Bachelor's and Master's Theses

Preliminary remarks

Research topics are assigned to both bachelor's and master's students, with each student pursuing his or her own (sub-)research question. The preparation of the empirical work and, to some extent, the data collection often take place as a team. Data analysis and reporting, however, are to be done as independent individual efforts.

Due to our staff capacities, we are not able to supervise student topic proposals unless they are very close to the topics advertised below.

It is your own responsibility to check whether or that you are eligible for the final module. Please clarify this with the STuP if necessary.

Current topics for bachelor's thesis:

*** Currently there are no topics for bachelor's thesis available ***

Current topics for master's thesis:

*** Currently there are no topics for master's thesis available ***

Please note, that Prof. Degner will not supervise any theses in the winter term 22/23.

Topic selection & registration

If you are interested in one or more of the listed topics, please send an email to the corresponding supervisor to ask if the topic is still available. For topics that are marked as 'assigned for the time being', you can put your name on a waiting list. Several topics can also be worked on in teams.
We expect that you will then read the basic reading indicated and prepare a short summary of your understanding of the issue and possibly develop your own ideas on the topic (about 1-2 pages). You may also conduct your own literature research for this purpose. Also state whether or in what way you meet the specific requirements of the project in question.

Send this exposé to the relevant supervisor at least four weeks before the desired start of supervision.

Since it is desirable that, when working on a social psychology final topic, you are also placed in the corresponding social psychology research seminar, we recommend that you register with us no later than the end of March (for the summer term) or the end of September (for the winter term). This will help you avoid being randomly assigned to a different seminar.

Open Science Practices

Students will deepen their knowledge of the background and practices of open, replicable, and robust research and apply the relevant strategies in their own research sections as part of their final project. If students conduct their own data collection or secondary data analysis, for example, a complete pre-registration of hypotheses, methods, and analysis plan is expected.

Supervision & Grading

At the beginning of the project, meetings with supervisors will be scheduled at a fairly high density (e.g., once a week), and later work will be more independent. We are of course still available for questions and assistance.

We offer a feedback session during the writing of the final paper, but we explicitly ask you to discuss the content and structure of the written paper with your supervisors before you start writing. In principle, we recommend that you structure your final paper like a manuscript for submission to a scientific journal. We explicitly do not give page guidelines, but focus on clarity and precision of presentation.

We also point out that when grading the final paper, we do not only look at the final written product, but also include the work process. We include the following factors:

- Independence and competence of preparation for the project meetings.
- Quantity and quality of own ideas brought into the project
- Quality, preparation, organization, and implementation of data collection
- Competence of data preparation and analysis
- Quality of initial written work and implementation of feedback and suggested corrections

Please note:
Due to the limited supervision capacity of the department of Social Psychology, we have to reduce the intensity of supervision. This means that we expect a very high level of independence in the processing of your research project.