what justifies this thesis as a doctorate

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

How to Justify Your Methods in a Thesis or Dissertation

4-minute read

• 1st May 2023

Writing a thesis or dissertation is hard work. You’ve devoted countless hours to your research, and you want your results to be taken seriously. But how does your professor or evaluating committee know that they can trust your results? You convince them by justifying your research methods.

What Does Justifying Your Methods Mean?

In simple terms, your methods are the tools you use to obtain your data, and the justification (which is also called the methodology ) is the analysis of those tools. In your justification, your goal is to demonstrate that your research is both rigorously conducted and replicable so your audience recognizes that your results are legitimate.

The formatting and structure of your justification will depend on your field of study and your institution’s requirements, but below, we’ve provided questions to ask yourself as you outline your justification.

Why Did You Choose Your Method of Gathering Data?

Does your study rely on quantitative data, qualitative data, or both? Certain types of data work better for certain studies. How did you choose to gather that data? Evaluate your approach to collecting data in light of your research question. Did you consider any alternative approaches? If so, why did you decide not to use them? Highlight the pros and cons of various possible methods if necessary. Research results aren’t valid unless the data are valid, so you have to convince your reader that they are.

How Did You Evaluate Your Data?

Collecting your data was only the first part of your study. Once you had them, how did you use them? Do your results involve cross-referencing? If so, how was this accomplished? Which statistical analyses did you run, and why did you choose them? Are they common in your field? How did you make sure your data were statistically significant ? Is your effect size small, medium, or large? Numbers don’t always lend themselves to an obvious outcome. Here, you want to provide a clear link between the Methods and Results sections of your paper.

Did You Use Any Unconventional Approaches in Your Study?

Most fields have standard approaches to the research they use, but these approaches don’t work for every project. Did you use methods that other fields normally use, or did you need to come up with a different way of obtaining your data? Your reader will look at unconventional approaches with a more critical eye. Acknowledge the limitations of your method, but explain why the strengths of the method outweigh those limitations.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

What Relevant Sources Can You Cite?

You can strengthen your justification by referencing existing research in your field. Citing these references can demonstrate that you’ve followed established practices for your type of research. Or you can discuss how you decided on your approach by evaluating other studies. Highlight the use of established techniques, tools, and measurements in your study. If you used an unconventional approach, justify it by providing evidence of a gap in the existing literature.

Two Final Tips:

●  When you’re writing your justification, write for your audience. Your purpose here is to provide more than a technical list of details and procedures. This section should focus more on the why and less on the how .

●  Consider your methodology as you’re conducting your research. Take thorough notes as you work to make sure you capture all the necessary details correctly. Eliminating any possible confusion or ambiguity will go a long way toward helping your justification.

In Conclusion:

Your goal in writing your justification is to explain not only the decisions you made but also the reasoning behind those decisions. It should be overwhelmingly clear to your audience that your study used the best possible methods to answer your research question. Properly justifying your methods will let your audience know that your research was effective and its results are valid.

Want more writing tips? Check out Proofed’s Writing Tips and Academic Writing Tips blogs. And once you’ve written your thesis or dissertation, consider sending it to us. Our editors will be happy to check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation to make sure your document is the best it can be. Check out our services for free .

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

9-minute read

How to Use Infographics to Boost Your Presentation

Is your content getting noticed? Capturing and maintaining an audience’s attention is a challenge when...

8-minute read

Why Interactive PDFs Are Better for Engagement

Are you looking to enhance engagement and captivate your audience through your professional documents? Interactive...

7-minute read

Seven Key Strategies for Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is rapidly shaping the digital landscape, requiring content professionals to adapt their...

Five Creative Ways to Showcase Your Digital Portfolio

Are you a creative freelancer looking to make a lasting impression on potential clients or...

How to Ace Slack Messaging for Contractors and Freelancers

Effective professional communication is an important skill for contractors and freelancers navigating remote work environments....

3-minute read

How to Insert a Text Box in a Google Doc

Google Docs is a powerful collaborative tool, and mastering its features can significantly enhance your...

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Structure and criteria of doctoral theses

The instruction belongs to the following themes.

• Doctoral thesis requirements
• Plan your doctoral studies

Search for degree programme

Open university programmes.

• Open university Flag this item

Bachelor's Programmes

• Bachelor's Programme for Teachers of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Agricultural Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Applied Psychology Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Art Studies Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Biology Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Chemistry Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Computer Science (TKT) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Cultural Studies Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Economics Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Class Teacher (KLU, in Swedish) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Class Teacher, Education (LO-KT) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Class Teacher, Educational Psychology (LO-KP) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Craft Teacher Education (KÄ) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Early Education Teacher (SBP) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Early Education Teacher (VO) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: General and Adult Education (PED, in Swedish) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: General and Adult Education (YL and AKT) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Home Economics Teacher (KO) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Education: Special Education (EP) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Environmental and Food Economics Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Environmental Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Food Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Forest Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Geography Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Geosciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in History Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Languages Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Law Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Logopedics Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Mathematical Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Molecular Biosciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Pharmacy Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Philosophy Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Physical Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Politics, Media and Communication Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Psychology Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Science (BSC) Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Social Research Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Social Sciences Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Society and Change Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in the Languages and Literatures of Finland Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Theology and Religious Studies Flag this item
• Bachelor's Programme in Veterinary Medicine Flag this item

