What Not to Do in a Bachelor Thesis (Especially If I’m Your Reviewer)

1. Don’t Write Theory That Is Unrelated to Your Hypothesis

This is the most common problem. Many students write 10–15 pages of general theory and past empirical results that are only loosely connected to their research question. Then, suddenly, hypotheses appear out of nowhere.

That’s not how theory work works.

Your research question should be directly linked to the theoretical framework. Theory work means understanding existing ideas and combining them into something new that can be tested. If your theory section does not lead naturally to a testable, interesting hypothesis, you probably did not do real theory work.

If you don’t have a novel idea to test, then perhaps you should not conduct an empirical study at all. A literature review, meta-analysis, or qualitative study might be more appropriate. Yes, I just said qualitative study.

2. Don’t Test Assumptions of Parametric Tests

This drives me crazy.

Students often want to run a simple significance test, like a t-test, but before that they perform multiple additional significance tests just to “prove” they are allowed to run the t-test. I have seen results sections filled with dozens of unnecessary assumption tests.

Stop doing that.

Instead, use resampling or bootstrapping methods, which do not rely on strict assumptions.

3. Never Run Undirected Tests

Please don’t do it.

If you run an undirected test (two-tailed), it usually means you don’t know what you’re doing. If you cannot predict whether an effect should be positive or negative, you likely don’t understand the subject well enough to conduct a meaningful study.

4. Don’t Perform Bad Power Analysis and Then Treat Underpowered Results as Conclusive

If you cannot justify the effect size used in your power analysis, you don’t understand what you are doing. This is a major red flag and usually leads to underpowered research.

Always take into account:

• unbalanced sample sizes in non-experimental designs
  
• potential missing values
  
• participant exclusions
  
• potential dropout or attrition

If your power analysis is weak, don’t pretend your results are “highly powered.”

A small effect (e.g., 0.3) can still be meaningful in a small sample—but I constantly read conclusions like:

“This effect is not statistically significant, so it must be irrelevant.”

No. If your study is underpowered, your results are inconclusive, not meaningless. The flaw is in the planning, not in the data.

5. Do Not Use APA Formatting for the Final Version

This also drives me crazy. APA format is designed for manuscripts, not for final print. Have you ever seen something as visually unappealing as an APA manuscript layout in a published book? No. That’s because the APA manuscript format is meant for editing and review, not for final presentation.

Your final thesis should be formatted in a way that is pleasing to the eye, not awkward. Use APA for citations and references, but format the document itself in a clean, readable style suitable for a finished product.

6. Read the Final Version (Seriously)

Just do it. I know it’s boring, but your thesis will contain many small mistakes—and sometimes not so small—if you don’t proofread.

You’ve read the final version? Then read it again. And again. You will still find errors.

If you haven’t proofread carefully, you’re not done yet.