Community & Regional Planning

School of Architecture, UT Austin

PR/Thesis Workshop

1.  PR vs. Thesis options

2.  Tips for PR/Thesis proposal
3.  Q&A
 PR vs. Thesis Option
Two options for a final project to earn MSCRP:

•  Internship (CRP 397) + Professional Report

(CRP 398R)

•  Masters Thesis
(CRP 698A Thesis Research + CRP 698B
Thesis Writing)
 PR/Thesis in MSCRP Curriculum

Year 1, Fall Year 1, Spring

CRP 980X (Mueller)
Planning Theory & Practice
(Planning History and Theory)
CRP 381 (Rawlins)
Planning Law
CRP 386 (Kahn)
Quantitative Methods
Elective
CRP 386 (Paterson)
Plans and Plan-making
CRP 980Y (Zhang)
Planning Theory & Practice
(Regional Analysis Methods)
CRP 381 (Wilson)
Participatory Methods
Elective

18 Credit Hours of Core Courses

6 Credit Hours of Electives
Year 2, Fall Year 2, Spring
CRP 980Z (Lee) Elective
Planning Theory & Practice
(Physical Planning Workshop)
CRP 381 (Oden) Elective
Financing Public Services
CRP 397 (Zhang) CRP 398R
Planning Internship Report Master’s Professional Report (PR)
or or
CRP 698A CRP 698B
Thesis Research Thesis Writing
Elective Elective

6 Credit Hours of Core Courses

12 Credit Hours of Electives
6 Credit Hours of Internship-PR or Thesis
Internship done in summer or fall and credits earned in the semester
when you are registered
Internship (CRP 397) Requirement
http://soa.utexas.edu/crp/internships

•  Required for PR option

•  An internship is any planning-related job, paid or

unpaid, that involves 300 or more hours of work and
that promises some professional development
benefits.
Internship Requirement (con’t)
•  Paper work (submit to Rosemin)

•  A letter from your employer that states that he/she understands

that you are earning credit for your work and that gives a brief
description of the kind of work you will be doing.

•  An Internship Report: By the end of the semester registered for

internship, submit either:

•  A 10-page, double-spaced report that describes your

experience, your work and what you learned; or

•  A copy of a report/publication or project that is mainly your

work along with a 2-3 page report that describes your
contribution to submitted work product.
Thesis Research (CRP 698A) Requirement
•  Thesis proposal approved by your thesis
committee

•  Sign up for 698A

Deliverables: work out between you and your
committee
PR/Thesis Proposal Deadlines

•  Proposal Approval (The Purple Form)

–  PR proposal: One semester in advance
–  Thesis proposal: Two semesters in advance

•  PR/Thesis Drafts: The last class day of the

semester registered for graduation
PR/Thesis Deadlines
 Work with your PR/Thesis Committee
1.  Identify a topic, conduct initial research and
produce a proposal draft

2.  Identify two or more committee members (readers).

The first reader must be a CRP faculty (CRP GSC
member)

3.  Complete a 7-10 page full proposal approved by

your readers and submit the approved proposal by
the PR or Thesis Proposal deadline

4.  Complete PR/Thesis writing and submit PR/Thesis

final draft to the Graduate School by the deadlines
PR/Thesis Format/Template Requirements
OGS requires specific format for your PR/Thesis. Meeting format
requirements involves three steps:

1. Review the
Format Guidelines for the Master's Thesis and Report The
manual discusses the arrangement of your thesis or PR,
copyright information, and includes front and back matter
sample documents.

2. Review the ITS Template User Guide and use the

ITS thesis template

Pre-formatted THESIS template (not dissertation) that contains

predefined styles.

3. Obtain formal format approval from an OGS Master's Degree

Evaluator
 Tips for PR/Thesis Proposal
Five W’s for a research proposal

•  What is your research about? (research question)

•  Why is it important or interesting (to whom)?

•  What have other people said (found) on your topic

(lit. review)?

•  How will you conduct the proposed research

(method – data and ways to obtain the data,
analytical techniques, et al)

•  When will you carry out the planned research

activities?
What is your research question?
Moving from Interest to Topic to Problem to Question

•  Identify a topic from the area of your research

interests

•  Asking a question about the phenomenon you

observed in practice or in literature

•  Speculate some answers to the question in

hypothetical conditions

•  Ask more questions

•  …
Different Nature of Research Different Kinds of
Questions

•  Interpretative
•  Descriptive
•  Exploratory
•  Explanatory
•  Predictive

•  Nature of research strongly tied with method

of research
Interpretative
•  What’s been done and understood?
•  Review
•  Meta-study: Study of studies
Descriptive
•  Precise measurement and reporting of the
characteristics of the population or
phenomenon
•  What is the case?
•  What is the nature of the relationship?

•  E.g., What is the level of job accessibility of the

low-income, ethnic minority population in the
Austin, TX area?
Exploratory
•  To develop an initial, rough understanding of a
phenomenon
•  What is out there?
•  Open-ended

•  E.g., Attitude of local communities to high-

speed rail development in Texas
Explanatory
•  Why “Is x the case?” or
•  Why “Is x the relationship?”

•  E.g., What factors affect the level of job

accessibility of the low-income, ethnic minority
population in the Austin, TX area?
Predictive
•  Forecasts: population, traffic, tax income
How to identify a research topic and define
a research question

•  Start from theory and test/verify it in a particular

situation.
–  Apply Alonso’s theory to study Austin’s urban
spatial structure

•  Address unresolved issues in the field.

–  Land use/transportation impacts: chicken-&-
egg
–  Road pricing policy is not working in most
places in the world. Why?
How to identify a research topic and define
a research question
•  Evaluate a policy or action.
–  Proposal for a bus rapid transit line along
Guatalupe
–  Impacts of fare increase proposed by CapMetro

•  Identify knowledge gap in the field.

