There comes a time in the life of every student that is inescapable, the time you have to write a thesis. Unless you are hiding under an table where no one can find you, this is something you will have to do. For me, this moment was early on in the study, we began practicing in the first Batchelor year. Now, four years later, I’m writing my master thesis. I’m very excited about the research I’m doing, but have to face one final obstacle. This is finding literature. For all my fellow students who dread this part of the thesis, I have some tips that helped me. Maybe, it will not be as bad after all.
Sometimes when you write a thesis, your mentor has already given you an starting article to begin with. This can be research done on a similar topic or an global overview of the field.
An similar research question
If an article of a similar topic is given to you, it might be time to be lazy. A lot of useful literature will be used in this article. You can find this literature in the introduction of the article. While reading how these researchers sustained their hypothesis, you can check if there is literature you can use as well. More often than not, this will be the case. If you are enthusiastic and just can’t stop yourself, you can also read their whole literature-list and see if there is something for you as well. Of course, the best way to see if an article in this list is useful, is to read the abstract.
Global overview of the field
If you already have a global overview of the field, this is very useful. In such an overview, a lot of literature is used. What helps me is to read such an overview carefully, and write down the citations you find useful. These citations lead to literature used in the overview, which you can find in the literature-list. This way, you can find out what articles lead to the information you found useful. Instead of citing only the global overview you can cite a bunch of articles and have a nice long literature-list. If one of those articles seems to have a similar research question as you, you can use the method described above.
Some days, you’re in bad luck and don’t have any article to start with. No need to panic, unless you really feel like it. These days, Google-Scholar is your friend. With Google-Scholar, you can find scientific articles (which will hopefully have free access)*. You can begin with typing a few key-words of the thing you want to research. If you don’t have a clear question yet, Google around. You can find loads of inspiration there. The articles in Google-Scholar have an indication beneath them in which states how many times they have been cited. The more an article is cited, the more prominent it is. If an article is cited a thousand times, it is likely to be an important article in the field, and it may be worth checking out.
*UvA students have access to the UvA VPN, which I strongly recommend they use. This way, they have access to almost all scientific articles.
My article is so old, I think it needs a walker
An old article is not necessarily a bad article. Some of the basis of scientific theories are cited in really old articles. If you really like a theory, but don’t know your research question yet, it can be useful to click on the ‘cited by’ option on Scholar. This gives you all the articles which cited the old one. This way, you find articles building upon the theory, and sometimes an helpful overview. Looking through these articles might also give you an updated version of the theory.
Good question! If you find an article you like, it is always helpful to read the abstract first. This gives you a clear overview of what the article is about. If you’re really lazy (like me searching for article two-thousand on an Saturday afternoon), you can just read the second-last sentence of the abstract. Most of the time, this sentence summarises the findings of the article. If this is something I need, I check out the rest.
I don’t want to read the whole article, I have better things to do
If you just don’t feel like reading the whole article (which isn’t the best option out there), you should ask yourself what you want to know about the article. In the last paragraph of the conclusion, the most important research findings are summarised. You can look here first, and read more if it is something you’re interested in. If it is uninteresting bogus, it is time to delete the article.
If the research findings are amazing and you want to know more, you can read the rest of the conclusion. Here, you can find more about why these conclusions are made and what exactly the researchers found.
If you’re amazed by the abstract alone and you think the article is really useful, you should read the introduction to. In the introduction, hypotheses are argued, and you can find literature that may be really useful. You can find out why they did what they did, and if you agree with their conclusions.
The result section is the part of an article I heartlessly ignore. This section is useful if you really want what conclusions are based on and the accompanying data. Of course it is wise to read this part, but it might be a waste of time when you’re just scanning an article.
I love the abstract
The very best thing to do with an article is just to read it. This is the best way to find out if the research is done well, and why they reached certain conclusions.
In bulletpoints, here are my tips to find literature:
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Tips for searching literatureThere comes a time in the life of every student that is inescapable, the time you have to write a thesis. Unless you are hiding under an table where no one can find you, this is something you will have to do. For me, this moment was early on in the study, we began practicing in the first Batchelor year. Now, four years later, I’m writing my master thesis. I’m very excited about the research I’m doing, but have to face one final obstacle. This is finding literature. For all my fellow students who dread this part of the thesis, I have some tips that helped me. Maybe, it will not be as bad after all.
Sometimes when you write a thesis, your mentor has already given you an starting article to begin with. This can be research done on a similar topic or an global overview of the field.
