Child & Family Psychology Thesis Guide – 2014-2015
Preparing to do a Child and Family Psychology Thesis:
A Guide to choosing a research methods course, thesis topic and
supervisor
A research thesis is an integral part of the Child and Family Psychology masters programme.
Depending on the masters degree you are doing, you will eventually be enrolled in CFPY 690
or 695 (MA and MSc in Child and Family Psychology Theses respectively) or EDEM 691 (MEd
thesis for an approved MEd). Fourth year MA and MSc in Child and Family Psychology, and
approved MEd, students begin their thesis planning through the choice of their 4th year
research methods course. Most research methods courses encourage students to make
progress towards choosing their ultimate research topic.
The approved research methods courses are one of HLTH 462, EDEM 694, EDEM 697, PSYC
460 or PSYC 464 or their equivalents. Your choice of methods course does not commit you
to a method, topic or supervisor but will increase your knowledge and it is certainly ideal if
you have studied the research method you will use for your thesis in this course. In this case
choosing a research methods course depends not so much on the actual topic you will
choose but on the method you will employ to research it. Many students choose a topic
offered by the programme staff (advised end of term 3 in the 4th year). Topics and
supervisors available for 2015 are listed at the end of this guide. If you choose one of these
topics, your supervior will ensure you are supported to carry out the appropriate method
for that study. If you wish to use your own idea for a research topic then it is worth
thinking about method early and using the methods course to advance your preparation
towards your thesis. It is perfectly acceptable to approach potential supervisors to check out
your ideas before finalising your 4th year research methods course. If you have no idea of
the research method you need or wish to study after reading this information sheet then we
recommend that you enrol in HLTH 462 (see timetable information in the next paragraph.
This is a general research methods course and will familiarise you with a number of
research approaches, with the exception of qualitative method.
If you are studying full-time then ideally the course is studied in the second semester of the
4th year. However, this limits your choice so do familiarise yourself with the courses and
their timings well prior to choosing. If you can decide by February it is possible for students
enrolled in 1.25 EFTS in their 4th year, to complete HLTH 462 which allows students to
spread course work across the whole year with some classes in the second semester and
their assessments being submitted later in the year. Alternatively students who plan to
enrol in EDEM 697 will be able to attend class in the first semester and similarly complete
assignments later in the year. Students wishing to follow this course of action should speak
to the course coordinator. Do remember that this decision must be made by February of
your first masters year.
CHILD AND FAMILY PSYCHOLOGY
A 4th year student planning a thesis typically enrols in February of their second masters year
and will need to know topic and supervisor by then. A proposal and ethics application is
completed over the first 2 months and data collection should be underway during the
second term. Submission is one year after your enrolment date. If you have been accepted
into the PgDipChFamPsyc and the research is being completed in the same year as the
limited entry papers then you are urged to begin your thesis over the preceding summer
(end of 1st masters year). You should aim to begin the summer with a topic and supervisor
chosen, as well as knowing what participants you will use. . This may affect your choice of
supervisor as he or she will need to be available to help you plan over this period of time.
Students in the limited entry programme need to draw on your research planning for class
work at the beginning of February. You should have a proposal completed and your ethics
application submitted by February (i.e. prior to the beginning of the first term) when you
enrol. Ideally you need to be gathering data by the end of the first term.
All Child and Family Psychology thesis topics need to be approved by the Coordinator of the
Child and Family Psychology Programme as being relevant to the area of Child and Family
Psychology. A very broad definition of relevance is held. Please refer to the FAQs for a list of
previous research projects to give you some idea of the scope.
How do I enrol? This is a two-component process:
1. Topic approval and getting on the CFPY database:

All CFPY or CFPY approved masters students must fill in the School of Health
Sciences (SHSS) enrolment application form. This applies even if your
supervisor is in another department our you are doing an approved MEd.
 Firstly your supervisor and his/her HOS need to sign
 Then the CFPY Programme Coordinator signs to approve your topic
 Finally HOS SHSS signs and becomes your MA or MSc Head of Studies
 Attach your College enrolment form to it. Admin SHSS or CFPY forwards to
the appropriate College
2. Enrolling with your appropriate College:
 Process varies depending on masters degree and associated College. Detailed
on the College website
 MA in CFPY College of Arts
 MSc in CFPY College of Science
 Approved MEd College of Education (NB your School HOS remains your Head
of Studies but CFPY Prog Coord and SHSS HOS approval means you can claim
equivalence later)
 MA or MSc in Psychology please see Karyn France
Finding a topic or supervisor
Nota Bene: if you have a mind to ever do a PhD, now is a good time to discuss this too. CFPY
students can do a PSYC PhD with a CFPY supervisor. In some cases you can transfer to a PhD
from your masters thesis and include your masters year and its thesis work into the PhD. In
this case plan your masters thesis with your final PhD programme in mind. Please see Assoc
Prof. Karyn France regarding this and talk to your supervisor.
