Thesis and Dissertation

Fall Semester

• PSY 5700 Clinical Orientation
• PSY 6111 Advanced Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
• PSY 6100 Data Management
• PSY 6710 Clinical Psychopathology
• PSY 6740 Fundamentals of Psychotherapy
• One additional course, required/breadth or elective/track

Spring Semester

• PSY 6112 Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis
• PSY 6120 Advanced Research Methods
• PSY 7740 Adult Psychotherapy
• PSY 6730 Fundamentals of Clinical Assessment
• PSY 7930 Readings in Psychology or PSY 7940 Research in Psychology

• PSY 6760 Diversity Issues in Research and Practice
• PSY 6750 Issues in Professional Psychology
• Additional Assessment Course (PSY 7730 Adult Assessment or PSY 7732 Child and Adolescent Assessment)
• PSY 7920 Clinical Practicum (3CR per semester)
• Required Discipline Specific Knowledge courses or electives for major areas of study
• Approved thesis proposal by Friday of the first week of classes in spring semester

• PSY 7920 Clinical Practicum (3 CR per semester)
• Begin Traineeship (PSY 7925 or 7910)
• Discipline-Specific Knowledge courses
• Electives or courses in other specialty training areas
• Successful defense of thesis by last day of classes in Fall semester
• Complete doctoral comprehensive exam.

• Have approved dissertation proposal by Oct 1 if applying to internship.
• Discipline-Specific Knowledge courses
• PSY 8920 Supervision
• Electives
• Complete Traineeship (PSY 7925 or 7910)

• Have approved dissertation proposal no later than Oct 1.
• Internship or completion of Discipline Specific Knowledge or elective courses and dissertation

Thesis committees must include three members. At least two of the three members must be Tenure Track psychology faculty, one of whom must be the chair. The third member of the committee may be a Tenure Track or Instructional faculty member from the Department of Psychology or a Tenure Track faculty member from another department at Ohio University. Exceptions are permitted with the pre-approval of the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies. Additional committee members (beyond the required three) are also permitted. Once the committee has been formed, its membership should not change. If some need arises for changing the membership, see the Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies. All members of a thesis committee must approve the thesis proposal as well as the completed thesis.

Members of thesis and dissertation committees are expected to physically attend both the proposal and final defense meetings. If physical attendance is foreseeably problematic or overly restrictive and rescheduling prohibitive or otherwise infeasible, other arrangements may be made (e.g., video conferencing or phoning in) with the approval of both the committee chair and the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies. For unforeseen events where other arrangements can be made (e.g., illness prevents physical attendance, but not virtual attendance), the committee chair will have the discretion to determine how to proceed, informing the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies of the circumstances as soon as possible.

For all required forms for thesis proposal and defense, please see the “Checklist and Timeline for Psychology Master’s Degree” on the Department of Psychology website.

Dissertation committees consist of four members and three of them must be Tenure Track psychology faculty. One of the three Tenure Track psychology faculty members must chair the committee. The fourth member must be a Tenure Track faculty member from another department at Ohio University who serves as the college representative. Students can opt to have an additional fifth member, which might be encouraged by their faculty mentor, depending on the nature of their dissertation project. This optional member cannot be a Tenure Track Department of Psychology Department of Psychology faculty member; they must have a doctorate in their field (e.g., Ed.D., M.D.) and may or may not be affiliated with Ohio University. Exceptions to this committee structure may be permitted with the pre-approval of the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies. Once the committee has been formed, its membership should not change. If some need arises for changing the membership, see the Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies.  All members of a dissertation committee must approve the dissertation proposal as well as the completed dissertation.

Members of thesis and dissertation committees are expected to physically attend both the proposal and final defense meetings. If physical attendance is foreseeably problematic or overly restrictive, and rescheduling prohibitive or otherwise infeasible, other arrangements may be made (e.g., video conferencing or phoning in) with the approval of both the committee chair and the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies. For unforeseen events where other arrangements can be made (e.g., illness prevents physical attendance, but not virtual attendance), the committee chair will have the discretion to determine how to proceed, informing the Assistant Chair of Graduate Studies of the circumstances as soon as possible.

For all forms, including approval forms for the proposal meeting, committee members, and the defense meeting, please see the “Checklist and timeline for Ph.D. Degree on the Department of Psychology website.

