Assistance with dissertation topic

Errata

Poverty_stricken_student wrote: »

Thanks a million u guys!

Which degree course are you doing? The reason I ask is that your assignment should be slanted differently if you're doing law, as opposed to social care and health.

melancholly

given your word limit, you might want to narrow your title to just one aspect of mental health - is there a link with depression or schizophrenia etc. by the time you've introduced why this is important (plenty of stats available about increasing numbers of children using cannabis, increasing strength of it, issues about the downgrading of it etc), you won't have enough time to do a lot of detail on any one mental health issue.

this will depend on your marking guidelines and what subject you're doing (i.e. do you have to discuss the possible neural mechanisms of the link?), and you can always mention links between cannabis and other issues in your conclusion. it's a very short word limit so don't try to cram too much in! (although i am a bit biased at the moment - attempting a thesis of about 50,000 words so 1500 seems short in comparison!).

good luck!

Moniker

If you are studying at a college or university you should pay a visit to your Library. University libraries will have librarians trained in subjects covered by the courses taught there and they can help not only with finding resources but also with study skills and how to get started.

It is also a good idea to see if the library has any dissertations done by previous students that you can look at. Not only will this give you an idea of the right style and layout to use, but if you find one that covers the topic you want to write about you can use their bibliography (the list of resources/references they used) to give you some material to start on.

So - go to your library and ask if there is a subject librarian for your course and make friends with them! (If there's no one around because of the vacation you might still be able to make contact via the library webpages - most have a section called something like 'subject help'). Don't be scared of asking - we like answering questions, that's why we became librarians!

Poverty_stricken_student

Hi again, thanks for your help. Just a quick question u mentioned something about a survey i was thinking of doing a survey to gain a public opinion of the reclassification of cannabis. Do u think i should ask more questions or just the one? Please get back to me at ur earliest convenience

Moniker

It's really important that you ask your survey question in the right way so that you get useful responses, otherwise it will be a waste of time. There are whole books devoted to how to do this. I don't know what will be in your library, but do a search in your library catalogue for something like "research methods for students" and you are sure to come up with something that will help you design a good survey. Good luck!

melancholly

might also be worth looking at the websites for MORI and yougov and also newspapers, as they may have run surveys about it recently which would have lots of people replying countrywide, so may be a more representative sample of the population as a whole.

Errata

Poverty_stricken_student wrote: »

Hi again, thanks for your help. Just a quick question u mentioned something about a survey i was thinking of doing a survey to gain a public opinion of the reclassification of cannabis. Do u think i should ask more questions or just the one? Please get back to me at ur earliest convenience

Your assignment length is 1500/2000 words. This isn't long enough to include a survey, or indeed to make the whole of the assignment a 'survey'. I'd like to suggest you seek guidance from your tutor on your assignment plan as I feel you would benefit from clarification of what's expected from you.