Writing a dissertation usually involves doing some original research. This may use qualitative methods such as interviews, or quantitative methods such as surveys. What method is most suitable for you will depend on what you need to find out.
We have lots of books (print and online) on research methods, so don’t just stick to the items on your reading lists. See below for some selected titles that are available from the library. You could also talk to your supervisor or academic skills tutors about suitable methodology in your subject area.
Next, you need to design your research tools before collecting your data.
Try looking on Library Search for topics such as "qualitative research methods", "quantitative research methods", "survey design", and more for ideas of how you could collect data for your research. Or, see some recommended books above.
There are also lots of videos and courses on LinkedIn Learning to help you learn about research methods. Try this for example: Quantitative vs. qualitative research.
If you need to create a survey for your research, the University has various tools for you to use:
If you are looking for a simple tool, Forms within Microsoft 365 may suit your needs. Forms is an app you can use as part of the University's Microsoft 365 package available to all students and staff.
Microsoft provide training and advice on their website.
Qualtrics is a powerful online survey tool that can be used to create surveys, allowing you to capture and analyse data whilst providing collaboration tools to easily send surveys to staff, students, and external users.
The tool is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation and is authorised by the University Legal Office and our IT Security teams. Other ‘free’ survey platforms (such as such as Google forms or SurveyMonkey) must not be used due to issues with where data is stored (normally USA & not in the EU/UK as it should be), poorer security on accounts and data and issues around governance.
You can access Qualtrics by visiting this link hud.eu.qualtrics.com. To log in, please use your University username and password: u1234567 or cmsxmw (where 1234567 or cmsxmw is your student login or staff account name) and your University password. There is no need to register for an account.
For first time logins you will be asked whether it's your first time logging in to the page and you will be given two options.
Creating a survey is simple, please read the survey basic overview to get started.
Please see the official Qualtrics support page. These include help in getting people started with Qualtrics, through to help with designing and using surveys. If you go to your Qualtrics account page there's a Help tab at the top right. Click on that and you can get to various help/info resources, including the Qualtrics Community.
If you have worked through the tutorials available on Qualtrics and would still like help, please email our Digital Skills Team.
So, you have your data, but what does it mean? This is where you put your data into the context of the literature you’ve already found. There are various tools available from the University that can help you analyse what you have found.
If you've used a qualitative method such as interviewing, you will need to transcribe these to analyse them. Manually transcribing interviews can be a long and laborious process. There are two tools available to you as Huddersfield students that can help speed up the process.
Remember, they are not perfect and the accuracy will depend on the quality of your audio recordings. Recent feedback from students suggests that they are between 85% - 95% accurate so some editing will be required. Unfortunately no automatic transcription tool is 100% accurate.
For more information, please see the Transcribe Audio and Subtitle Video pages on Brightspace. For help and advice, please ask hudstudy@hud.ac.uk.