Master's and Licentiate's Programmes

• Degree Programme in Dentistry Flag this item
• Degree Programme in Medicine Flag this item
• Degree Programme in Veterinary Medicine Flag this item
• International Masters in Economy, State & Society   Flag this item
• Master ́s Programme in Development of health care services Flag this item
• Master's Programme for Teachers of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Agricultural Sciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Agricultural, Environmental and Resource Economics Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Area and Cultural Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Art Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Atmospheric Sciences (ATM) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Changing Education Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Chemistry and Molecular Sciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Computer Science (CSM) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Contemporary Societies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Cultural Heritage Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Culture and Communication (in Swedish) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Data Science Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Economics Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Class Teacher (KLU, in Swedish) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Class Teacher, Education (LO-KT) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Class Teacher, Educational Psychology (LO-KP) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Craft Teacher Education (KÄ) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Early Education (VAKA) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: General and Adult Education (PED, in Swedish) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: General and Adult Education (YL and AKT) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Home Economics Teacher (KO) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Education: Special Education (EP) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in English Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Environmental Change and Global Sustainability Flag this item
• Master's Programme in European and Nordic Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Finnish and Finno-Ugrian Languages and Cultures Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Food Economy and Consumption Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Food Sciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Forest Sciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Gender Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Genetics and Molecular Biosciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Geography Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Geology and Geophysics Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Global Politics and Communication Flag this item
• Master's Programme in History Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Human Nutrition and Food-Related Behaviour Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Integrative Plant Sciences Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Intercultural Encounters Flag this item
• Master's Programme in International Business Law Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Languages Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Law Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Life Science Informatics (LSI) Flag this item
• Master's programme in Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Literary Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Logopedics Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Materials Research (MATRES) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Mathematics and Statistics (MAST) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Neuroscience Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Particle Physics and Astrophysical Sciences (PARAS) Flag this item
• Master's programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Pharmacy Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Philosophy Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Politics, Media and Communication Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Psychology Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Scandinavian Languages and Literature Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Social and Health Research and Management Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Social Research Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Social Sciences (in Swedish) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Society and Change Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Theology and Religious Studies Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Theoretical and Computational Methods (TCM) Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Translation and Interpreting Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Translational Medicine Flag this item
• Master's Programme in Urban Studies and Planning (USP) Flag this item
• Master’s Programme in Global Governance Law Flag this item
• Nordic Master Programme in Environmental Changes at Higher Latitudes (ENCHIL) Flag this item

Doctoral Programmes

• Doctoral Programme Brain and Mind Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Atmospheric Sciences (ATM-DP) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Biomedicine (DPBM) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (CHEMS) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Clinical Research (KLTO) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Clinical Veterinary Medicine (CVM) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Cognition, Learning, Instruction and Communication (CLIC) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Computer Science (DoCS) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Drug Research (DPDR) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Economics Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Food Chain and Health Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Gender, Culture and Society (SKY) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Geosciences (GeoDoc) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Human Behaviour (DPHuB) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Integrative Life Science (ILS) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences (DENVI) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Language Studies (HELSLANG) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Law Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Materials Research and Nanoscience (MATRENA) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Mathematics and Statistics (Domast) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Microbiology and Biotechnology Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Oral Sciences (FINDOS) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Particle Physics and Universe Sciences (PAPU) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts and Society Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Plant Sciences (DPPS) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Changes (PYAM) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Population Health (DOCPOP) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in School, Education, Society and Culture Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE) Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Theology and Religious Studies Flag this item
• Doctoral Programme in Wildlife Biology (LUOVA) Flag this item

Specialist training programmes

• Multidisciplinary studies for class teachers (teaching in Finnish) Flag this item
• Multidisciplinary studies for class teachers (teaching in Swedish) Flag this item
• Non-degree studies for special education teachers (ELO) Flag this item
• Non-degree studies for special education teachers (LEO) Flag this item
• Non-degree studies for special education teachers (VEO) Flag this item
• Non-degree studies in subject teacher education Flag this item
• Spe­cific Train­ing in Gen­eral Med­ical Prac­tice Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Clinical Mental Health Psychology Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Neuropsychology Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Environmental Health and Food Control (old) Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Equine Medicine (old) Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Food Production Hygiene Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Infectious Animal Diseases (new) Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Production Animal Medicine (old) Flag this item
• Specialisation Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Small Animal Medicine (old) Flag this item
• Specialisation Studies in Community and Hospital Pharmacy (for B.Sc.Pharm.) Flag this item
• Specialisation Studies in Community and Hospital Pharmacy (for M.Sc.Pharm.) Flag this item
• Specialisation Studies in Industrial Pharmacy (for B.Sc.Pharm.) Flag this item
• Specialisation Studies in Industrial Pharmacy (for M.Sc.Pharm.) Flag this item
• Specialist Training in Dentistry Flag this item
• Specialist Training in Hospital Chemistry Flag this item
• Specialist Training in Hospital Microbiology Flag this item
• Specialist Training in Medicine, 5-year training Flag this item
• Specialist Training in Medicine, 6-year training Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Environmental Health and Food Control Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Equine Medicine (new) Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, general veterinary medicine Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Infectious Animal Diseases (new) Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Production Animal Medicine (new) Flag this item
• Specialist's Programme in Veterinary Medicine, Small Animal Medicine (new) Flag this item
• Trainer Training Programme in Integrative Psychotherapy Flag this item
• Training Programme for Psychotherapists Flag this item

