| Category | Dissertation | Subject | Education |
|---|---|---|---|
| University | University of Bristol | Module Title | BRMSM0009 MSC Population Health Sciences |
| Word Count | 10,000 Words |
|---|---|
| Assessment Title | Module Handbook |
| Academic Year | 2024-25 |
| Deadline | 29th August 2025 |
All students are required to undertake a dissertation project to obtain their MSc qualification. In your dissertation, we expect that you will put into practice the principles you have learnt in the taught component of your programme. The project is an independent piece of research, which will demonstrate that you have the skills required to formulate a research question and to carry out, analyse and interpret an appropriate study to address that question. The project must be carried out by you, but you will have support from academic supervisors. The dissertation is an important part of your MSc, as it contributes one-third of all the credits you need to pass your MSc programme. You will write your dissertation in the form of an academic journal article. Whilst we cannot guarantee you will end up with a peer-reviewed publication, you will gain real-life experience of the processes involved in publishing research in a relevant journal, and you may have the opportunity to publish your work after you have submitted your dissertation. This handbook will provide you with everything you need to guide you through your dissertation. We encourage you to look at it regularly!
By the end of your dissertation, you should be able to:
Potential supervisors (academic staff in the Bristol Medical School and collaborators) will submit dissertation topics, a list of which will be made available to you in late January. You will have until the 21st of February to complete a form indicating your project preferences. There is no guarantee that you will get your first choice, given the likelihood that multiple students may be interested in the same project. You will be informed of the project to which you have been allocated by mid-March.
Your dissertation is an opportunity to do some in-depth research in an area that interests you, and it could take various forms. Your choice of project should be influenced by what you want to do in the future, the skills you want to develop further and, most importantly, what interests you. The following are examples of the different types of projects you could choose to carry-out:
Analysis of an existing dataset – this is most likely to be an extension of work done or based on data collected and provided by staff at the Bristol Medical School, or others, or on data that are freely available in the public domain. This could also be based on data collected by you or through your workplace (e.g., local government child health data) before or during the programme; however, this is rare and would need to be discussed with the unit leads as early as possible. The focus of such a project would be on data analysis and interpretation, and could include quantitative or qualitative data or methods development. Some projects can also be mixed methods and include elements of several types of analysis (e.g., using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data).
Evidence synthesis – this would involve undertaking a formal review of the published literature on a research topic that could be answered within the timescale by systematically appraising and summarising existing evidence regarding that question. This may be a scoping review (to map the available literature), a small systematic review, a ‘rapid’ version of a systematic review, or a component of a wider evidence review that is ongoing in the School. The project would implement established methods from the systematic review toolkit and might use meta-analysis, if appropriate. Please note that it is NOT a requirement to register or publish a protocol for a review – it will be your supervisor’s responsibility to coordinate this. It is also not a requirement for the dissertation to duplicate processes that would usually be required for publication (e.g., screening and data extraction). This should only be done if supervisors or other staff/students can do this, and this should not impact your progress in any detrimental way.
Empirical study (collecting new data) – it may be possible for students to undertake primary data collection on a small scale to answer a clear research question. This would involve collecting and analysing data, presenting the results, and drawing appropriate conclusions. Such projects may cover a spectrum of work, such as undertaking qualitative interviews or focus groups and/or collecting survey data. It is really important that feasibility and timings are carefully considered for this type of project; therefore, these projects tend to be rare and would need to be discussed with the unit leads at an early stage.
Designing projects - In exceptional circumstances, and with prior agreement of the dissertation unit leads and programme directors, you may design your project in collaboration with appropriate supervisors. We recommend that this takes the form of an evidence synthesis or secondary data analysis, as this will make your project more manageable. You should identify potential supervisors early in the academic year, meet with them and discuss what you are planning. They will be able to help you decide whether your proposed project is feasible, what further planning is required, and whether you need to apply for ethical approval. The research question you wish to address should be specific enough to be answered within the time and resources you have available and be relevant to your MSc programme. If you are thinking of undertaking your own project, you must contact the dissertation unit leads as soon as possible after you start your MSc programme (and certainly before the project list is released in January), so that they can help you formulate and refine the research question before deciding whether you can pursue this and there are relevant supervisors to support the project.