–  Trends of inter-city travel in mega-regions
–  The extent to which rail transit affect land values
along the Redline in Austin, …
Refine your question by…
Presenting and elaborating on your initial
research question in different formats:
•  In question format, a sentence ending with a
question mark,”?”.

•  In purpose statement format:

“The purpose of this research is …”

•  In hypothesis format: Hypo 1; Hypo 2, ..

•  In equation format: y=a + bx + cz

Exercise (by yourself)

•  What is your research question?

•  What type of question it is (one of the above
four or others)?
•  Can you describe your question in 1-2
sentences?
•  Can you express your question in various
format mentioned before?
Formulate Research Questions:
How to do literature review
General Remarks
•  Research begins with a problem/question

•  Most find the writing of a literature review

a difficult task that takes patience,
practice, drafts, and redrafts

•  Reviewing the Literature vs. ‘The

Literature Review’

•  Be critical but objective

Reasons for reviewing the
literature
•  Informing yourself of what is happening in the field

•  Gaining a level of topical and methodological

knowledge and expertise

•  Finding potential gaps in the literature that may

point to potential research questions

•  Critically evaluating common/typical methods

•  Facilitating the development of your own

methodological approaches
 Purposes of the ‘literature
review’
•  Informing your audience of what is happening in the field

•  Establishing your credibility as a knowledgeable and

capable researcher

•  Arguing the relevance and the significance of your

research questions

•  Providing the context for your own methodological

approach

•  Arguing the relevance and appropriateness of your

approach
Questions your literature
review should answer
1.  What do we already know in the immediate area
concerned?

2.  What are the key concepts or the main factors or

variables?

3.  What are the relationships between these key

concepts, factors or variables?

4.  What are the existing theories? Generative basis?

Empirical support?

5.  Where are the inconsistencies or other

shortcomings in our knowledge and
understanding?
Questions your literature
review should answer
6. What views need to be (further) tested?

7. What evidence is lacking, inconclusive,

contradictory or too limited?

8. Why study (further) the research problem?

9. What contribution can the present study be

expected to make?

10. What research designs or methods seem

unsatisfactory?
Ask yourself questions like these about
each article you review
•  Has the author formulated a problem/
issue?

•  Is its significance (scope, severity,

relevance) clearly established?

•  Has the author evaluated the literature

relevant to the problem/issue?

•  Does the author include literature taking

positions she or he does not agree with? Is
it balanced and objective?
 Ask yourself questions like these about
each article you review
•  What is the author's theoretical framework?
Empirical evidence to test theory adequate and
appropriate for research question?

•  Could the problem have been approached more

effectively from another perspective? Are methods
and results plausible? Or problematic?

•  What are the key findings? Measures? Future

Research?

•  How does this book or article relate to the specific

thesis or question I am developing?
Some tips about conducting the
literature review
•  Concentrate your efforts on the scientific
literature. Try to determine what the most
credible research journals are in your topical
area and start with those.

•  Put the greatest emphasis on research

journals that use a double blind review.

•  Do the review early in the research process.

You are likely to learn a lot in the literature
review that will help you in making the
tradeoffs you'll need to face.
Some tips about conducting
the literature review
•  Do look at dissertations in your topic area,
they did lit reviews as well. Learn by
example….

•  Write with objective language…. you are to

critically synthesize and evaluate the
literature according to the guiding concept of
your research question.

•  Annotate, annotate, annotate….

•  This is a time investment for a program of

research for the rest of your life!!!
Ming’s Literature Review
Template
For each article/book, take notes on the following:
1.  Citation: article title, author, publication
year, journal, etc.
2.  Main topic, research questions
3.  Analytical framework and methodology
4.  Main results and findings
5.  Comments (strength and weakness of the
study)
Another Literature Review
Template
Decompose each article into three parts:
–  Theory/framework
–  Method/Data
–  Findings
Decompose each article into 3
parts: #1
•  Theory/framework
Decompose each article into 3
parts: #2
•  Method/Data
Decompose each article into 3
parts: #3
•  Results/Findings
Murphy's Laws of Research (1)

  1st Law of the Research Question : If you have

finalized your research question, you don't
understand the literature.

  2nd Law of the Research Question : Only when

you have clarified your research question will
you discover a large body of conflicting findings.

  3rd Law of the Research Question : Your study

will only make sense as long as your research
question is hazy.
Murphy's Laws of Research (2)

  Law of Inverse Self-Reward : The more you enjoy your

research, the less data there is to support it.

  Fallacy of the Library Researcher : Somewhere there is a

reference (the "Ultimate Reference") which will give you
a stunningly brilliant opening and conclusion, tie your
materials together and give you the premise for your first
book. ( The search for this kind of thing has delayed
dissertations for years, and forced advisers to threaten
the student with bodily harm if the search is not
abandoned.)
Murphy's Laws of Research (3)

  1st Law of Research : If you think of something new, it's

been done.

  2nd Law of Research : If you think something is

important, no one else will.

  3rd Law of Research : If you throw it away, someone

else will publish it, obtain a grant, write a book, and get
on the Oprah Winfrey show.
 Murphy's Laws of Research (4)

  1st Law of Theory : No theory will answer the important

questions. Corollary : All theories are irrelevant.

  2nd Law of Theory : All theories seem workable in

conversations.

  Law of Importance : When you think you have discovered

the real problem, you have not.
  Corollary : When you are sure it is not important, it is

  Law of Remaining Time : If there is a significant

breakthrough, it will occur when your adviser is out of the
country.
  Corollary : When your adviser is available, you will be
mired in confusion.
Q&A