The doctoral dissertation and related research are the most significant and extensive part of a doctoral degree. The University of Helsinki does not measure dissertations in credits, but their scope has been calculated to correspond to approximately 200 credits. A doctoral dissertation is a consistent scholarly work based on independent research that makes an original contribution to scientific knowledge. It can be a monograph or based on articles. In the natural sciences, dissertations are typically based on articles. The humanities and social sciences have traditionally preferred monographs, although the number of article-based dissertations is continuously increasing in these domains, with most dissertations already being article-based in such fields as the educational sciences.

On this page

General dissertation criteria.

Article-based dissertations consist of several peer-reviewed scholarly publications or manuscripts accepted for publication as well as a summarising report on them. A monograph dissertation is a scholarly work on a single topic issued under the name of the author alone and based on previously unpublished research results. In exceptional cases, a doctoral dissertation may also take another form, provided it meets the appropriate scholarly criteria and the doctoral candidate’s independent contribution to it can be verified.

Regardless of the chosen format, the dissertation must always make an original contribution to scientific knowledge. The dissertation should demonstrate the doctoral candidate’s critical thinking skills and profound familiarity with the topic as well as his or her knowledge of key research methods in the field and competence in their application. The research results presented in the dissertation must be justified, scientifically convincing and sustainable in terms of research ethics. Faculties assess dissertations on consistent criteria that are announced in advance. You and your supervisors should acquaint yourselves with the criteria at the outset of your dissertation work.

The topic of your dissertation should be clearly defined so that you are not overwhelmed by an excessive workload. Remember that the dissertation is just the first step on your career path as a researcher and should not take you forever to complete. You and your supervisor should together limit the topic and content of the dissertation in such a way that you can complete the dissertation and the doctoral degree in approximately four years of full-time study.

A completed dissertation always includes a one- or two-page abstract outlining the objectives or research questions of the dissertation, as well as the key research methods, results and conclusions.

Article-based dissertations

Article-based dissertations consist of scholarly publications focusing on the same research problem as well as a summarising report.

The summarising report is the core of an article-based dissertation: it must present the background, objectives, methods, material, results, discussion and conclusions of the research. It must be a balanced work based on both the publications included in the dissertation and the research literature. Its recommended length varies by faculty, so read your faculty’s instructions before writing the report. For practical tips on how to write a good summarising report, we recommend for example this blog post by researchers from Tampere University .

As a rule, the publications included in an article-based dissertation must have been published or approved for publication. However, article-based dissertations can also contain articles that have not yet been accepted for publication. In such cases, the preliminary examiners will pay particular attention to articles that have not yet been peer-reviewed. A typical article-based dissertation includes a summarising report and three to five scholarly articles. The number of articles required depends on their scope, scientific quality and significance, and publishing forum as well as the author’s independent contribution to any co-authored articles included in the dissertation. Read your faculty’s instructions for article-based dissertations, including the sections relevant to the above, at the outset of your dissertation work.

Article-based dissertations can include co-authored publications – indeed, such articles are the rule rather than the exception in some disciplines. However, if your dissertation includes co-authored articles, you must be able to clearly demonstrate your contribution to them. You and your supervisor must together write an informal report on your contribution to each co-authored article. You are strongly recommended (and in some faculties, required) to have the report approved by the other authors of the articles in question.

The recommended scope of a monograph is 250 pages, excluding appendices. Monographs must be previously unpublished, but doctoral researchers writing a monograph need not keep their findings under lock and key until the public examination. While working on their monograph, doctoral researchers can publish articles related to the dissertation topic and then refer to them in the completed dissertation using common referencing practices.

Other types of dissertations

Some faculties accept dissertations that differ from the format of a monograph or an article-based dissertation, provided the work otherwise meets the scholarly criteria set for dissertations. Decisions on the scope and structure of such dissertations are made by the faculty council of the relevant faculty at the proposal of a doctoral programme. As a rule, however, all dissertations must be monographs or article-based, and the acceptance of other types of dissertations is exceedingly rare at the University of Helsinki.

Faculty-specific grading criteria and additional requirements for article-based dissertations

The faculty-specific criteria for evaluating doctoral theses and the possible additional requirements placed on article-based dissertations are available on your home faculty’s external website, in the instructions aimed at the examiners of doctoral theses. Getting acquainted with the instructions aimed at the examiners is a recommendable idea in general, as it will give you a good idea of how your final doctoral thesis will be evaluated. However, do not forget that reading only the instructions aimed at the examiners is not enough – when you are ready to submit your doctoral thesis for preliminary examination, do not forget to read the instructions aimed at doctoral researchers about to get started with the examination process of their doctoral thesis. All those instructions are available elsewhere on this site.

• Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences
• Faculty of Pharmacy
• Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
• Faculty of Arts
• Faculty of Educational Sciences
• Faculty of Medicine
• Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry
• Faculty of Science
• Faculty of Law
• Faculty of Theology
• Faculty of Social Sciences

Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident Due to planned maintenance there will be periods of time where the website may be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper
• > Ph.D. and other doctoral theses

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Basic rules of writing
• 2 Comments on scientific language
• 3 Drafting the manuscript
• 4 Choosing a journal
• 5 Preparing a graph
• 7 Figure legends
• 8 How to design tables
• 11 Abstract
• 12 Introduction
• 15 Discussion
• 16 Acknowledgments
• 17 References
• 18 Ph.D. and other doctoral theses
• 19 Letters and case reports
• 21 Abbreviations
• 22 How to present statistical results
• 24 Dealing with editors and referees
• 25 Correcting proofs
• 26 Authors‘ responsibilities
• Literature needed on your desk
• Further reading
• Literature cited

18 - Ph.D. and other doctoral theses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

The Ph.D. (Philosophiae Doctor) is the highest university degree. It is acquired after writing a doctoral thesis (or dissertation) and defending it at an oral examination.

There are almost no generally accepted rules for thesis preparation. The structure varies from country to country, “from institution to institution and even from professor to professor in the same department of the same institution” (Day and Gastel 2006).

However, theses are of two kinds: monographs and compilations of articles. Monographs are the most common form, especially in the humanities, theology, and law. But compilations are increasingly used in medicine, technology, and the natural sciences.

Compilations: the theses of the future

Compilations are based on articles that have “been scrutinized by international peer review, probably more prestigious than local committees” (Carling 2006). They are recognized in Argentina, Australia, India, Japan, the United States, and in such European countries as the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden; they are permitted in the United Kingdom, but are not common there (Burrough-Boenisch 2006).

Compilations are of two types. In one, the reprinted articles are sandwiched between introductory and concluding chapters. In the other, the reprinted articles are appended to a summary of their contents. In both types, the articles are published or publishable in refereed journals and often have several authors, with the doctoral student as first author of most of them. The subject of this chapter is the type of compilation that includes a summary; for lack of an official name, I propose to call that summary a thesis overview.

Access options

Save book to kindle.

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service .

• Ph.D. and other doctoral theses
• Björn Gustavii
• Book: How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper
• Online publication: 05 June 2012
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808272.019

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools

• Log in/Register Register

https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/doing-a-doctorate/completing-your-doctorate/writing-and-submitting-your-doctoral-thesis/writing-as-you-go

This page has been reproduced from the Vitae website (www.vitae.ac.uk). Vitae is dedicated to realising the potential of researchers through transforming their professional and career development.

• Vitae members' area

Writing your thesis as you go

Why write as you go.

Writing is part of the process of research and analysis rather than something to do once your research is finished. It can be tempting to leave your writing until the end of the doctorate, but be wary of doing this as:

• writing is a skill that needs to be practised. The more you write the easier it will become
• writing helps you to think through what you are doing and forces you to analyse and make connections
• a doctoral thesis is a long document and better tackled in small chunks.

Try to get into the habit of writing from the start of your research. For example, summarise research articles you read and produce some written material for meetings with your supervisor.

What can you write?

Try to set aside time for writing and consider whether anything you are doing could be written up. Typically it is possible to write the following well before you get to the end of your research:

• Research proposals
• Literature survey
• Reports analysing data and detailing pilot studies
• Reports for your supervisor
• A personal journal or laboratory notebook
• Methodology chapters
• Early drafts of other chapters.

Much of this writing will be useful when you come to put your thesis together. You may need to restructure and rewrite, but rewriting is easier than starting from a blank page.

Keeping track of your writing

Below are tips for making your early writing useful for you final thesis:

• Start thinking about your thesis structure
• Develop a filing system to keep track of relevant results and relevant bits of writing for each chapter
• Keep track of your references and your associated notes, ideally by using a reference manager
• Back up your work regularly
• Copy key parts of manual records, logbooks or diaries, ideally by creating a digital backup

Bookmark & Share

Five tips for writing your PhD thesis

A PhD is a unique experience, filled with exciting and unpredictable challenges. One of the most noteworthy is the PhD thesis, where you compile your research and arguments into one extensive document. Sounds overwhelming? It needn’t be. Here are five tips to help you hit the ground running.

Be ruthless

No writer strikes gold upon their first draft – the secret is to edit, edit and edit again. Be proactive and work with your supervisor to devise your thesis’ structure. Don’t feel you have to write in chronological order – work on each chapter while it is fresh in your mind. Look objectively when you edit your work. Furthermore, be ruthless. Take a step back and assess your writing as if you’re reading someone else’s.

