On Thesis Ideas

I met with my major professor today and we talked about what I'll be doing for my master's thesis. I have an assignment in another class that is directly related to my thesis so I wanted to touch base with him and talk about what I could realistically and interestingly study with the data I'll be working with.

In my methods class we've been discussing research designs, research questions, why we study what we study and how we study what we actually want to study. For Tuesday I've got to come up with a "Big T" and a "Little e." The Big T is a theoretical question that will lead my line of research. It's something I can write many empirical papers on and tie them back into each other to build on what I'm studying. My Little e is the empirical question that I want to ask in my next (thesis) paper.

I went in thinking that I wanted to examine how romantic relationships mediate how a person handles mental health but I think now I'm looking at it a bit differently. Instead of looking at romantic relationships as the starting point, I'll be looking into attachment styles and views of relationship quality as they affect emotional states (namely depression). I'll be able to look at how each partner views the relationship and how those similar/dissimilar views influence each partner's emotional stability. The population that I'll be examining will be around age 21 and I'll have data from when they were around age 19 as well, so I'll probably end up doing some comparison across time. Of course, it'll all probably change some before I'm done.

I've got a lot to read this weekend and a lot of thinking to do about my "Big T" and "Little e" but I'm ready. I'm excited that I've identified what I want to look at... now to figure out how to look at it.