The standard proposal format requires the student to demonstrate comprehensive and critical review of the research that serves as a foundation for their study. As proposed projects may be outside of committee members’ areas of expertise, an extensive review of the theoretical and empirical literature may be necessary to evaluate the merits and needs of project hypotheses and design.

Students will initiate their 2-hour proposal meeting with a short presentation (10-15 minutes). This is to allow sufficient time for critique and discussion by the committee about the proposed project. The student and their mentor should take careful note of committee members’ critiques, concerns, and requested revisions during the proposal meeting so that the student can formally respond to these issues at the time of the defense meeting. Prior to the close of the proposal meeting, the student’s mentor should confirm with committee members which of these issues are necessary for the student to address as they proceeds with the project and prepares the final draft to submit to the committee.

The final draft of thesis and dissertation projects will be formatted as a manuscript prepared for publication. Students will format sections, content, and citations using APA publication guidelines for submitted manuscripts. Final drafts will vary in length from student to student; however, overall length will fall within a range appropriate to journal submission requirements in the student’s area of research. At the very least, this will require more succinct introduction, discussion, and reference sections relative to the proposal document. In the methods section, students should include the level of methodological detail that would be necessary for publication of the study in a peer-reviewed journal. The results section may remain more comprehensive than a typical journal manuscript, as students should include a comprehensive review of all statistical strategies used in order to test research hypotheses, including initial analysis of data and statistical test assumptions.

In addition to the traditional manuscript format, final drafts to the committee will include additional content areas as Appendices. The additional sections may be removed or revised upon final preparation for submission for publication outside the university. Appendix sections are listed below.

1. Introduction: If deemed necessary by the committee, the student may include an Appendix (A) to the submitted document, which would address shortcomings in the proposal introduction that were identified by the committee and that cannot be addressed in a shorter manuscript (e.g., a review of an important issue that had been neglected by the student in the proposal draft, a rewrite of a particular section of the original proposal that does not fit into the flow of the final manuscript’s introduction, a complete rewrite of the original proposal introduction).
2. Methods: Copies of the instruments used in the study and detailed review of psychometric properties of instruments used in the study should be placed in Appendix B. Before submitting the document to the College of Arts and Sciences, however, copyrighted measures will need to be removed from the Appendix.
3. Statistical Analyses: Supplemental, post-hoc, and exploratory analyses can appear as Appendix C to the document. The student and their mentor can decide which supplemental statistical analyses can be placed in the body of the document and which can appear as Appendix C.
4. Limitations. Students will include an examination of project limitations and their potential impact on the results. If there are limitations to the study that warrant discussion during the dissertation defense but, due to journal style, may not be presented in a detailed way in the main body of the defense document, the student can either orally present a detailed examination of study limitations during their defense meeting and/or opt to include a longer limitations section as an Appendix (E) to the main document.
5. Tables & Figures. Tables and figures should be submitted as separate documents attached to the draft of the manuscript text. Titles and footnotes should be included with the tables and figures and not on a separate page.

Students should also note that additional formatting may be necessary before submitting the final draft to Arts and Sciences. Please refer to the A&S website for specific formatting instructions.

In addition to the defense document described above, the student should provide each committee member with a cover letter, in which they addresses the committee members’ critiques, concerns, and requested revisions that were raised during the proposal meeting. The format of the letter should list, point by point, the specific critique, concern, or requested revision, and the specific way in which the student has addressed or will address the issue (e.g., specific places in the defense document that address an issue, changes to the methodology, additional hypotheses that were tested, indicating the concern will be discussed during the defense meeting presentation rather than in the written document).

The defense meeting format will differ from the proposal meeting in length (2.5 hours), presentation requirement, and audience present.

Defense meetings will include a longer presentation from the student (approximately 45 minutes) about their project and will take a format similar to a job talk or colloquium presentation, followed by oral examination/questions from the committee regarding the project and document. Students are encouraged to use Powerpoint or other visual aids as part of their presentation. Students are reminded that during their presentation they can provide details beyond that provided in their defense document. For example, a student may choose to respond to an issue raised at the proposal meeting during their defense presentation rather than in the submitted document.

For dissertation and thesis projects, meetings will be open to the public during the presentation and questioning. Non-committee members will have the opportunity to ask questions of the student following completion of committee questions.

