The bachelor thesis is an independent project where the students must use the knowledge and skills they have acquired during the bachelor's degree. The bachelor thesis must have a clear problem that must be answered in the thesis. Furthermore, students will present findings from the work and discuss the findings with theory. The bachelor thesis is an academic thesis and must either be 1) an empirical thesis with data collection, 2) a theoretical thesis or 3) a project thesis.

1. An empirical thesis

When writing an empirical assignment, the students must use a qualitative or quantitative method to answer the problem statement. Presented below are examples of methods that can be used in a bachelor's thesis.

Anonymous surveys

When using a questionnaire as a method, the student(s) must use a program for questionnaires that do not collect an IP address, for example, a "Nettskjema".
No information may be collected that may link the answers to a person, for example, email addresses or names may not be collected in the questionnaire.

Use of existing data

The student(s) can use existing data as a basis for the analysis, for example, data sets that are generally available.
Bachelor theses can be part of a larger research project and can use data from the research project.

Experiment

For online experiments, the same rules for anonymization apply as described under surveys.

Interview

There are many interview variants. The ones that are best suited for a bachelor project are: structured, semi-structured, or focus groups.
Structured interviews can be conducted "face to face". It is also possible to conduct structured interviews electronically and anonymously via Nettskjema. When using structured interviews, at least 10 interviews are expected.
When using semi-structured interviews as a method, between 5-10 interviews are normally expected, but fewer respondents (3-4) may be sufficient in some cases, for example when using expert interviews.
When using focus groups, at least 2 focus groups with 5-10 participants per focus group are recommended.

Observation

If the observation is of a comprehensive nature, it can be used as the main method, but in many cases, it will be natural to combine observation with another method.

Text/document/content analysis

Text/document/content analysis as a method involves analyzing relevant texts and/or documents. It can be texts taken from social media, websites, annual reports, newspaper articles, or similar.
Text/document/content analysis can be quantitative (approx. 100 analysis units recommended) or qualitative (approx. 8-10 analysis units recommended).

Method triangulation

It is possible to use several methods, such as a combination of interview and text analysis. If the student(s) does not obtain a sufficient number of interview objects, this can, for example, be compensated for by including additional text analysis.

2. Theoretical thesis

The student(s) can write a theoretical assignment in which an issue is analyzed based on current academic literature in the field.
A theoretical thesis should discuss a minimum of 10 research articles.
When completing a theoretical assignment, students are not expected to collect other empirical data, but a structured analysis and discussion of the findings in the relevant research articles must be carried out.

3. A project thesis

A project assignment implies that the students carry out practical work that will be of benefit to a company/organization.
A project thesis can for example be to develop a strategy, marketing plan, business model/plan, sales strategy, communication plan/strategy, or similar.
The thesis must be based on current academic literature in the field and obtain empirical data (both primary and secondary data).
The thesis must have a discussion section that discusses the recommendations in the thesis based on literature in the field.

The scope of the bachelor thesis is 8000-12000 words, +/- 10%. This applies to all types (empirical, theoretical, and project thesis).

Tables, appendices and reference lists are exempt from word count. Tables are entered in text format in Word and should not be pasted as a screenshot. Figures can be entered in image format.

Subject description BPG3100

Bachelor's Thesis

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