I evaluated the Master Thesis Instagram Use and Its Effect on Well-Being and Self-Esteem written by Briana Trifiro at the Bryant University.
Level of design
The level of design is quite high, as the author decided to use questionnaires for the method and was able to gather over 400 respondents. This makes the results very credible and supports the thesis.
Degree of innovation
For me, the results and the approach do not really seem new, as there is already a lot of research and knowledge in this area. Nevertheless, it makes sense to survey the user group itself and draw your own conclusions. In this sense, the results still provide added value.
Independence
The thesis was written on the basis of a lot of literature. However, due to the fact that the study was conducted by the author, it also contains a large proportion of independence and new insights gained by the author.
Outline and structure
First, the author gives an insight into the theory and explains all the necessary terms and background information. She then moves on to the method, explains it and how it was carried out and then explains the results. She concludes the thesis with the discussion. This corresponds to the normal structure of a scientific paper and is therefore clearly structured.
Degree of communication
The work is written in a comprehensible English and is easy to read.
Scope of the work
In my opinion, the work is too short and too little detail has been included. The content of the thesis is only 26 pages (with appendices a little more than 40). I would have liked a more detailed insight into the various areas and think that more could have been gained from over 400 questionnaires and more detailed results could have been presented.
Orthography and accuracy
The spelling is correct as far as I have seen. Sometimes a few points are very vague or briefly described, so they are not always completely accurate or well explained.
Literature
The author has used a lot of literature (the list of sources is more than 8 pages long!). Personally, the sources do not seem familiar to me, but the variety of different authors and types of sources is positively striking and speaks for the quality of the work.