Students are advised to consider that, although their written document is much shorter, they are still likely to have to answer detailed questions about rationale for study, methodology, statistical analyses, and discussion/ implications/limitations of their study.

Following questions, committee members will conduct a closed evaluation of the student, dismissing both the student and the audience during this process.

Students defending their dissertation and thesis will need to schedule their defense meeting and submit their document to committee members at least two weeks in advance. At this time, students must also submit a proposal announcement form to the Chair of Graduate Studies, who will post the time, date, and location of the meeting via e-mail and in department and college postings.

At a minimum, each student must complete a brief, three-to-five page thesis prospectus prior to the second Monday of April of their first year. This prospectus must be reviewed and approved by the student’s mentor and submitted to the Clinical Section director prior to the deadline. The prospectus may include a brief outline and overview of the relevant literature and may include a methodology and timeline for the completion of the thesis. If students do not meet this deadline, they will receive an automatic Type II letter at the end of the year.

Students should have an approved thesis proposal by the Friday of the first week of classes during Spring Semester of their second year. Those students not meeting this deadline will get an automatic Type II evaluation at the end of the year (even if they have proposed between the deadline and the end of year evaluations) and will be reviewed by the Clinical Section for possible action to get them back on schedule. If students do not have a thesis proposal accepted by their committee by the last day of classes during Spring semester of their second year, they will be automatically dismissed from the program. The purpose of this policy is to ensure that students make appropriate progress toward completion of the thesis by the completion deadline; that deadline is the last day of classes in Fall Semester of the third year.

Thesis research will take a lot longer than students may think. If students work on their thesis proposal during the Spring semester of their first year in the context of the Advanced Research Methods course (PSY 6120), this likely will facilitate progress on the project. The research proposal that students prepare in spring semester of their first year should further prepare them for their thesis proposal.

In order to facilitate meeting proposal and defense deadlines, it is recommended that students start trying to schedule the meeting two or three weeks in advance of when they want it to occur. People are busy, and it may take several days just to schedule the meeting. Students are not allowed to set up a meeting until their thesis director says they can. Also, the director must approve the final copy of the document before it can be distributed to other members of the committee. Students are not allowed to start collecting data before the committee approves the thesis proposal. The thesis committee may require changes in procedures that render such pre-collected data useless, which means a student will have wasted a lot of time and effort as well as some of the department’s materials and resources.

Once the thesis proposal is approved, students should begin preparing the materials for the project. The department provides some funding to help defray the costs of the research project (see section on “Research Support”). The main office administrators will help students get the materials they need.

If a student does not expect to be able to meet the fall semester of the third year deadline for completing the thesis, they may appeal to the Clinical Section for an extension of the deadline. An appeal is appropriate if circumstances that were beyond the student’s control delayed completion of the thesis. Personal illness, significant equipment failure, and lack of appropriate participants when using a special population are among the reasons that may be acceptable. Procrastination or lack of adequate planning do not count. Students should submit appeals as soon as they know that they will not be able to make the deadline. Note that the section will consider requests for extensions only from students whose thesis proposals were approved by the Friday of the first week of classes during spring semester of their second year. Continuation of funding will be contingent on either completing the thesis on time or a successful appeal for an extension of the deadline.

In the case when the section does not support the student’s appeal, if the student completes the thesis between the end of Fall semester and the last day of classes of Spring semester of their third year, funding will be resumed at the beginning of the following semester after the student successfully defends their thesis. If the thesis is not successfully defended by the last day of classes during the third year, the student will be automatically dismissed from the program.

Once the thesis or dissertation committee has approved the work, students should submit final copies of the work to the College of Arts and Sciences. Here are some guidelines for preparing the final copies.

The appropriate style for submitting theses and dissertations is given in the current edition of the APA Publication Manual. Please be familiar with that style and use it in the preparation of thesis and dissertation documents. The purpose of the manual is to help authors prepare manuscripts for submission to APA journals. Given that students are required to have their theses and dissertations in the format of a journal article, it is essential that students follow the procedures in the APA Publication Manual very closely. However, The College of Arts & Sciences annually produces a pamphlet titled "Directions for the format and presentation of theses and dissertations." The instructions in this pamphlet take precedence over the instructions given in the APA Publication Manual. If students have questions about how to prepare the documents, they are welcome to check with the Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies.