Writing a Scientifically Sound Master Thesis for the Ancient Languages and Civilisations

Abstract

This book contains material normally found in at least three separate volumes: research methodology, philosophy of science, and (simple) statistics. They are all compressed into one relatively small volume. All the basics you should know about carrying out scientific research and writing your Master Thesis about it, is presented in this book. The book is especially written for students of the ancient Languages and Cultures. The object is to make them acquainted with basic theory and methods used in social sciences. This should enable them to get more grasp on research that they will be carrying out for their Master Thesis. The author is acquainted with both research practice and the study of ancient Languages and Cultures, as he studied Egyptology after having experience as a scientific researcher in sociology and criminology. He found out that fellow students were not able to get the most out of their Master Thesis research simply because they were not sufficiently thought on the subject. Some students were displaying a slight fear of using mathematics too. That is the reason that this subject is very delicately handled in this publication and examples from their own study are used. The student is guided through the material in a relatively easy way. Although one chapter is devoted to the use of statistical software, this is done only for those who want to master this relatively complicated matter as well. In practice, it is not really necessary because a standard program like Excel allows use of the most basic statistical functions as well.