An similar research question
If an article of a similar topic is given to you, it might be time to be lazy. A lot of useful literature will be used in this article. You can find this literature in the introduction of the article. While reading how these researchers sustained their hypothesis, you can check if there is literature you can use as well. More often than not, this will be the case. If you are enthusiastic and just can’t stop yourself, you can also read their whole literature-list and see if there is something for you as well. Of course, the best way to see if an article in this list is useful, is to read the abstract.
Global overview of the field
If you already have a global overview of the field, this is very useful. In such an overview, a lot of literature is used. What helps me is to read such an overview carefully, and write down the citations you find useful. These citations lead to literature used in the overview, which you can find in the literature-list. This way, you can find out what articles lead to the information you found useful. Instead of citing only the global overview you can cite a bunch of articles and have a nice long literature-list. If one of those articles seems to have a similar research question as you, you can use the method described above.
A youtube channel about special needs and friendshipAs a psychologist, I want to help people. These are mostly people with mental disorders, of which there are (unfortunately) many. While browsing on youtube, I found a beautiful channel about people living with all kinds of special needs. The channel is about inclusion and seeing persons for who they are. I highly recommend to watch it! (Even if it is just for procastination ;) ).
Feeling better during corona-timesWinter is coming. This, in combination with a pandemic, means working at home. It isn’t the best thing ever, but with this blog, I hope I can help you feel a little bit better.
A few weeks ago I had a lecture about treating depression. We talked about behavioural activation and why this is so important. I won’t bore you with the whole story (if you like clinical psychology as much as I do, you can read my summaries), but I believe some aspects of this therapy can help also you feel less blue in these dark days.
What is behavioural activation? Well, as you would probably have guessed, this means just being active. It is so simple, yet so difficult. A thing you can notice about yourself (and I have noticed about myself in yet another wave of corona), is that if you begin to feel blue, you don’t want to do anything. And, if you stop doing anything, you keep feeling blue. Most of the time, you will just have a bad day. It isn’t fun, but we have all been there (except if your extraordinarily happy, good for you). If you take a closer look at such a day, you can notice an very important thing. Namely, does lying in bed, feeling blue, really makes it better? In my experience, it doesn’t. If you keep doing nothing, there is nothing that makes live rewarding, and in that sense, fun. A second problem is that if you don’t do anything fun, you won’t ‘feel like doing anything’ again. It is a downwards circle.
To break this circle, the solution is to become active. This is all too simple, and all too difficult. Think of lying in bed and don’t feeling about doing anything, why would you come get up? The thing is, most people wait till they ‘feel like’ doing something. The problem here is, you can wait a long, long time until you feel like it. If you begin doing an activity, you slowly begin to enjoy it and ‘feel like it’. The circle is the other way around. Of course, there are days you hate everything you do and just want to pretend you are a blanket-taco in bed. But if you want to end such a day, you will have to get up.
If you think ‘you fool, I will never enjoy getting up at all’, there is a simple trick you can do. Think of what activity you want to do, but don’t feel like. Write down on a scale of 0 (the most horrible thing ever) to 10 (it will be amazing) the amount of pleasure you think the activity will give you. After you do the activity, write down the amount of pleasure the activity actually gave you. Most of the time, it will be a bit more than expected. And, if you see this, it might motivate you to do more. In
.....read more Silly things I do that help me study.As you might expect, I love psychology. I love studying and learning new things. Yet, there is one thing I struggle with. One a month, the UvA gives me examinations, and I hate reading the same text about two hundred times. If examinations come up, I feel like escaping my study and hiding under my bed. Of course, if I do that, I can say my degree farewell, so I came up with silly ways to help myself study.
In the first weeks of a course, I am okay. The love new information, so I summarise it all. This way, I have an advantage in the way that I already have learned the information.
If exams come up, I trick myself into reading my summaries by collecting them all together, and minimizing the size of the letters. That way, it seems like there is less to read (which of course is untrue), and I get less unmotivated.
I do the same thing with my notes. I take a lot of notes during the course, and I dislike having a mountain of paper to work through. So, when exams come up, I re-write my notes in a more efficient, and (literally) smaller way, so it is all scrammed together and seems like less to read (it is silly, I know). Another advantage of this strategy is that I trick myself into learning while I rewrite the notes.
When I’m really don’t feel like reading my notes, but I have to, I give myself rewards after each chapter. This can vary by a m&m or a cup of tea. Since I like chocolate as well as tea, I keep reading.
