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SSIM907
Policy Analytics:
Dissertation or Research Consultancy Project
2025/2026
Module details
During term 1, an information session will be held on preparing a dissertation or a research consultancy project. This will be sometime during November – please check your timetables, as this session will appear there at some point in the coming weeks. Following this session, students will be asked to fill in a questionnaire about their preferred topic and whether they are interested in writing an independent dissertation or collaborating with an external partner as part of a research consultancy project. This questionnaire will help us in allocating the most suitable supervisor.
If you would like to discuss your ideas for your dissertation prior to November, please contact me via email and we can arrange an appointment.
In consultation with your supervisor, you will undertake an extended piece of original research related to policy analytics and/or evidence-based decision-making in a subject area related to your interests. All this really means is that you will use data to answer a research question and consider the practical/policy implications of your findings in your write-up. This process may involve working with a non-academic partner if you choose to complete a dissertation based on a research consultancy project.
It is an assessment that we very much hope you will benefit from and enjoy, but it will likely require significantly more work than any assessment you have done previously. It also accounts for a significant proportion (one third) of the credits making up your Master’s degree.
Module aims
This module aims to:
1. Provide you with an opportunity to conduct independent research-based academic work in the area of policy analytics related to a topic you wish to pursue further
2. Develop your ability to apply your data analysis skills to provide novel insights on a research topic. This may be consultancy or workplace based.
3. Enhance your awareness of the methodological, ethical and practical concerns of social science and data driven research.
Learning outcomes
Module-Specific Skills
1. Demonstrate in depth knowledge of a specialised subject area;
2. Design an individual research programme, incorporating appropriate policy analytic methods;
3. Collate and analyse subject-specific information from a range of appropriate sources.
Discipline-Specific Skills
4. Assimilate and critically analyse data from an appropriate range of sources;
5. Demonstrate how research fits within policy context and the implications that the research will have for policy practitioners.
Personal and Key Skills
6. Develop cogent arguments;
7. Communicate complex information and ideas effectively in writing;
8. Undertake an individual research project;
9. Manage your own work.
Work Placement Process
Arrangement of placements is largely self-directed. The following 3 scenarios are common paths to securing a placement that students have followed in the past.
1. You have an existing contact, or you make your own speculative approach to an organisation and they agree to offer you a placement. In this case, we would check that your placement would meet the module requirements and if it did, then proceed to formally approve your placement.
2. You identify a number of organisations within a sector that would be of interest to you, and ask us to contact these organisations on your behalf to see if they are able to offer you a placement.
3. Organisations that have previously hosted placement students offer placements again if they have appropriate projects and supervision capacity at the right time. In this case, we would circulate a summary of the placement that is on offer to you and invite interested students to apply. If more than one student applies for one position, the decision is ultimately with the placement provider as to who they take on.
Research Proposal
Formative Assessment
You should write a project proposal detailing your research or consultancy project. This should be a maximum of 1500 words and include reflection on the research questions to be answered, the data to be used, the methods to be applied and any potential ethical issues that may arise as a result of the analysis. Please see the section on Ethics Approval. If you think you may have ethical issues regarding your proposal, you should discuss this as early as possible in term 2, as the ethics committee meets less frequently in term 3.
You should send this directly to your supervisor by the end of Friday 15th May 2026.
Assessment
Summative
Your sole summative assessment on this module is:
1 x 12,000 word dissertation due early September. Exact date TBC. I will update you when this is confirmed.
Learning
The dissertation coordinator is Dr Lizzie Simon. The role of the dissertation coordinator is to:
• Assign a supervisor to your project based on a research proposal submitted by you
• Discuss and try to resolve any difficulties that may arise in relation to your dissertation supervision throughout the year.
Once assigned a supervisor, you should address any specific concerns related to your project to your supervisor. If you have decided to change your topic you should still meet with your assigned supervisor to discuss this before getting in contact with the dissertation coordinator. You should only contact the dissertation coordinator directly if an issue arises that cannot be resolved in supervision meetings.
Dissertation supervisor
Your dissertation supervisor will provide general guidance in the research process. More specifically, they will:
• Provide a sounding-board for developing your ideas;
• Help you identify a relevant literature/debate to address;
• Help you to formulate a viable research question (although they will not provide you with a research question);
• Make suggestions about the organisation and structure of your dissertation;
• Recommend a methodology or general approach to your research; and,
• Challenge you to make explicit and defend underlying assumptions.
