For me, it all started with a placement, right after the group had been established. Due to Covid and the lockdown, all meetings and communication took place online at first, which was a bit unfortunate, but as time went by, I got used to this kind of communication and appreciated personal meetings even more as soon as they were possible again. During this time, I got the chance to work with a dataset, which explores the effects of recreational use of blue spaces on behavior and health. Since I hadn’t done much statistical data analysis apart from my mandatory courses at this point, figuring out the analyses and understanding my outputs and results was the biggest challenge for me, but also the skill I developed most. The initial research questions I came up with within this dataset eventually turned into the basis of my thesis, which I’m currently still working on. It has been a great opportunity for me, because I had the chance to work on this data in an international team, which was a very rewarding experience and I’m utterly grateful for the support and help I got from my supervisor and colleagues during all stages of the thesis.
Overall, my personal experience has been very positive and did not only help me to improve my empirical skills, but also helped me to get a better idea of what I’d like to do after finishing my studies. This was not only due to my big personal interest in the topics I’m working on, but also because of the welcoming feel of the group and the lovely and extremely helpful meetings with Mat and Sabine. And of course the bigger meetings with the entire group are a great opportunity to present own ideas and results and to listen to other people’s findings and discussions.
Some tips for getting started with your thesis:
Getting in touch
If you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to work on in your thesis yet, I would highly recommend visiting one of the classes offered first, where you can get an overview over common topics and the methods used in Environmental Psychology. You could also have a look at the recent projects of the group on the website and send a friendly email to the people involved if you’d like to find out more about a certain project. Usually everybody loves to talk about their own research!
But no matter how detailed your ideas for your thesis are at this point, if you’re interested in starting to work on a topic from Environmental Psychology, don’t hesitate to message someone from the group with what you currently have in mind so you can have a talk about your possibilities and you can be registered for the thesis seminar.
Tips/resources for deciding on a topic
Like mentioned before, a good idea to get started would be to visit one of the classes or to have a look at the current projects on the website. I would also highly recommend taking a look into recent papers from relevant journals like the Journal of Environmental Psychology or Environment and Behavior, or skim through textbooks like Environmental Psychology: An Introduction (Steg et al., 2019) and Psychology for Sustainability (Scott et al., 2021). This is a great way to get an overview of recent and relevant topics in the field, to find out what interests you the most and to gain inspiration for your own project!