Be on the ball

Don’t leave everything until the last minute. Write up your methods in the style of a thesis as you go along. Continually update your literature review with new and relevant information. Manage your bibliography from day one. If you start as you mean to go on, PhD life will be a lot less stressful.

Be consistent

Sometimes, you can have so many references to cite that you can get muddled. All references need to be crosschecked with your bibliography before submission, so it’s important that you get it right. Manage your bibliography from day one and it’ll save you save a great deal of time and stress.

It’s important you maintain originality throughout your work. If you’re using quotes, ensure they’re accurate and paraphrase them where necessary. The last thing you want before attending your viva is to be pulled up for plagiarism.

The viva is one of the scariest parts of the PhD process. Therefore, it’s important you know what you’re talking about. Ensure you aware of exactly what you’ve done and why you’ve done it, as well as what possibly didn’t work and how you overcame it. Furthermore, think about your audience. Don’t waffle on for the sake of the word count. Keep it concise and cut out anything superfluous.

Life after a PhD

10 tips for working from home during your research degree

Five tips on becoming a more productive writer

Top Tips from PhD Graduates

The Brilliant way to gain teaching experience during your PhD

Thinking about a PhD?

Take a look at our PhD courses and become an expert in your field.

View courses

Recent searches

We won't record your recent searches as you have opted out of functional cookies. You can change this on our Manage Privacy page should you wish to.

Popular searches

• Postgraduate Guide
• Student Finance
• Accommodation

Suggested searches

• Life in Birmingham
• Look at Me Now
• Graduate Scholarship

How To Write A Dissertation Or Thesis

8 straightforward steps to craft an a-grade dissertation.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Expert Reviewed By: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | June 2020

Writing a dissertation or thesis is not a simple task. It takes time, energy and a lot of will power to get you across the finish line. It’s not easy – but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a painful process. If you understand the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis, your research journey will be a lot smoother.  

In this post, I’m going to outline the big-picture process of how to write a high-quality dissertation or thesis, without losing your mind along the way. If you’re just starting your research, this post is perfect for you. Alternatively, if you’ve already submitted your proposal, this article which covers how to structure a dissertation might be more helpful.

How To Write A Dissertation: 8 Steps

• Clearly understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is
• Find a unique and valuable research topic
• Craft a convincing research proposal
• Write up a strong introduction chapter
• Review the existing literature and compile a literature review
• Design a rigorous research strategy and undertake your own research
• Present the findings of your research
• Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

Step 1: Understand exactly what a dissertation is

This probably sounds like a no-brainer, but all too often, students come to us for help with their research and the underlying issue is that they don’t fully understand what a dissertation (or thesis) actually is.

So, what is a dissertation?

At its simplest, a dissertation or thesis is a formal piece of research , reflecting the standard research process . But what is the standard research process, you ask? The research process involves 4 key steps:

• Ask a very specific, well-articulated question (s) (your research topic)
• See what other researchers have said about it (if they’ve already answered it)
• If they haven’t answered it adequately, undertake your own data collection and analysis in a scientifically rigorous fashion
• Answer your original question(s), based on your analysis findings

In short, the research process is simply about asking and answering questions in a systematic fashion . This probably sounds pretty obvious, but people often think they’ve done “research”, when in fact what they have done is:

• Started with a vague, poorly articulated question
• Not taken the time to see what research has already been done regarding the question
• Collected data and opinions that support their gut and undertaken a flimsy analysis
• Drawn a shaky conclusion, based on that analysis

If you want to see the perfect example of this in action, look out for the next Facebook post where someone claims they’ve done “research”… All too often, people consider reading a few blog posts to constitute research. Its no surprise then that what they end up with is an opinion piece, not research. Okay, okay – I’ll climb off my soapbox now.

The key takeaway here is that a dissertation (or thesis) is a formal piece of research, reflecting the research process. It’s not an opinion piece , nor a place to push your agenda or try to convince someone of your position. Writing a good dissertation involves asking a question and taking a systematic, rigorous approach to answering it.

If you understand this and are comfortable leaving your opinions or preconceived ideas at the door, you’re already off to a good start!

Step 2: Find a unique, valuable research topic

As we saw, the first step of the research process is to ask a specific, well-articulated question. In other words, you need to find a research topic that asks a specific question or set of questions (these are called research questions ). Sounds easy enough, right? All you’ve got to do is identify a question or two and you’ve got a winning research topic. Well, not quite…

A good dissertation or thesis topic has a few important attributes. Specifically, a solid research topic should be:

Let’s take a closer look at these:

Attribute #1: Clear

Your research topic needs to be crystal clear about what you’re planning to research, what you want to know, and within what context. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity or vagueness about what you’ll research.

Here’s an example of a clearly articulated research topic:

An analysis of consumer-based factors influencing organisational trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms.

As you can see in the example, its crystal clear what will be analysed (factors impacting organisational trust), amongst who (consumers) and in what context (British low-cost equity brokerage firms, based online).

Need a helping hand?

