Stay critical to your own research plan

Constantly update your research plan as you progress through your research project. Your research plan should not be signed once and forgotten. You need to constantly expand on your plan and update it according to changes that may happen and delays. Update it as you progress through your research plan and make sure you always have enough time set of for upcoming tasks.

Feasibility of data collection methods

Always stay critical towards your own methods. Some methods not working as intended is where your thesis can often go wrong. It is important to not only think critically about your methods before you start working but also while you applying them. Do not only rely on the assessments of your supervisor. Your supervisor does not have the full overview of what you are doing, and no one besides yourself has hands-on experience with your work. Are there potential limitations, areas for failure, potential problems that might restrict your collection and analysis?

This can include:

The time necessary to collect enough and analyze the data.
If you are doing field observations, are you likely to encounter what you want to observe?
Will you be able to collect sufficient data?
Limitations around equipment access
Financial constraints to your fieldwork
Time and cost to construct experimental designs
Access to databases/articles may be limited

The best is if you can recognize and address these potential shortcomings in the planning stages of your thesis. However, some of these issues may only become visible while you are conducting your actual research. It is often when you get out into the field or start working on the practical tasks that you see that something does not work out as planned. It is therefore vital to stay critical of your own work throughout your thesis. Try to continuously think about what you are missing and see if it will be possible to correct this. You should always schedule in a few days in the beginning of your work to test whether your methods actually work

When plans change

Research changes as new insights or limitations arise. There is always something that does not go according to plan. You should still be able to conduct some appropriate form of data collection and use an appropriate analysis method. These may be different than what you originally planned, so be aware of alternative options for your research. Plans always change and you can work around it or accept that there will be holes in your research - this is acceptable for a master thesis. Typical issues that may arise includes:

No previous research conducted on your topic?
- Maybe you have to consider changing your topic to something you can locate more information about.
- Try to link your research up to studies from a different field that still have some similarities with what you want to do.
Missing data?
- Be vigilant during your data collection and analysis if there is key information that you are missing
Statistical analysis did not generate results?
- Is there a problem with your method, do you not have the necessary data or maybe there is just nothing to find?
  - Remember no results is also a result
- Experiments failed?
  - Analyze the reason why and whether you have time to change your experimental setup
  - Otherwise, include the insights into why it did not work into your discussion.

The most important thing to do when you realize that your plans must change is to update your research plan. How much extra time will it take if you are changing something? Do you really have time for that? Talk about the options with your supervisor or even study advisor. But most importantly work actively on your research plan to see whether a change is even an option. Again, you have to best insight into your research process and responsibility to update and assess your own research plan.

Thesis extensions

There are strict regulations on extending your thesis to deliver at a later time. However, exceptions are made if you can document that something outside of your control will make you unable to hand in your thesis on time. If you are going to need an extension you need to recognize that and explore that opportunity as soon as possible. It will take time to apply for an extension and there are no guarantees that you will actually be granted one. Talk to your study advisor about the possibilities for a thesis extension and check out the university’s guidelines.