Masters Dissertation Example

3.2 Author survey 
An online survey was sent to 1432 authors of species-based papers published in five major 
conservation journals; Animal Conservation, Biodiversity & Conservation, Biological 
Conservation, and Conservation Biology across a 6 year period, 2000-2005.
3.2.1 Survey method 
There are obvious limitations to the method of approaching the topic from the perspective of 
the researchers themselves; such as the issues of author self-reporting, differing perspectives 
on what constitutes ‘implementation’, and bias in terms of response rates towards respondents 
who believe that their work has had an impact. 

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Similar issues, however, are also prevalent approaching it from the institutional side 
(Sutherland et al, 2004; Pullin & Knight, 2005), as practitioners may exaggerate their use of 
research in the same way, and the data collected must necessarily be from only a limited range 
of institutions. Similarly, examining the research that goes into action plans (Boersma et al, 
2001; Harding et al, 2001) involves a certain amount of bias in that an action plan has to have 
been produced for the species in question in the first place, and such plans are largely tools 
used in the developed world or by specialist groups at a larger policy scale, with the level of 
actual implementation unknown (Fuller et al, 2003). These limitations are inherent in 
undertaking any self-reporting based assessment, and largely the reason as to why no study 
has properly contextualized the issue as yet.
Surveying the literature has the advantage of assessing the utility of the peer-reviewed 
literature across a wide range of situations and on a global scale. It also facilitates quantitative 
analysis of the factors facilitating uptake. Ideally, the respondent would provide exact details 
of the claimed implementation, providing information by which each response could be cross 
checked at source. Realistically, this is not possible and the results must naturally be treated 
with a certain amount of caution. Every effort was taken in the design of the survey, however, 
to ensure that responses could be validated (section 3.2.4)