Attribute #2:   Unique

Your research should be asking a question(s) that hasn’t been asked before, or that hasn’t been asked in a specific context (for example, in a specific country or industry).

For example, sticking organisational trust topic above, it’s quite likely that organisational trust factors in the UK have been investigated before, but the context (online low-cost equity brokerages) could make this research unique. Therefore, the context makes this research original.

One caveat when using context as the basis for originality – you need to have a good reason to suspect that your findings in this context might be different from the existing research – otherwise, there’s no reason to warrant researching it.

Attribute #3: Important

Simply asking a unique or original question is not enough – the question needs to create value. In other words, successfully answering your research questions should provide some value to the field of research or the industry. You can’t research something just to satisfy your curiosity. It needs to make some form of contribution either to research or industry.

For example, researching the factors influencing consumer trust would create value by enabling businesses to tailor their operations and marketing to leverage factors that promote trust. In other words, it would have a clear benefit to industry.

So, how do you go about finding a unique and valuable research topic? We explain that in detail in this video post – How To Find A Research Topic . Yeah, we’ve got you covered 😊

Step 3: Write a convincing research proposal

Once you’ve pinned down a high-quality research topic, the next step is to convince your university to let you research it. No matter how awesome you think your topic is, it still needs to get the rubber stamp before you can move forward with your research. The research proposal is the tool you’ll use for this job.

So, what’s in a research proposal?

The main “job” of a research proposal is to convince your university, advisor or committee that your research topic is worthy of approval. But convince them of what? Well, this varies from university to university, but generally, they want to see that:

• You have a clearly articulated, unique and important topic (this might sound familiar…)
• You’ve done some initial reading of the existing literature relevant to your topic (i.e. a literature review)
• You have a provisional plan in terms of how you will collect data and analyse it (i.e. a methodology)

At the proposal stage, it’s (generally) not expected that you’ve extensively reviewed the existing literature , but you will need to show that you’ve done enough reading to identify a clear gap for original (unique) research. Similarly, they generally don’t expect that you have a rock-solid research methodology mapped out, but you should have an idea of whether you’ll be undertaking qualitative or quantitative analysis , and how you’ll collect your data (we’ll discuss this in more detail later).

Long story short – don’t stress about having every detail of your research meticulously thought out at the proposal stage – this will develop as you progress through your research. However, you do need to show that you’ve “done your homework” and that your research is worthy of approval .

So, how do you go about crafting a high-quality, convincing proposal? We cover that in detail in this video post – How To Write A Top-Class Research Proposal . We’ve also got a video walkthrough of two proposal examples here .

Step 4: Craft a strong introduction chapter

Once your proposal’s been approved, its time to get writing your actual dissertation or thesis! The good news is that if you put the time into crafting a high-quality proposal, you’ve already got a head start on your first three chapters – introduction, literature review and methodology – as you can use your proposal as the basis for these.

Handy sidenote – our free dissertation & thesis template is a great way to speed up your dissertation writing journey.

What’s the introduction chapter all about?

The purpose of the introduction chapter is to set the scene for your research (dare I say, to introduce it…) so that the reader understands what you’ll be researching and why it’s important. In other words, it covers the same ground as the research proposal in that it justifies your research topic.

What goes into the introduction chapter?

This can vary slightly between universities and degrees, but generally, the introduction chapter will include the following:

• A brief background to the study, explaining the overall area of research
• A problem statement , explaining what the problem is with the current state of research (in other words, where the knowledge gap exists)
• Your research questions – in other words, the specific questions your study will seek to answer (based on the knowledge gap)
• The significance of your study – in other words, why it’s important and how its findings will be useful in the world

As you can see, this all about explaining the “what” and the “why” of your research (as opposed to the “how”). So, your introduction chapter is basically the salesman of your study, “selling” your research to the first-time reader and (hopefully) getting them interested to read more.

How do I write the introduction chapter, you ask? We cover that in detail in this post .

Step 5: Undertake an in-depth literature review

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to do some initial review of the literature in Steps 2 and 3 to find your research gap and craft a convincing research proposal – but that’s just scratching the surface. Once you reach the literature review stage of your dissertation or thesis, you need to dig a lot deeper into the existing research and write up a comprehensive literature review chapter.

What’s the literature review all about?

There are two main stages in the literature review process:

Literature Review Step 1: Reading up

The first stage is for you to deep dive into the existing literature (journal articles, textbook chapters, industry reports, etc) to gain an in-depth understanding of the current state of research regarding your topic. While you don’t need to read every single article, you do need to ensure that you cover all literature that is related to your core research questions, and create a comprehensive catalogue of that literature , which you’ll use in the next step.

Reading and digesting all the relevant literature is a time consuming and intellectually demanding process. Many students underestimate just how much work goes into this step, so make sure that you allocate a good amount of time for this when planning out your research. Thankfully, there are ways to fast track the process – be sure to check out this article covering how to read journal articles quickly .