The following sections expand on the practicalities and logistics of the dissertation unit in more detail.
Your dissertation should represent three months of full-time study; however, there will need to be some organisation and planning prior to the dissertation commencing in June. To complete your dissertation, you will need to have passed the taught part of the programme. You will therefore start the project at your own risk, as the unit assessment marks from teaching block 2 will not be available until after you have started. If you need to undertake resits for any units of the taught component, you will be asked to pause your dissertation until the resits are finished, and you will have an agreed-upon extended dissertation deadline to reflect the pause due to these resits.
Please note the following dates apply to full-time students and part-time students studying the MSc programme over two years, where specified (please see Section 4 for further details for dates relevant to part-time students):
In teaching block 1, If you are planning to design your project, you need to let the dissertation unit leads know as soon as possible to allow them to decide whether the idea will be feasible for a dissertation project. Note: This is usually very rare, and most students choose from the comprehensive list of provided projects. Dissertation unit leads will also meet with part-time students to discuss timings (see Section 4 for more information about part-time students).
9th January: We will hold a “Dissertation Information Session”, where you will be briefed about the dissertation and can learn more about the dissertation process and ask any questions about the dissertation unit. All students are required to come to this session.
Late January: The list of available projects and the document in which you will indicate your preferred project choices will be made available. Part-time students studying their MSc programme over two years are required to choose their dissertation in their first year of studying, at the same time as full-time students.
January-February: This is the time dedicated to selecting your project preferences. During this time, you are encouraged to contact the supervisors of projects that interest you to discuss the project in more detail to inform your choices. Around this time, you will also likely meet with your tutor to discuss your teaching block 1 assessment results. At that meeting, you should talk about your dissertation project preferences. If you are planning to undertake your project and your project is deemed to be feasible following discussion with the dissertation unit leads and identified supervisors, you must develop the project with these supervisors and resources provided to you by the dissertation unit leads to ensure you have a realistic plan of what you hope to achieve.
21st February: Deadline to submit your project preferences or to provide more formal details about your project, if the option of pursuing your project has been approved by the dissertation unit leads. This applies to full-time students and part-time students studying their MSc programme over two years.
Week beginning 17th March: You will be informed of which project you will work on (we aim to maximise the number of students who are allocated to their first-choice project), and a template for completing the project outline will be made available on Blackboard.
Late March: Prepare a project outline with your supervisors’ guidance. Full-time students and part-time students studying their MSc programme over two years must complete and submit their project outline document.
By 26th March: send draft project outline to your supervisors for comment.
2nd April: Submit your finalised project outline on Blackboard.
Week beginning 28th April: You will be notified whether your project is approved (subject to ethical review, if appropriate). If your proposed project is not approved, the dissertation leads will discuss with you how to amend your project with the help of your supervisors or consider other related projects.
April: apply for ethics approval, if required (see Section 2.4).
22nd May: We will hold a “Dissertation Training Day” including sessions on academic language and literacy, dissemination, presenting scientific posters and writing for a lay audience. All students are required to come to this session.
Week beginning 2nd June: From this date (after the unit assessments have finished), you will undertake the main part of your project work. Part-time students will start on the date that has been discussed with and approved by the dissertation unit leads.
Week beginning 21st July: You will be asked to present an electronic poster on your research to the unit leads, programme directors and your fellow students in a research symposium. You will receive written feedback on this (see Section 2.7). You will be given further details nearer the time on the format of your poster and how/when to submit. Part-time students will present at a different time, arranged by dissertation unit leads.
Noon on 29th August: Deadline for submitting your dissertation on Blackboard for full-time students (see Section 4 for more information about part-time students).
You will have at least two supervisors; at least one will be based at the University of Bristol. If your project is multidisciplinary or involves an external organisation, you may have additional supervisors or those who are not based at the University.
If you choose to carry out a project you have designed, you must identify at least a primary supervisor yourself and with the help of the dissertation unit leads. The primary supervisor should be able to assist with identifying a second supervisor. This should be done as early as possible – please see the timelines above in Section 2.2. If you are unsure about how to identify an appropriate supervisor or whether the person you have identified is suitable, please consult the dissertation unit leads.