The primary aim for a Masters level research topic is that it is straightforward enough to be
done in the time so you can complete your degree without delays. This means a clear
research question which is able to be operationalised, and access to participants.
Remember that access to participants through your work may create a conflict of interest so
do not talk to agencies until you have discussed the situation with a potential supervisor.
Stay away at this level from topics involving difficult to access or vulnerable participants
such as “sexually abused children” or “children in foster care”, unless you are working on
part of your supervisor’s existing research. Topics such as “the development of children
receiving behaviour support at school” will need to be refined down to clear specific
questions about what kind of development, what kind of support and how you will measure
each. Start by talking to lecturers whose research areas seem to map onto your interests.
Ask if there are ideas or projects you could be involved in. In fact working on an existing
project is an excellent way to do a thesis or a dissertation. Most supervisors are happy to
help you formulate your own ideas but would not be expected to put in a large amount of
work with a student who was going to be supervised by another staff member.
Once you are clear with whom you would like to work, then ask that person if they will work
with you, on that project. If more than one supervisor seems relevant then it is possible to
have two supervisors. You do need to have a primary supervisor though, and that person
will help you coordinate with the other supervisor as required. Usually you will have two
supervisors in case one becomes unavailable. Sometimes the second supervisor stays “in the
wings”, in other cases that supervisor is almost as involved as the primary supervisor. GUIDE
(2013)
If your supervisor is from another College then you will need to have a School of Health
Sciences or other COE supervisor involved for administration purposes. This is standard UOC
practice and your supervisor will work that out for you.
If a supervisor declines to be involved that usually means that the supervisor has already
accepted enough students for the year or that the topic is not as good a match to their
strengths as some other topics. Matching topic, student and supervisor is a delicate art!
Supervisors’ workloads are also monitored by their Heads of School who also have to
approve the arrangement. If there is no suitable supervisor available for your topic, then
you will need to choose a new topic.
The following list of supervisors have indicated that they are currently willing to discuss
supervision of Child and Family Psychology masters students in 2015. This is not an
exhaustive list and if you have interests/needs outside of these areas then please meet with
the Programme Coordinator to discuss who else might be available.
A brief description of their interests is included here followed by a list of specific topic they
would be interested in supervising or facilitating. Further information can be obtained from
staff web-pages.
Neville Blampied (Psychology Department)
Interests: Family psychology, especially social learning processes, behavioural family
interventions (including sleep disturbances, conduct disorder), Family Health Psychology,
Single-case research designs with individuals or groups.
John Everatt (School of Literacies and Arts)
Interests: Cognitive and linguistic aspects of literacy learning and learning disabilities.
Karyn France (Health Sciences Centre)
General Interests:
 development of sleep in infancy and childhood
 child and family interventions,
 emotional and behavioural regulation in children,
 parent behaviour and education.
Topics for 2015:
Karyn is on sabbatical for the first half of 2015. She has three topics that she is able to
supervise in 2015 that are based around the activities in the in the Pukemanu/Dovedale
Centre. These include enhancing motivation in children with enuresis, pathways to enuresis
in younger and older children (may best suit a limited entry PGDipChFamPsyc student), and
sleep interventions with older children.
In addition Karyn can facilitate the the following topics. Please contact her if you are
interested, there are supervisors available: rapid learning (video self-modelling) with
children with severe behaviour problems in schools, knowledge around emotions before
and after a group intervention for children with severe behaviour problems in schools, rapid
learning (video self-modelling) as an intervention with children who are fussy eaters
Myron Friesen (School of Educational Studies and Leadership)
Interests: Social development in both children and adults, family development and
functioning, particularly parent-child relationships, and other interpersonal relationship
research. Have supervised projects together with Garry Hornby on parental involvement in
education, and I am very keen to pursue new research topics on the development of
positive psychological constructs in children such as hope, forgiveness, gratitude, and
generosity. I’m happy to discuss any of these and other possible projects that students
might be interested that are loosely related to these domains.