Literature Review Step 2: Writing up

Once you’ve worked through the literature and digested it all, you’ll need to write up your literature review chapter. Many students make the mistake of thinking that the literature review chapter is simply a summary of what other researchers have said. While this is partly true, a literature review is much more than just a summary. To pull off a good literature review chapter, you’ll need to achieve at least 3 things:

• You need to synthesise the existing research , not just summarise it. In other words, you need to show how different pieces of theory fit together, what’s agreed on by researchers, what’s not.
• You need to highlight a research gap that your research is going to fill. In other words, you’ve got to outline the problem so that your research topic can provide a solution.
• You need to use the existing research to inform your methodology and approach to your own research design. For example, you might use questions or Likert scales from previous studies in your your own survey design .

As you can see, a good literature review is more than just a summary of the published research. It’s the foundation on which your own research is built, so it deserves a lot of love and attention. Take the time to craft a comprehensive literature review with a suitable structure .

But, how do I actually write the literature review chapter, you ask? We cover that in detail in this video post .

Step 6: Carry out your own research

Once you’ve completed your literature review and have a sound understanding of the existing research, its time to develop your own research (finally!). You’ll design this research specifically so that you can find the answers to your unique research question.

There are two steps here – designing your research strategy and executing on it:

1 – Design your research strategy

The first step is to design your research strategy and craft a methodology chapter . I won’t get into the technicalities of the methodology chapter here, but in simple terms, this chapter is about explaining the “how” of your research. If you recall, the introduction and literature review chapters discussed the “what” and the “why”, so it makes sense that the next point to cover is the “how” –that’s what the methodology chapter is all about.

In this section, you’ll need to make firm decisions about your research design. This includes things like:

• Your research philosophy (e.g. positivism or interpretivism )
• Your overall methodology (e.g. qualitative , quantitative or mixed methods)
• Your data collection strategy (e.g. interviews , focus groups, surveys)
• Your data analysis strategy (e.g. content analysis , correlation analysis, regression)

If these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these in plain language in other posts. It’s not essential that you understand the intricacies of research design (yet!). The key takeaway here is that you’ll need to make decisions about how you’ll design your own research, and you’ll need to describe (and justify) your decisions in your methodology chapter.

2 – Execute: Collect and analyse your data

Once you’ve worked out your research design, you’ll put it into action and start collecting your data. This might mean undertaking interviews, hosting an online survey or any other data collection method. Data collection can take quite a bit of time (especially if you host in-person interviews), so be sure to factor sufficient time into your project plan for this. Oftentimes, things don’t go 100% to plan (for example, you don’t get as many survey responses as you hoped for), so bake a little extra time into your budget here.

Once you’ve collected your data, you’ll need to do some data preparation before you can sink your teeth into the analysis. For example:

• If you carry out interviews or focus groups, you’ll need to transcribe your audio data to text (i.e. a Word document).
• If you collect quantitative survey data, you’ll need to clean up your data and get it into the right format for whichever analysis software you use (for example, SPSS, R or STATA).

Once you’ve completed your data prep, you’ll undertake your analysis, using the techniques that you described in your methodology. Depending on what you find in your analysis, you might also do some additional forms of analysis that you hadn’t planned for. For example, you might see something in the data that raises new questions or that requires clarification with further analysis.

The type(s) of analysis that you’ll use depend entirely on the nature of your research and your research questions. For example:

• If your research if exploratory in nature, you’ll often use qualitative analysis techniques .
• If your research is confirmatory in nature, you’ll often use quantitative analysis techniques
• If your research involves a mix of both, you might use a mixed methods approach

Again, if these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these concepts and techniques in other posts. The key takeaway is simply that there’s no “one size fits all” for research design and methodology – it all depends on your topic, your research questions and your data. So, don’t be surprised if your study colleagues take a completely different approach to yours.

Step 7: Present your findings

Once you’ve completed your analysis, it’s time to present your findings (finally!). In a dissertation or thesis, you’ll typically present your findings in two chapters – the results chapter and the discussion chapter .

What’s the difference between the results chapter and the discussion chapter?

While these two chapters are similar, the results chapter generally just presents the processed data neatly and clearly without interpretation, while the discussion chapter explains the story the data are telling  – in other words, it provides your interpretation of the results.

For example, if you were researching the factors that influence consumer trust, you might have used a quantitative approach to identify the relationship between potential factors (e.g. perceived integrity and competence of the organisation) and consumer trust. In this case:

• Your results chapter would just present the results of the statistical tests. For example, correlation results or differences between groups. In other words, the processed numbers.
• Your discussion chapter would explain what the numbers mean in relation to your research question(s). For example, Factor 1 has a weak relationship with consumer trust, while Factor 2 has a strong relationship.

Depending on the university and degree, these two chapters (results and discussion) are sometimes merged into one , so be sure to check with your institution what their preference is. Regardless of the chapter structure, this section is about presenting the findings of your research in a clear, easy to understand fashion.

Importantly, your discussion here needs to link back to your research questions (which you outlined in the introduction or literature review chapter). In other words, it needs to answer the key questions you asked (or at least attempt to answer them).