Whilst you are selecting your preferred projects, you may approach and meet potential supervisors to discuss a proposed project (although we cannot guarantee that you will be allocated to that particular project). Once you have been allocated a project, you will begin to work on your project outline, during which time, you are permitted to meet with your supervisors once for the purposes of discussing the project outline. You must send your project outline to your supervisors at least a week in advance of the deadline to give them time to provide feedback. Your supervisors need to approve the project outline (there is space for them to sign the document) before you submit it. Before your project starts, you may have an additional “planning meeting” with your supervisors to make sure everything is set up for you to begin your dissertation.
Once you begin working on your project (for most students, from the start of June), you are allowed no more than seven hours of contact time with your supervisors – this could be split into seven separate one-hour meetings or more frequent, short meetings – as long as the maximum of seven hours is not exceeded. Aiming to have a least one contact point per month is a good guide. You may have already had one or two meetings before your project starts (i.e., to discuss the project outline and for the “planning meeting”), but these do not count towards the seven hours. If your project involves methods that you have not learnt, the onus is on your supervisor to provide additional support (which can be facilitated by approximately one additional hour on top of the seven hours of contact time). It is your supervisor’s responsibility to log these meetings for the purposes of monitoring engagement; however, we also encourage you to keep a note of how many hours you have used.
In addition to the seven hours of contact time, your supervisors may, at their discretion, provide additional support via email or any other messaging platform (e.g., Teams or Slack). However, you and your supervisors must agree on boundaries for how often such conversations occur. You must not rely on immediate responses from your supervisors and, instead, should focus on answering any questions you have independently first before seeking their advice if still required.
It is your responsibility to book meetings with supervisors, and these may be online and/or in person. Please be courteous and plan your meetings with your supervisors well in advance to avoid disappointment (as they may be busy or on holiday). It is your responsibility to arrange the meetings and to take ownership of your project; your supervisors are there to guide you. It is also important that any communications you have between meetings by email should include all supervisors, unless alternative arrangements have been agreed with them. Similarly, ideally, all meetings should be with all supervisors, if possible.
Where your dissertation is nested within a larger study or working group, you are welcome to observe research team meetings as part of your learning providing:
In general, supervisors are expected to provide enough support such that you can undertake the listed project objectives. This may mean providing feedback on scripts (or providing scripts and guidance on those scripts if you have not learnt a particular method or coding language) for quantitative projects, approving various stages of a systematic review project or undertaking some double-coding for qualitative projects. However, this will look different for each project and each supervisor/student combination. Importantly, the dissertation needs to reflect your independent work, so supervisors advise and provide feedback, where necessary.
Your supervisors can read and provide comments on one draft only of your final dissertation and can also offer advice on your poster presentation, but they will not edit your work. The full dissertation draft should be shared with your supervisors at least two weeks before your final deadline for submission, to give your supervisors sufficient time to respond. Any later and your supervisors may not be able to respond, unless you have agreed this in writing with all supervisors in advance. Your supervisors will provide one set of feedback no more than five working days later to give you sufficient time to take the feedback into account. We recommend that you save at least half an hour of your allowed seven hours of contact time to clarify any feedback you have received from your supervisors before you submit your final dissertation. You can expect to receive feedback on:
We make the following recommendations to encourage a smooth relationship with your supervisors:
Your supervisors should be your first point of contact for any assistance you may require related to your dissertation. However, if they cannot help or you do not feel comfortable discussing an issue with them, please contact your tutor in the first instance, who may refer to the dissertation unit leads, if necessary. Please ensure you read what is expected of both students and staff in Section 5.
Do You Need BRMSM0009 Dissertation of This Question
Order Non-Plagiarized DissertationA new project that involves recruiting or collecting new data from human subjects will require ethical approval. Your supervisors should be able to advise you on whether you need to apply for this.
There is a specific committee that considers ethics applications for master's projects, and they approve projects on a rolling basis (without set deadlines). However, you should allow up to 6 weeks for your project to be approved from the submission date. If your project requires ethical approval, we recommend that you submit your application for this by mid-April. The student projects ethics committee offer 1:1 advice sessions and workshops so that you can find out more about this process. It is your responsibility to obtain ethical approval for your project (if it is required), with the support of your supervisors, and ethical approval must be in place before you start your research.