You can expect to meet with your supervisor four times between January and July. Please bear in mind that term 3 ends on Friday 12th June 2025. Please be aware that your supervisor may be available less frequently in July and August due to other commitments. You are therefore expected to co-ordinate these meetings with your supervisor, bearing in mind any periods that they may not be available. It is therefore in your interest to schedule meetings during term 3 when your supervisor is more likely to be available.
To make the most out of these meetings you should prepare for them by writing an outline of the progress made, as well as an outline of specific questions and topics you want to concentrate on next. Styles and practices of supervision may vary depending on the subject matter, individual students’ particular needs, and staff members’ teaching methods.
Ethics approval
NB: If you think you may have ethical issues regarding your dissertation proposal, you should discuss this as early as possible in term 2, as the ethics committee meets less frequently in term 3.
When you write your proposal detailing the research or consultancy project, you should include some reflections on any potential ethical issues which may be involved in your work. For example, if there are any sensitive data being analysed, what steps will be included to mitigate any risk to respondents being accidentally identified. In this particular example, you might choose to avoid reporting any low frequencies in any outputs.
Your supervisor will examine your proposal and may refer this to the departmental Ethics Officer in the event of uncertainty regarding potential ethical issues. In the event that this is necessary, the Ethics Officer will be able to advise whether a full ethical review is necessary.
In this eventuality, approval of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Research Ethics Committee involves making sure your human subjects give informed consent to participating in your research, and makes provisions for the use, security, and privacy of data (including the identity of your participants, any information they divulge, their demographics and any photo, video or audio recordings made). Your supervisor will be able to help you with this. More information is available here:
https://universityofexeteruk.sharepoint.com/sites/SSISResearchEthicsCommittee
Please be aware that the deadlines for submissions to the ethics committee meetings are listed on the following page:
https://universityofexeteruk.sharepoint.com/sites/SSISResearchEthicsCommittee/SitePages/Introduction-to-SSIS-Research-Ethics-Committee.aspx
The rules around ethics approval for your dissertations are generally as follows:
· If your project does not use any data about individuals or confidential data about organisations (e.g., it relies on country-level data), it does not require research ethics review.
· If your project uses secondary data secured from data archives and large, well-known survey projects, it will be covered by the module-wide ethics approval we have completed on your behalf and will not require research ethics review.
· If your project uses other, lesser-known, sources of secondary data or plans to harvest data online (from social media, forums etc.) you should consult with your supervisor as to whether you will need to undergo ethics review. Dissertation supervisors can decline an application if the project involves risks to its participants or the student cannot be effectively supervised.
o For those considering conducting online research please read the guidance here: https://universityofexeteruk.sharepoint.com/sites/SSISResearchEthicsCommittee/SitePages/Conducting-Research-Online.aspx
· If your project collects new survey data, and does not target narrow or vulnerable populations, you will need to discuss the process of data collection with your supervisor and prepare a participant information pack, a consent form. and a draft of the survey, questionnaire or experiment you plan to administer. Please contact the module convenor who can send you templates for these forms. These must then be sent to the module convenor for approval. Dissertation supervisors and the convenor can decline an application if the project involves risks to its participants or the student cannot be effectively supervised.
o For those considering this route, please read the guidance here: https://universityofexeteruk.sharepoint.com/sites/REGComms/SitePages/Informed-Consent.aspx?web=1
Structure of the dissertation
It is not necessary to structure your dissertation in any particular way, and there is a wide variety of dissertation structures students choose to employ, but an example dissertation structure is as follows:
Title. This should make the topic of your dissertation clear and, ideally, also indicate your main argument or research findings.
Abstract (approx. 300 words). A brief outline of your dissertation research, setting out what your research does, what it finds and the implications of the findings.
Table of contents. Use meaningful section headings that signpost the main points of the dissertation and indicate how they fit together.
Introduction (approx. 1,000 words). Explain the research problem you are attempting to solve, and how your dissertation will do this. Be explicit about what your main argument or finding is and provide an overview of the content of individual chapters.