CHILD AND FAMILY PSYCHOLOGY
Julia Rucklidge (Psychology Department)
Interests: Nutritional interventions (including micronutrients) in the treatment of psychiatric
symptoms; Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan;
Psychological, psychiatric and cognitive factors that contribute to severity of impairment in
ADHD; Mood disorders in children and adolescents; Risk factors contributing to youth
offending. Julia also says: “I prefer to supervise within my specific areas of research interest.
That way, I can be most helpful to graduate students. I encourage students to become
independent thinkers and to develop a thesis that is empirical with the goal that the work
will be publishable. I enjoy self-motivated, thorough and dedicated students. In turn, you can
expect my supervision to be structured and involved. I am prompt with answering questions
and also open to meet with students as the need arises.”
Kathleen Liberty (School of Health Sciences)
Interests: Early intervention, children's learning and health, children with special needs,
Principal Investigator, Children's Learning Study.
Michael Tarren-Sweeney (School of Health Sciences)
Interests: Psychosocial development and well-being of children in alternate care (‘out-of
home care’, ‘looked after children’), and children adopted from care; developmental
psychopathology, with particular focus on attachment- and trauma-related difficulties; child
and family social policy; measurement of mental health and attachment difficulties among
children in care; attachment disorders and the spectrum of attachment difficulties; adult
attachment and parenting capacity; psychological practice in child welfare and alternate
care; ecological formulation in clinical child assessment.
Lawrence Walker (School of Educational Studies and Leadership)
Interests: Instructional processes including ICT, e-Learning (including web design and
Learning Management Systems) and Assistive technology and their effects on the learner
and learning, especially in children and adolescents and how Assistive Technology enables
active participation in learning. I have a strong interest in mental time travel, augmented
reality and video self modelling as ways of achieving rapid learning and effective behaviour
change in individuals.
Some recent and current supervision topics:
1. Potential for using Augmented Reality in Presenting Educational content.
2. Effects of Video Self Modelling as an Intervention for Teenagers with Public Speaking
Anxiety
3. Effects of Feedforward Video Self Modelling on Fluency and Comprehension in School
Aged
Children
4. Effects of Video Technology on Parent Implemented Functional Analysis.
5. Evaluation of the Team-Teach behaviour support training programme in New Zealand
THESIS GUIDE (2013CHILD AND FAMILY PSYCHOLOGY
Gaye Tyler-Merrick (Health Sciences Centre)
Interests: Single case design, applied behaviour analysis, antisocial development, antisocial
behaviour, early intervention, functional behavioural assessment, learning and behaviour
interventions, working with teachers and parents. The following are specific research areas
in which I would consider supervising students:
1. Projects that investigate the development of antisocial behaviour in the home and/or
school/preschool. I am willing to talk about ideas around this topic, basically, the effects of
doing this on that.....
2. There is now in intervention programmes and in health/education a huge emphasis on
'building relationships' (e.g. IY programme and school curriculum/Te Whāriki) but what does
this mean in the 'real world'?. Specifically, what does this look like (in interactions between
parents/teachers and children at home/school/preschool) and what are the outcomes of
'building relationships'?.
3. Functional assessment and interventions based on FBA (in particular use of FBA in home
and school and resulting interventions).
4. My real desire: I really want to do a pilot to replicate Hart and Risley's 1995 work specifically video for 1 hour in the home at dinner time parent/child interactions - analyse
these interactions. Pilot of 4 families (professional middle class, working class and family on
a benefit) once per week for 4/6 weeks and analyses of these interactions. I would
welcome anyone interested in this topic to come and have a chat.
Anna Wilson (School of Educational Studies and Leadership)
Interests: Learning disabilities (dyscalculia, dyslexia, ADHD), numeracy, educational
neuroscience, and educational psychology. I supervise quantitative projects with children or
adults, single cases or group studies. I have expertise/experience in intervention software
design, intervention studies, brain imaging studies, cognitive testing (pencil/paper and
computerised), neuropsychological testing, psychometric testing and statistics (quantitative
research).
Possible projects:
 Clinical casework – cognitive profiling, ABA intervention designs
 Group evaluation of STEPS programme
 Development of NZ maths assessment
 The Number Catcher intervention
 Cognitive profiling using pre-existing data
… many others we can come up with!
Students will need to be independent workers, to be motivated and enthusiastic and
committed to their project. I am flexible and willing to talk with students. The best way to
contact me is by phone.
Kate Reid (Health Sciences Centre)
Research area: supporting bereaved children and adolescents within a hospice palliative
care context. I am interested in research with a particular focus on:
 The impact of cancer diagnosis on the individual their siblings and other family
members
 The support needs of 13-24 year olds who have a parent with cancer or who have
had cancer