You must ensure you comply with all rules and regulations around data handling, as specified by the provider of the data that you might use in your dissertation. It is your responsibility to find out what these are.
You should discuss with your supervisors where and how data that you collect and/or use during your project (questionnaires, computer files, etc.) should be stored securely, both during your project and after you submit. You should keep this data until after you graduate. The Board of Examiners may request access, and students should be able to provide it on request. If you plan to publish your project after submitting your dissertation, you should set up appropriate mechanisms for you to access this data, if required, and your supervisor must have a copy of all working files relevant to the project.
You must submit a one-page outline of your project (up to 500 words) via Blackboard by the
2nd of April. A template for this will be made available on Blackboard and will include:
It is your responsibility to send this to your supervisors for comment by the 26th of March so that you have time to make any changes based on their feedback before submitting.
Your supervisors must give permission to you to add their names to the bottom of the outline form to show that they have seen and are happy with the content of the outline. Your outline will be reviewed by the dissertation unit leads. You will be informed in the week beginning the 28th of April whether you can go ahead with your project or how it needs to be modified in order to ensure a manageable project.
During the week of the 21st of July, we will hold a series of student symposia. The aim of these is to simulate a short oral presentation at a scientific conference and give you the opportunity to receive constructive formative feedback from academics, external colleagues, and peers. All students will present an electronic poster of their research and give a short, 5-minute presentation, followed by up to 5 minutes of questions. When presenting your poster, please consider how to communicate your project clearly using plain language so that your project can be understood by a range of audiences including those who are not familiar with the more technical content. Practising your presentation helps ensure the messages are easy to understand. A number of people will be invited to these sessions including dissertation unit leads, programme directors, supervisors and relevant external individuals.
Your poster presentation must be formatted in landscape orientation and submitted in PDF format. We will not provide a template poster, but will provide examples from previous cohorts closer to the time of the symposia for your reference. In general, you should have your project title, your name and your supervisors’ names on the top of the poster. The content of the poster should then be written in clear boxes separating out the various sections (i.e., background, methods, results (if applicable), any conclusions thus far or progress / future plans and references). Importantly, limit the number of words on the poster and increase the font size so that the text is readable from a distance. You may also put figures and tables on the poster, if they are easy to read and there is a good balance
between text and figures or tables. Lastly, please make sure to include references to the literature and make sure these references are presented on the poster (e.g., in a separate box or at the bottom of the poster).
You do not need to have finished your project for the poster presentation – this is an opportunity for you to engage with the background literature of your project and write about your chosen methodology, any results you may have (though this is not a requirement), your progress and future plans. This will ultimately help you in structuring your dissertation when writing for submission.
The dissertation unit leads will provide formative written feedback to all students after the poster symposia, which should be shared and discussed with your supervisors to aid your progression in the next supervisory meeting you have planned.
Throughout your dissertation, you should cite and reference other people’s work, where appropriate, and you should explain how your project and the results from it fit into the context of what is already known on the subject. In doing this, you should reference work already carried out in this area. Any work cited should be referenced at the end of the dissertation following the provided guidelines (see Section 3.3).
Copyright and intellectual property rights are important issues to be aware of when using the work of others in your dissertation. This is not just about ensuring that you correctly reference everything you use – you also need to be sure that you have permission to make use of this work. For example, if you are displaying a figure you have taken from someone else’s work or using an existing questionnaire, you must reference this appropriately. You should be certain about whether any restrictions apply in the way you communicate, disseminate, or even publish work that you have produced based on the work of others. Your supervisors will be able to assist in such circumstances.
Please see the relevant section of your MSc Programme Handbook and the Academic Integrity training for important information on plagiarism.
