Bryman & Bell: Research Project Guide

Table of Contents

1. Preparing Yourself to Do Research
2. What Do I Want to Research Exactly?
3. The Research Process
4. Writing Up Your Research Report
   1. Preliminary planning
   2. The structure of a dissertation
   3. Title page, acknowledgements and contents page
   4. Abstracts
   5. Introduction
   6. The literature review
   7. Research Methods
   8. Results
   9. Discussion & Conclusions
   10. References, appendices and obligations
   11. Referencing
   12. Writing up research checklist

Referencing

Chapter 26, Page 564

1. Include all references cited in the text; you should follow whichever format is prescribed by your department.
2. Nowadays, the format is usually a variation of the Harvard method, such as the one employed for this text.
3. Your own institution will almost certainly have pages devoted to how to reference your work (usually as part of the library site), failing that a simple web search on Harvard referencing or Harvard citation will produce a plethora of help pages.
4. There is a growing practice in academia that, when referring to websites, you should include the date you accessed them.
5. Since websites often disappear and frequently change, if subsequent researchers want to follow up your findings, or check on them, they may find that they are no longer there or have changed. This does mean, however, that you will have to keep a running record of the dates you consulted the websites to which you refer.

Web link:

www.bournemouth.ac.uk/academic_services/documents/Library/Citing_References.pdf - PDF document on the Harvard System from Bournemouth University