The Navigation Test: Put Your Thesis to a (Stress) Test

If you are reading this article, it is probably time to put your thesis to a navigation test. I am assuming that you have a first readable draft of your thesis where you already implemented the writing rules checklist that I shared with you in a previous article.

A navigation test is important for the following two reasons:

• It is hard to structure writing coherently: It hardly happens at the first attempt. Therefore, a proper assessment of the consistency of the structure of your manuscript can help to identify areas of improvement as well as critically reassess what has been written.
• So far you probably wrote your thesis (following an IMRaD structure) thinking that your reader will read it from the beginning to the end. Also this will happen, it is usually not the first way your reader will approach your masterpiece. Probably he/she will jump around in search of information in order to get a feeling of what you did and only afterwards will decide to read it in a more complete manner.

What I am suggesting is a test that can assess the status of your work from the point of view of the reader and the aspects described before. You can do this navigation test alone but it works better if you are doing it with a friend, maybe with a fellow student that is familiar with your field of study but not with your thesis.

The test is relatively simple but requires you to take notes and keep a humble attitude as you will find unexpected surprises. These are the steps:

1. Meet with a friend that is familiar with your field of study but not with your work.
2. After a drink of their choosing, give him/her your thesis outline (the index that contains the subsections as well). Make sure that each subsection has the pictures and the tables that you would like to have in your final thesis. Alternatively, you can share your entire work but make sure that he/she will not spend more than 10 minutes browsing the document.
3. Tell him/her that you will ask her a few questions and that he/she can use the manuscript for answering. He/she will not have to retrieve the complete answer but tell you to which section(s) he/she will jump to search for more information.
4. Take notes on how they react to the questions and the sections they decide to visit. You should not give any suggestions and you should repeat this process for each question.

Here you can find an initial set of questions:

• What it this thesis about?
• What is the research question?
• Did you collect your own data or use an existing dataset?
• What kind of methodology did you use for validating your research questions?
• How can you reuse my data for your own thesis/research?
• Can this research be considered concluded or is further research needed?
• Who else has done research in a similar topic?

If you have time, you can also ask the following questions:

• What can you learn if you read the thesis?
• How can you get access to my data?
• What code/tool did I use for analyzing my data?
• Does this thesis have industrial relevance?
• Did you do an internship in conjunction of this thesis?
• If someone does not have time to read the whole thesis, can you give this person a short description of it? (Follow up question: If someone already read the executive summary, can you give them a short version of the thesis that is a bit longer than the summary?

Now it is time to check your notes and critically assess (with or without the help of your friend) the following points:

• How easy was it for him/her to find the answers?
• Was the selected section(s) the most appropriate one? Why?
• Does the text of the selected section(s) deliver(s) the answer in a simple and complete manner?
• Do the identified sections live up to other expectations of the reader?

Remember that you are suppose to take the perspective of your friend. They were confronted for the first time with your thesis and this is what they understood.

I am sure that this exercise will give you the opportunity to critically reflect on your work and implement the proper corrective actions. If you have the time, you can repeat the exercise with a different friend.

This article (Put your Thesis to a Test: the Navigation Test) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

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