths and weaknesses:

Not surprisingly, the best projects addressed all of the above points. They set out clear research questions, organised the literature review in a sensible structured way, undertook a CRITICAL review and came to conclusions.

Weaker answers missed out some of the above points or were poorly presented (poor literary presentation). Typical problems for projects which failed were as follows (not all failed projects suffered from all of these weaknesses):

1. Research questions were not clearly stated (in some cases nothing more than a general area was mentioned).
2. In some cases research questions were identified, but then the review of the literature did not address these questions.
3. Discussion of the literature was not well organised – some times it was presented chronologically, on other occasions it was not obvious at all why the order in which papers were discussed was chosen. Certainly in a number of cases papers were not discussed in themes (or according to research questions).
4. Often, the review lacked detail – which markets were being analysed, for which period, etc.
5. Importantly, most of the weak projects did not undertake a CRITICAL review. Often, only summaries of papers were provided, with no attempt to compare and contrast or no attempt to explain differences in results. In some cases only ‘opinion’ was put forward, with no evidence to back it up.
6. In some projects there were a number of sections, but the different sections were not linked well. In some cases a section only discussed ONE paper.
7. Surprisingly some projects only reviewed 6-10 papers, despite a letter from me to you dated 14 January 2008 stating ‘I would suggest that you need to review at least 15 articles’. Similarly, in some projects the review only covered relatively old papers (nothing in the last five years or so). In other words, the project was not a review of the literature, but rather a review of a small part of the literature.
8. Conclusions were not always drawn. At the end of the project it was not obvious what we know and what remains a puzzle.
9. Some projects suffered from very poor literary presentation (on occasions to the point where it was difficult to understand what was being said).
10. References were some times presented incorrectly or did not contain full details. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

Advice for resubmissions:

For those students preparing a revised project for resubmission, please give careful consideration to all of the points mentioned above and to the specific comments that were given to you in the feedback sessions. All of the above bullet points in both the sections ‘Key issues which needed to be addressed’ and ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ should be given detailed thought. Also, I again advise you to look at the best projects that you were given for the marking exercise in seminars in Research Methods.