PSY 989 THESIS-DISSERTATION
PSY 989- 57 CREDIT HOURS
Professor: DR. GEORGE GONZALEZ, PH.D.
SYLLABUS
COURSE OVERVIEW:
Requirements :
1. Demonstrated ability to read, understand, abstract, select, and integrate the current (and past) literature pertaining to a focal topic of (common) interest in the science (and sometimes the philosophy) of the discipline of psychology
2. Identification and articulation of a theoretical need in that literature (e.g., a gap in the data that, when filled, could add to the theoretical understanding of the focal topic; an empirically resolvable data-theory conflict; or an empirically resolvable conflict between two theories that purport to account for the same phenomenon).
3. Demonstrated ability to produce a professional quality, literature-based, coherent, concrete, and complete proposal or prospectus acceptable to the thesis or dissertation advisory committee, the departmental faculty, and the brotherhood watchdogs in the graduate office.
4. Ability to carry out an accepted proposal completely and with integrity, and within a mutually agreed upon time frame.
5. Demonstrated ability to produce a professional quality, literature-based, coherent, concrete, and complete thesis or dissertation acceptable to the thesis or dissertation advisory committee, the departmental faculty, and the brotherhood watchdogs in the graduate office.
6. The ability and willingness to take direction and correction appropriately, while at the same time moving toward a collegial (rather than a subordinate) relationship with the thesis or dissertation advisor.
7. The dissertation is sometimes quantitatively more complex conceptually or methodologically, and that often means that it has more words in it than does the thesis. In practice, some theses are as good or better (qualitatively) than some dissertations.