Masters Dissertation Example

conservation measures than those investigating species biology, but this again was not significant (p=0.08) 
The majority of research papers (72%) took only species/system biology into account, but a 
significantly higher proportion of uptake was reported for those that also incorporated socio-
economic factors (z=2.34,df=461,p=0.02). Although there appears to be significantly lower 
levels of implementation with only socio-economic factors taken into account (fig. 16), the 
sample size (n=10) was not large enough to determine significance.

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Fig 16. The influence of incorporation of socio-economic factors into research upon the implementation of 
findings. There was a significant difference in levels of implementation depending on whether the research 
took into account only species/system biology (Biology), socio-economic factors only (Socio) or both 
biological and socio-economic factors (Both) (X
2
=8.64,df = 2,p=0.01) 
 
4.3.4.2 Threats 
65% of respondents identified habitat loss as the major threat to the study species/system, and 
a further 20% identified human influences or over-exploitation. Habitat loss also was the 
major threat identified in a ranking of the top three threats and over-exploitation was the 
second (fig. 17). All other categories were therefore grouped as ‘other’ for analysis. A higher 
proportion of respondents identifying exploitation and ‘other’ had their findings implemented 
than those who identified habitat loss as the major threat (X
2
=9.03,df = 2,p= 0.01), perhaps 
suggesting that it is more manageable to remove a threat than to address the issues of habitat 
loss. 
Fig 17. Summation of rankings (top threat=3, second threat=2, third threat=1) for the categories identified