Thesis data analysis in Trivandrum

Tables and figures in a KTU thesis

KTU’s thesis and synopsis guidelines are very exact about how the results are shown. Engineering and management scholars both get caught by these rules.

• Write the table number and its title just above the table. A figure gets its number and caption underneath.
• Numbering is done chapter-wise. The fourth figure of Chapter 5 becomes Figure 5.4.
• Each table or figure comes right after the spot where you mention it first. Small ones, under half the writing area, stay inside the text, and a bigger one can take a full page.
• If your results tables and graphs are long and detailed, put them in the appendices. In the chapter keep some representative data only.
• For equations, KTU wants each one typed in a line of its own, and the equation number comes at the right end of that line.
• When you reproduce a table or figure from some other work, give its source as a separate last line of the caption.

Out of these, the appendix point is the one that helps you with page count. KTU allows a maximum of 300 pages for the thesis, and forty SPSS tables in one results chapter will use that up fast. We decide with you which tables your argument needs and which can be shifted to the appendix, so the chapter reads like your findings.

Charts that still read on an A5 page

Many scholar notice this point only when they reach the binding shop. KTU examiners read the soft copy at A4 size. But as per the guidelines, the library copies are printed at A5. At that size an AMOS path diagram, or a SmartPLS model having twenty indicators, shrinks so much that the labels can’t be read.

That is why we check every figure at A5 first when we draw it. Mostly we increase the label size and cut down the colours. In black and white print a reader should still follow the figure, so colour can’t be the only way to show a difference. Sometimes a crowded structural model has to be split, one measurement figure and one separate structural figure. Portrait pages are what the guidelines prefer. A wide regression table will not fit that way, so we break it into two smaller tables.

Clinical and health-science data at SCTIMST and KUHS

At SCTIMST, the guidelines keep Results as a separate chapter, coming after Material and Methods. They also allow Results to be combined with the Discussion. For the running text they ask double spacing, and long tables you can keep in single spacing. It looks like a small allowance, but when baseline characteristics of three groups run down one full page it helps a lot.

At KUHS, as per the regulations, the thesis should be between 40,000 and 100,000 words, and annexures and references are kept outside this count. Figures are to be embedded in the text. In a medical thesis, survival curves and ROC curves with around a dozen regression tables can cross the upper limit with the results part alone. So we sit with you and go objective by objective. Whichever table answers that objective stays in the chapter. Others we shift to annexures.

With this type of data, mostly the work is sample-size reasoning, comparing groups, logistic or Cox regression and diagnostic accuracy. Before we run any test, we explain its assumptions to you in simple words. A DAC member or an examiner will surely ask why you selected that test.

Kerala University: results that face the committee early

As per the University of Kerala’s 2022 regulations, you have to present before your Department Doctoral Committee every semester. Commerce, management and social science scholars mostly show some early results there, from a pilot study or the first round of a survey. If a committee member see a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.52 in your second year, the same question will come again in the third year.

Because of this, do the reliability test and the basic descriptives before the review itself. If one scale is weak, there is still time to correct the questionnaire. For the review we help you make two or three clean tables, with a short note on what each number means.

The UGC 2018 plagiarism regulations have one rule that touches every results chapter. As per that rule, your results part has to be original work, and the conclusions and recommendations also. Many scholars are lifting the standard lines from some SPSS guide or a senior’s thesis. The plagiarism software catches those lines very easily. We help you write the interpretation of your own numbers in your own words.

How it works from Trivandrum

Start with a WhatsApp message. Tell us your university, your objectives or hypotheses, and the software your guide prefers. After that, share the questionnaire or data sheet along with data file.

We first go through the data and tell you honestly what can be tested with it and what cannot. Nothing is run till the tests, the timeline and the fee are written down and you have agreed to them. For each set of results you get the output files and formatted tables. Then we explain every number to you on a call. For KTU scholars we number the tables chapter-wise itself. Table titles go on top and figure captions at the bottom, as KTU wants, and you only have to copy them into your template.

The data belongs to you only. What goes into the chapter is your final decision, and at the viva you are the one answering for the analysis. So we keep explaining a result till it makes sense to you.