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I am planning to research on topic for masters by research course. Googling, I found that a "micro-research" study on a similar topic (some objectives matching) has been done by somebody as a part of coursework master’s thesis (project) work. But there is nothing online except some initial pages of thesis (as a blog post on the student's website), so I am unable to read the whole thesis and understand what has been done. It has not been published in a peer-reviewed forum, and it looks like it was done in around 4 months with a small sample size for coursework thesis. Moreover, it seems to be in a different field of study.

From the available pages it looks like research has tried to touch most of the things but at a very superficial level: three pages of data analysis and one page of findings also make me question how in-depth the analysis was.

I am writing a research proposal and really confused how I should include it. Especially in previous works, do I need to validate or justify each of my objectives against its objectives? (or show the difference)

I am thinking of expanding the scope, objectives of research and planning to use different data analysis methods. What should I do?

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    Have you tried to contact the author(s) of that coursework master’s thesis (project) work?
    – Nobody
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 5:24
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    In my opinion, you should get the full paper(thesis) and then assess its value and determine how to reference (use) it.
    – Nobody
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 5:39
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    problem is on objectives it looks similar. I am afraid you will need to reference that paper when you write yours. This is my opinion, though
    – Nobody
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 6:20
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    The obvious choose would be to reference this paper ("Johnson, J. (2014) 'bla bla bla', unpublished thesis, University of What Ever, blog access date: april 8th 2015" Reference software such as Endnote have an unpublished manuscript category) in the literature review part of your thesis.
    – Maarten van Wesel
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 7:26
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    @Maarten Thanks.Well can i call it 'unpublished'? or is there any other better terms? . The proposal was never meant to be published i guess reading at its abstract.Rather it was just trying to fulfill the partial requirement of a subject or coursework master's degree and just submitted to College. The research mentions that analysis is not in depth as thesis has to be submitted by 4 months as degree requirement.
    – TheGooooogle
    Commented Apr 8, 2015 at 7:40

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But there is nothing online except some initial pages of thesis (as a blog post on the student's website [...]. It has not been published in a peer-reviewed forum, and it looks like it was done in around 4 months with a small sample size for coursework thesis. Moreover, it seems to be in a different field of study.

From the available pages it looks like research has tried to touch most of the things but at a very superficial level: three pages of data analysis and one page of findings also make me question how in-depth the analysis was.

None of this indicates that the previous study was 'inadequate'!

You should definitly mention this study in your proposal, but use better arguments than 'three pages of data analysis and one page of findings' to describe its limitations!

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  • Yup. Thanks and that is what i did.I listed limitations of that research and were around 1 page long.I am trying to make it bit shorter(just really difficult). No references for data-stats-many claims,data analysis and findings all based on just mean,mode analysis to name few.Any ways thanks I have included it. It just looks like it was done for the thesis requirement of the course.
    – TheGooooogle
    Commented Apr 15, 2015 at 10:39

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