When I become to un-concentrated and stare out of the window more than 80% of the time, it is time to take a walk. This might be the only thing on the list that isn’t silly. Fresh air can make you think more clearly and it is a healthy break (unlike the chocolate).
Another thing I do is to read my notes and summaries from the back to the frond. I begin with chapter 9, and work to chapter 1. I do this because my summaries take up way to much space, and in the end I will be less concentrated. So, if I feel I remember chapter 9 not as well as chapter 1, I begin to read it the wrong way around.
I take a marker and underscore everything that seems important in my summary. While this this mainly makes my summaries very colourful (a lot of times whole pages are underscored), it makes it easier to spot the important parts. When I become too lazy to read the whole summary again, I settle for reading only coloured parts.
Speaking of colours, when I have notes I don’t fully understand or remember, I give the upper
.....read more
Wat wil ik van mijn stage?Van de week kreeg ik de vraag van Joho wat ik nou eigenlijk wil van een stage en wat ik belangrijk vind. In het kader van ondersteuning heeft Joho een hele site over contenties en competenties, dus werd ik gedwongen om een kijkje te nemen. Ik ben allang blij dat ik een stage heb gevonden, want op het moment is dat een regelrecht wonder. Tijdens het solliciteren naar een stage heb ik helemaal niet aan ‘contenties’ gedacht (gedeeltelijk niet omdat ik nog nooit van het woord had gehoord), maar het schijnt handig te zijn om je erin te verdiepen. Contenties zijn waarden die jij belangrijk acht in het werk. Als er tijdens een sollicitatie wordt gevraagd wat ik belangrijk vind en mijn antwoord is ‘ik moet het leuk vinden’ en ‘het zou zo fijn zijn als ik er ook nog naartoe kan fietsen’, is dat wat oppervlakkig. Volgens Joho zijn de belangrijkste contenties (met een handig linkje als je het zelf wilt bekijken):
Als ik ze snel doorkijk kan ik me er wel in vinden. Het zou toch wel leuk zijn als ik ook mensen help met mijn baan als psycholoog… Gezien het handig is om te weten wat je wilt ga ik mij hier de komende tijd in verdiepen. Als ik weet wat ik wil kan ik hier mijn stage op inrichten (met natuurlijk het idee dat ik er dan blijer zal zijn). Nu heb ik het idee dat ik mij al in grote mate blij voel, maar wie weet :)
Hopelijk hebben jullie iets aan mijn zoektocht en is het anders vermakelijk om te lezen.
Groetjes,
Sanne
Voel ik mij evenwichtig?‘Je evenwichtig voelen’. Het is een prachtige vage term, en is abstract genoeg om open te staan voor veel interpretaties. Voel ik mij evenwichtig? En is dit belangrijk voor mij?
Voor mij betekend evenwichtig zijn in het kader van stage dat ik een goede werk-thuisverhouding heb. Dit heb ik de afgelopen jaren tijdens studeren geheel in het water gegooid met late avonden en hele weekenden aan het werk. Hoewel ik de stof heel leuk vind, raak je toch wat overwerkt. Met het begin van mijn stage is hier verandering in gekomen. Ik heb ervoor gezorgd dat mijn scriptie al af was en ik helemaal niets heb naast de stage. Toen ik de eerste dag om vijf uur uitlogde gebeurde er ook iets wonderbaarlijks. Voor het eerst in drie jaar (op zomervakanties na) hoefde ik niets te doen. Er waren geen deadlines waar ik nog even aan moet werken en het enige wat ik kon denken was ‘Ik moet hobby’s zoeken’. De vrije tijd is een zeer welkome verassing en ik kan niet anders dan ervan genieten. Dit is precies wat ik zoek op dit vlak, een evenwicht. Ik werk hard op stage, maar hoef daarna ook helemaal niets. Juist door die balans kan ik mij ook beter inzetten op stage, want ik kom er uitgerust heen. Nu speel ik wel een beetje vals. Ik neem diagnostiek spullen mee naar huis om mee te oefenen, en verbreek daarmee de hele balans waar ik zo blij mee ben.
Dus ben ik ‘evenwichtig’? Ik vind van wel. Het enige waar ik nog aan moet werken is dat ik mezelf niet uit evenwicht gooi door een te grote hoeveelheid enthousiasme...
Psychology at the uva
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Field of study
Literature Robertmagee264 contributed on 29-12-2022 12:34
I have read and enjoyed your post.
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