Supervision

Supervision of students at the working group

At the Department of Psychology, every chair has to contribute to the supervision of final theses, including Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. In addition to this voluntary commitment, we have an interest in ensuring that students perceive us as a working group where not only methods are taught, but also researched and applied - and where substantive research is carried out. In this way, we can contribute to the training of capable users of the statistical methods taught and at the same time strengthen our own research areas and create young talent.

We can announce topics for theses ourselves (e.g. via our homepage or in lectures) and respond to requests from students if the topic and time available for supervision are suitable or refer them to colleagues if they are not. It is a good idea to repeatedly point out at the beginning of the semester during the Master’s lectures that you can write a Master’s thesis at our department.

The supervisor should discuss the formal and content requirements for the thesis with the student in advance, including

the rough topic / the rough research question
the time frame
the use of open research methods (power analysis, pre-registration, open and reproducible materials)
sample recruitment (i.e. what approximate sample size does the student need to be prepared for in order to obtain meaningful results; the supervisor should provide a realistic estimate in advance)
the supervisory relationship (e.g.: how often do you meet? On which aspects of the written work is feedback provided in advance and in what detail? For some students, a more intensive supervisory relationship is better, for others a less intensive one; what can the supervisor do?)
data protection issues (see template in the team folder, depending on whether the supervisor or the student is responsible)
the grading (here we use a standardised grading scheme at the chair; according to the Prüfungsordnung, only the written work may be graded, not the process).

Optionally, it is possible to have the student write an exposé in which the points discussed are reproduced in writing by the student.

We want to offer students good and fair supervision, where they can learn a lot and achieve a very good performance in their thesis. This includes giving feedback on the design of the thesis study, addressing open/overlooked aspects, being open to questions and providing assistance with content-related or methodological problems. At the same time, we expect students to prepare joint meetings with appropriate preparatory work and to contribute questions and problems on their own initiative. Accordingly, the performance in the written paper also reflects the extent to which sufficient personal effort has been made, whether questions have been addressed and resolved and the extent to which the content of joint discussions has been incorporated into the paper.

In order to be allowed to supervise a thesis, supervisors must be listed as an authorised examiner with the examination board.

Supervision of Doctoral Students

The Department of Psychology has voluntarily undertaken to conclude a doctoral agreement between the supervisor and doctoral candidate for each doctorate - a template is available for this purpose (see https://www.lmu.de/psy/en/research/open-science-measures/). The aim of the doctoral agreement is to define the key points of the joint collaboration.