Tips, tools and websites

Methodology and statistics can be an important part of your thesis. Would you like to receive tutoring for any of the methodolody, techniques and statistics courses? Do you need advice on how to perform a statistical analysis with SPSS? Are you getting stuck in the area of methodology and statistics while conducting your undergraduate or graduate research?

The Department of Methodology & Statistics offers additional support in various ways, in addition to the regular education program:

• Tutoring in methods and statistics
• Help with SPSS
• Consultation on research for your bachelor thesis (only available for students of the faculty Social and Behavioral Sciences)

Go to 'Methodology and Statistics' for more information.

LibGuides are created by information specialists and subject specialists at Utrecht University Library to support teaching and research across Utrecht University.

Search strategy

A search strategy is a way to efficiently find the information you need to answer your research question. With a search strategy you work systematically to find relevant information. By doing a targeted search you get targeted results and spend less time reading irrelevant material.

Go to the LibGuide on search strategies.

Evaluating sources

The sources you use when writing a scientific text (such as a thesis, paper etc.) determine the quality of that text for a large part. You will have to evaluate the relevance and scientific quality of found sources before using them. You will find the different methods and tools you can use to do this in this LibGuide.

Go to the LibGuide on evaluating sources.

LibGuides are created by information specialists and subject specialists at Utrecht University Library to support teaching and research across Utrecht University.

Citing: using sources

When writing your own text you will (almost) always make use of the work of others. You may do this in three ways:

• Quoting 
• Paraphrasing
• Summarizing

In each of these cases you must refer to the work of the original author (your 'source'), regardless of where the information comes from; from a scientific journal, a thesis, a conference report or directly from the Internet. If you reuse material without citing the source you are committing plagiarism and that can have serious consequences.

Go to the LibGuide on citation.

Reference Management

Reference management is the systematic collection and organization of concrete sources and/or the bibliographic data ('references') of sources, usually for the purpose of (re)use at a later date. You can use a reference tool for this purpose. Good reference management enables you to work more effectively and efficiently.

Go to the LibGuide on reference management.

Skills Lab has listed some writing tips to get you started. Check out the Skills Lab writing tips.

Utrecht University has received a license for KU Leuven's online Writing Tool!

This tool helps you to look at your work critically. You paste your Dutch or English text in the writing tool and then choose which aspects of the text you want to 'check'. After that, it is up to you to edit your text.

Some of the features of the writing tool:

• Spelling check
• Style (informal language use)
• Structure (signal and reference words)
• Frequently used words

You can request log in details for English texts and for Dutch texts.