You will have the opportunity to indicate both the academic support you received from your supervisors and any other practical help or advice you received for your dissertation through the “Author Contributions” section. Within the “Author Contributions” section (see Appendix One for where in your dissertation this appears), we ask you to clearly describe any part of the work that was not completed by you (e.g., done by your supervisors, colleagues, or peers). This could include searches, screening, extraction, or bias assessments for evidence synthesis projects, data cleaning, analyses, or interpretation for quantitative projects or data collection, transcription, analysis (for example, second coding) or interpretation for qualitative projects. This need only be a brief paragraph (no more than 100 words) that summarises work not completed by you.
We do not expect you to use methods that you have not been taught. Any projects that require additional learning will be identified when the project list is released, and we have sought assurance from potential supervisors that they are happy to support that additional learning. For example, for MSc Epidemiology or MSc Public Health students, we do not expect you to undertake multiple imputation for missing data for a quantitative analysis. However, we would expect you to include details on bias and non-response in your write-up. If you decide to present any multiple imputations, this should be included in the supplementary material. If you go on to submit your dissertation for publication after you have submitted, your supervisors and any other significant contributors must be authors.
Separate from the “Author Contributions” section, you will likely use data from projects that were not collected by you; therefore, you must acknowledge who designed the study and collected the data in your “Acknowledgements” section and adhere to any guidelines from the data provider. Ask your supervisors how to reference and describe the study appropriately. For example, there is a checklist available that describes the details you should include for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) that is available on their website, so please use this and any equivalent documentation for acknowledging the study, participants and data collected.
We have a long-standing agreement with the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) that allows access to ALSPAC data for use in MSc dissertation projects to be funded by the Bristol Medical School. There is no other budget available to support projects during the dissertation. If you incur costs, these will need to be covered by your supervisor (with their prior approval if they have funds available) or yourself. If, with agreement from your supervisors, you wish to publish your work after you have submitted your dissertation. The School has limited funding to help with publication costs and open access fees, and the University of Bristol has agreements to cover publication costs with some journals – see JST - Journal Search Tool (scifree.se).
For those students with Tier 4 visas, it is important that you check your visa requirements for what is expected of you for the duration of the dissertation period. According to the Visa Compliance team, students with a Tier 4 visa are required to have one in-person contact point per month. These contact points must be academic and not purely administrative; therefore, a contact point is defined by the University as one of the following:
Whilst a meeting with your dissertation supervisor can be considered one of these contact points, you must not exceed the seven hours of contact time. Your attendance is affected by all absences, including if you miss a meeting because you are ill. If your supervisor or tutor is unable to meet with you in person, you must let us know as soon as possible as we may need to arrange an in-person contact with the admin team. If you are not able to attend the symposium in July in person and you have a Tier 4 visa, you should alert the dissertation unit leads as soon as possible and, in that scenario, you would be required to have an in-person contact point in July with either your dissertation supervisor or personal tutor.
If you are a student visa holder and you do not meet the above engagement requirements the University will be required to withdraw sponsorship of your Student visa. This will affect your eligibility to apply for a Graduate route visa. You can find out more about your attendance requirements here.
If you do not have a Tier 4 visa, you should still aim to have regular contact points with your supervisors throughout the dissertation period (and aim to have a least one contact point per month is a good guide, as long as you do not exceed the seven hours of allowed contact time). However, your contact points are not required to be in-person, as they are for students with Tier 4 visas.
Whilst this programme does not usually allow students to complete the course and write their dissertation remotely overseas, it may be possible in exceptional (but rare) circumstances for students to undertake projects away from Bristol, either elsewhere in the UK or overseas (depending on visa requirements). If this is the case, a suitable supervisor in the host country must be identified, and this must be approved by the dissertation unit leads and programme directors before the project starts. If you are planning to visit another country where you require a visa, please check the visa requirements and complete your application early, well before you plan to travel. If you are travelling, you must have agreement from your Bristol-based supervisors to hold supervision online meetings if necessary.
It is a good idea to devise a plan and a simple timetable for carrying out your dissertation as early as possible, with the help of your supervisors. This does not need to be detailed, but breaking the work down into a series of realistic objectives may help turn a daunting overall prospect into an achievable set of tasks. Setting yourself small but regular deadlines can help keep everything on track, and using your meetings with your supervisors to discuss your progress and reflect on these deadlines will help keep you accountable and ensure you can complete your dissertation on time. Drawing a Gantt chart (a type of bar chart that summarises the project schedule over time) at the start of the project is a really good idea, and checking this at regular intervals with your supervisors to determine whether you are progressing as expected will help to keep you on track to finish on time.