Body. This is the main bulk of your dissertation, which examines the problem and gives evidence in logical sequence. While the number of chapters may vary and different disciplines may have different structuring conventions, the dissertation’s body is generally organized into three chapters (approx. 3,000 words each). The first chapter is usually a literature review that establishes your research puzzle and situates your research within a broader academic debate (What is new about your research? What gap are you trying to address in the existing literature?). The next two chapters are typically a data and methods chapter and a results chapter. The first sets out the data you are using, why this is suited to addressing your research problem, and gives a brief explanation of how the data looks (descriptive statistics). It also explains how you will use this data in your dissertation, i.e., the methods employed. The results chapter then explains what you find through the process of data analysis.
Conclusion (approx. 1,000 words). Your conclusion should reiterate your main argument or research findings as set out in the introduction, but in a more sophisticated way given the analysis built up in the body of the dissertation. It may also identify areas or questions for further research and discuss the limitations of the analysis you have conducted. In this section, you should reflect on the implications your findings have for policy and/or practice.
Bibliography. This is a list of all the sources used in your dissertation. Use a consistent style. of referencing and provide full bibliographical information.
Structure of the research consultancy project
We recognise that the structure and format of a report produced for a research consultancy project may differ from a traditional dissertation. For example, it may be more appropriate to include an Executive Summary rather than an Abstract. The proportion of the research consultancy project devoted to the literature review may differ from a traditional dissertation. Most reports examining issues of public policy would include a literature review with citations, even if these were referenced using footnotes rather than typical academic formats. This is why a single format is not prescribed for either a dissertation or a research consultancy project.
The project should represent your own work and therefore your contribution to the report. If the work is part of a larger, co-authored report then the section written by you should be the submitted work for assessment.
Word limit
Your dissertation should be 12,000 words in length. It is important that you keep to the word length both to encourage concise writing and to ensure equity between students. If you exceed the specified word limit for an assessment, you will be subject to the following penalties:
• Up to 10% over length: No deduction from final mark
• 10-20% over length: Deduction of 5 marks from final mark
• 20% or more over length: Maximum mark of 50%
The word count excludes the bibliography, appendices, abstract, table of contents and any other tables and figures.
Footnotes count towards the word count (unless they are used as part of your referencing system). Please use them concisely and sparsely. If a point is important enough to be expanded upon at length it should be included in the body of your work.
You are responsible for including an accurate word count; failure to be honest in this respect will itself be penalised under 1.1.d of the University’s cheating and plagiarism regulations.
Style, references and bibliography
You are free to use any established referencing system. The key thing is to be consistent and accurate in your use of your chosen referencing style. Many different examples are modelled in the books and journals you use in your studies. The style. used by an academic for a given publication is determined by the conventions of the publication rather than personal preference. One of the most used systems is the Harvard Style. For basic instructions on how to reference using the Harvard Style. see: https://www-citethemrightonline-com.uoelibrary.idm.oclc.org/category-list?docid=CTRHarvard
Dissertation submission
You should submit your dissertation electronically via ELE by 2pm on Tuesday 1st September 2026.
Assessment criteria
Your dissertation will be double-marked, i.e. marked separately by two independent examiners. All written work is judged according to the following criteria:
Knowledge and coverage of the material. Do you have a good understanding of all the issues? Have you covered all the relevant material? Have you researched the topic in adequate depth?
Structure and argument. Is your work clearly structured? Is it analytical? Is your argument well supported? Does it avoid unnecessary repetition?
Critical technique. Does your work show an awareness of scholars’ debate and disagreement on a topic? Does your work show an awareness of the problems inherent in and the biases of particular source materials?
Originality. How original is your work in terms of content and structure? How far do you express your own views?
Style. and presentation. Is your work clearly written? Does it conform. to the style. guidelines laid down in the relevant departmental guidance? Do the references conform. to the style. guide provided by the Department? Have you checked it for spelling and grammatical errors?
Overlap of assessed work
Students are reminded that they are not permitted to submit the same piece of work for assessment in two different modules or substantially reproduce essay or exam answers within modules. Essays or dissertations which are found to duplicate entirely, or in part, the work which a student has already submitted for assessment will be subject to a penalty depending on an assessment of the severity of the case. In extreme cases a mark of zero might be awarded.
It is permissible to develop and extend upon earlier submitted work. Students who are concerned about possible overlap in their assessed work should seek advice from Dr Simon.