An essential, practical guide for students conducting a final year study in psychology. This text provides guidance on many questions, enabling the student to make full use of valuable yet limited time with his or her supervisor. This text should be viewed as an invaluable asset to the project student. Paul Castle, Senior Lecturer in Sport Psychology, University College Worcester This book is practical, easily accessible, well written and brimming with good advice. It offers guidelines to the psychology student on the often daunting task of designing and writing a final year dissertation. It begins by including helpful material on how to find relevant information about the chosen topic and helps steer the student through the entire research process, concluding the journey with the presentation of the final report. This book should not be too far away from any student's side. Karen Monaghan, BSc (Hons) Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University, BPS Student Members' Group - Chair 2004/5 Final year psychology students carrying out a substantial empirical project should find this book very useful indeed. They should keep it by them and consult each section thoroughly at the start of each phase of their work: planning the project, gathering data, analysing data and, most importantly of all, writing it up. The text is crammed with the useful insight and experiences of an author who has clearly witnessed the passage of very many project students through their empirical trials; students should benefit from this experience by avoiding many of the pitfalls and blind alleys that lie in wait for the unwary and naive psychological researcher. Despite its topic the book is not dry and the author's own zest for research and generally humorous outlook on life shine through from most pages. When possible, and when it is appropriate, the author chooses highly entertaining examples to get across what could otherwise be a dreary point to the young reader ... The information on general writing is useful and perhaps students will pay more attention to it here (in an official and entertaining book) than they mostly do to the yards of similar information handed out by lecturers each year and steadfastly ignored in student reports. Overall, I found this a pleasant read and something which most research methods supervisors will be happy to add to the strongly recommended reading of their project students. Thoroughly read, it should give students no excuse not to obtain good marks with well-planned, executed and written up research projects. Hugh Coolican, author, 'Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology' It will be useful for students of psychology at every stage, but particularly for final year students. It encourages students to think practically about how to design, conduct and write up project work, and it is a mine of useful information and guidelines. I would recommend it to any student of psychology who was conducting practical work. J.M. Carroll, British Journal of Educational Psychology (2006), 76.