The 9th of January “Dissertation Training Session” sets aside time in your timetable for you to learn what to expect as part of the dissertation, as well as ask any questions you have about the dissertation process. This will be led by the dissertation unit leads.
On the 22nd of May, there will also be a training session on academic language and literacy (focusing on dissertation writing) run by staff from the Centre for English Language and Foundation Studies, as well as other sessions on dissemination, writing a plain language summary and presentation skills.
In addition, you will have up to seven one-to-one supervision meetings with your supervisors, so use this time wisely to complete your dissertation. We will not be providing example dissertations from previous years.
The submitted work will be in the form of an academic journal article. The word limit for your dissertation is between 5,000-10,000 words overall, not including the front page, declaration and references (see Appendix One for full details on what is included in the word count). Your project should be formatted according to the provided guidelines – all information about the formatting of your dissertation is in Appendix One.
Exceeding the word limit will incur the following penalties:
|
Dissertation exceeds the stated word limit by: |
Penalty (absolute): |
|
Up to 10% of the minimum (500 words) |
10% of total mark is deducted |
|
Between 10% and 20% of the minimum (500-1000 words) |
50% of total mark is deducted |
|
By over 20% of the minimum (1000 words) |
A mark of 0 is awarded |
Whilst there are no penalties for being under the minimum word count (i.e., 5,000 words), you must consider whether you are providing adequate detail and making the most of the words available to you.
University regulations require a Submission Declaration to be included at the front of your manuscript. This declaration should be placed on the front page of your dissertation. A template for this front page will be made available to you, which you must sign before submitting.
The dissertation should be submitted via Blackboard by 12 noon on the 29th of August. Failure to submit on time will incur penalties unless you have agreed an extension. Please consult your Programme Handbook for further information about these penalties. If you are likely to have a genuine problem submitting on time, please let your supervisors and the dissertation unit leads know as soon as possible. If you have approved exceptional circumstances (ECs), any penalty incurred by the late submission may be removed, but this is not guaranteed.
Please ensure you submit your dissertation as one Word document, which includes your front page and declaration and all text, tables, figures and supplementary material (see Appendix One for details on formatting). In certain circumstances, it may be necessary to submit tables in Excel and in this case, please clearly label the file with your name and student number; however, please note that all submitted work needs to be within the overall word count, so consider what is necessary to submit.
To complete the dissertation unit, students will need to engage with the following activities within the timelines detailed in this handbook:
Feedback will be provided as part of the project outline approval process (see Section 2.6). You will also receive feedback on your poster presentation from the dissertation unit leads (see Section 2.7). It should be noted that neither the project outline nor the oral presentation contributes to the unit mark. The written dissertation in the form of an academic journal article will contribute 100% of the total unit mark. As detailed in section
2.3 above, your supervisors will also provide feedback on one full draft of your dissertation in the form of advice on content, structure, presentation style, omissions and references, but they will not edit your work.
One of your supervisors and another member of the University staff (who is independent of your project but will likely be a supervisor to someone else’s project) will mark your dissertation.
The marking criteria that apply for this assessment are Criteria B. Further details of Criteria B can be found on Blackboard in your programme handbook.
The total mark available for this assessment is 100. You will be assessed according to the following criteria:
We encourage students to discuss with their supervisors the opportunity to publish their dissertation in a scientific journal after they have submitted, as this is an achievement that will be of enormous benefit for their future career. Therefore, the submission of your dissertation for assessment should not necessarily be seen as the endpoint of your research. Most projects will require further work to be carried out for it to be publishable. It may be that you cannot do this after completing your MSc, and if this is the case, you should discuss with your supervisor whether this can be taken on by someone else. If this happens, there may be implications for authorship (i.e., someone else may have to be the first author on the final publication) and timing (i.e., it may take longer to publish). As supervisors will be co-authors of the paper, you should not, in any circumstances, pursue publication without your supervisors’ involvement.
Some of the MSc programmes may be undertaken part-time over a 2- or 3-year period. The process for undertaking the dissertation is therefore amended to take this into account, assuming you will also be working on your dissertation part-time. Full-time students have 3 months to complete their project (approximately ~65 days). Part-time students working over 2 and 3 years will therefore have the same amount of time spread over approximately 6 and 9 months, respectively.
Therefore, not all the timelines detailed in this document will apply to part-time students. Part-time students working over two years will submit their dissertation in their second year but will need to attend the dissertation information session (and training day), choose and be allocated to their dissertation topic, and complete their outline in their first year of study. Part-time students working over three years will submit in their final year, but will need to attend the dissertation information session (and training day), pick and be allocated to their dissertation topic and complete their outline in their second year.
The dissertation unit leads will meet with each part-time student in teaching block 1 of their first year to determine the most appropriate start time for their dissertation, given their circumstances and the number of days they can realistically dedicate to the dissertation. An example timetable is summarised below; however, exact timings will depend on each part-time student’s circumstances, and both important dates and deadlines will be clearly communicated to all students.
Whilst the expectation for monthly meetings does not apply to part-time students, part- time students should regularly interact with their supervisors once they start their dissertation (making sure not to exceed the allowed seven hours of contact time).
Generally, you should have either online or in-person supervision meetings and engage with your supervisors regularly during your dissertation period, as long as your meetings do not exceed the allowed seven hours of contact time. You are also expected to be working on your dissertation full-time between the first week of June to your submission date. If you are a part-time student, you will be working on the dissertation for the same amount of time as full-time students spread over a longer period of time, as agreed with the dissertation unit leads and your supervisors.
Your responsibilities as a student undertaking their dissertation are to:
The responsibilities of your supervisors are to:
Supervisors will NOT
“… proofread or edit the work. In programmes where a specified proportion of the draft dissertation may be read by the dissertation supervisor, they may comment on the following as applicable: dissertation or report structure, content of sections, research sources and methodology, referencing and style.”
University of Bristol Regulations and code of practice for taught programmes.
Biggam John. Succeeding With Your Master's Dissertation: A Step-By-Step Handbook, 4th Edition, 2018. McGraw-Hill: Open University Press.
Borja A. 11 steps to structuring a science paper editors will take seriously. Elsevier 2014.
Please read the guidance below for full details on how to structure and format your dissertation.
The word limit of the main article is 3,500 words, which does include all headings and main text but does not include the front page, declaration, abstract (limited to 250 words), plain language summary (limited to 450 words), author contribution (limited to 100 words), acknowledgements, references, tables/figures and accompanying headings and legends, and supplementary material. Therefore, the 3,500 essentially includes everything from the first word of your introduction to the last word of your discussion.
The total word limit for your dissertation (excluding the front page, declaration, and references) is 10,000 words; therefore, in addition to the main text, you may use the remaining words (i.e., 6,500) for your abstract (limited to 250 words), plain language summary (limited to 450 words), author contributions statement (limited to 100 words), acknowledgements, tables/figures and accompanying legends and supplementary material.
The supplementary material can be used to provide sufficient detail to ensure that the full breadth of your project can be described. Usually, the supplementary material can be used to expand the detail on methods or even present additional results (please appropriately refer to this in your main text). Everything you submit will be assessed and contribute to your overall dissertation mark. The front page, declaration and references do not count towards the maximum word limit of 10,000 words.
We will provide you with a front page and declaration, which should be copied and pasted onto the first page of your dissertation document and signed.
Your dissertation should be in the following order:
Front page and declaration
Plain Language Summary (max 450 words)
Abstract (max 250 words)
Main text
Author contributions (max 100 words)
Acknowledgements
References
Tables
Figures
Supplementary Material (where appropriate)
The “Author Contributions” statement should be limited to 100 words and should detail the academic support you have received from your supervisors and any other practical help or advice you have received within your dissertation. In this section, clearly describe any part of the work that was not completed by you (e.g., done by your supervisors, colleagues, or peers).
The “Acknowledgements” can include any studies, participants and people you would like to thank as well as any data access information. If you would like to thank your supervisors, please keep their names anonymous for marking purposes.
For submission of your dissertation, you do not need to include the following:
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