For example, if we look at the sample research topic:

In this case, the discussion section would clearly outline which factors seem to have a noteworthy influence on organisational trust. By doing so, they are answering the overarching question and fulfilling the purpose of the research .

For more information about the results chapter , check out this post for qualitative studies and this post for quantitative studies .

Step 8: The Final Step Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

Last but not least, you’ll need to wrap up your research with the conclusion chapter . In this chapter, you’ll bring your research full circle by highlighting the key findings of your study and explaining what the implications of these findings are.

What exactly are key findings? The key findings are those findings which directly relate to your original research questions and overall research objectives (which you discussed in your introduction chapter). The implications, on the other hand, explain what your findings mean for industry, or for research in your area.

Sticking with the consumer trust topic example, the conclusion might look something like this:

Key findings

This study set out to identify which factors influence consumer-based trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms. The results suggest that the following factors have a large impact on consumer trust:

While the following factors have a very limited impact on consumer trust:

Notably, within the 25-30 age groups, Factors E had a noticeably larger impact, which may be explained by…

Implications

The findings having noteworthy implications for British low-cost online equity brokers. Specifically:

The large impact of Factors X and Y implies that brokers need to consider….

The limited impact of Factor E implies that brokers need to…

As you can see, the conclusion chapter is basically explaining the “what” (what your study found) and the “so what?” (what the findings mean for the industry or research). This brings the study full circle and closes off the document.

Let’s recap – how to write a dissertation or thesis

You’re still with me? Impressive! I know that this post was a long one, but hopefully you’ve learnt a thing or two about how to write a dissertation or thesis, and are now better equipped to start your own research.

To recap, the 8 steps to writing a quality dissertation (or thesis) are as follows:

• Understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is – a research project that follows the research process.
• Find a unique (original) and important research topic
• Craft a convincing dissertation or thesis research proposal
• Write a clear, compelling introduction chapter
• Undertake a thorough review of the existing research and write up a literature review
• Undertake your own research
• Present and interpret your findings

Once you’ve wrapped up the core chapters, all that’s typically left is the abstract , reference list and appendices. As always, be sure to check with your university if they have any additional requirements in terms of structure or content.  

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

You Might Also Like:

20 Comments

thankfull >>>this is very useful

Thank you, it was really helpful

unquestionably, this amazing simplified way of teaching. Really , I couldn’t find in the literature words that fully explicit my great thanks to you. However, I could only say thanks a-lot.

Great to hear that – thanks for the feedback. Good luck writing your dissertation/thesis.

This is the most comprehensive explanation of how to write a dissertation. Many thanks for sharing it free of charge.

Very rich presentation. Thank you

Thanks Derek Jansen|GRADCOACH, I find it very useful guide to arrange my activities and proceed to research!

Thank you so much for such a marvelous teaching .I am so convinced that am going to write a comprehensive and a distinct masters dissertation

It is an amazing comprehensive explanation

This was straightforward. Thank you!

I can say that your explanations are simple and enlightening – understanding what you have done here is easy for me. Could you write more about the different types of research methods specific to the three methodologies: quan, qual and MM. I look forward to interacting with this website more in the future.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions 🙂

Hello, your write ups is quite educative. However, l have challenges in going about my research questions which is below; *Building the enablers of organisational growth through effective governance and purposeful leadership.*

Very educating.

Just listening to the name of the dissertation makes the student nervous. As writing a top-quality dissertation is a difficult task as it is a lengthy topic, requires a lot of research and understanding and is usually around 10,000 to 15000 words. Sometimes due to studies, unbalanced workload or lack of research and writing skill students look for dissertation submission from professional writers.

Thank you 💕😊 very much. I was confused but your comprehensive explanation has cleared my doubts of ever presenting a good thesis. Thank you.

thank you so much, that was so useful

Hi. Where is the excel spread sheet ark?

could you please help me look at your thesis paper to enable me to do the portion that has to do with the specification

my topic is “the impact of domestic revenue mobilization.

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Print Friendly

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Developing a Literature Review for a Doctoral Thesis

A literature review is ‘integral to the success of academic research’ and an indispensable component of a doctoral thesis. Brief versions are particularly important for the Confirmation phase of your candidature. Often this work will form a significant component of the introduction or early chapters of your thesis.

Related Papers

• Learning outcomes • The nature of a literature review • Identifying the main subject and themes • Reviewing previous research • Emphasizing leading research studies • Exploring trends in the literature • Summarizing key ideas in a subject area • Summary A literature review is usually regarded as being an essential part of student projects, research studies and dissertations. This chapter examines the reasons for the importance of the literature review, and the things which it tries to achieve. It also explores the main strategies which you can use to write a good literature review.

Auxiliadora Padilha

Rebekka Tunombili

InSITE Conference

shardul pandya

Aim/Purpose: Identify the prerequisites, the corequisites, and the iteration processes in organizing and writing the literature review chapter of doctoral dissertations. Background: Writing the literature review chapter of doctoral dissertations presents unique challenges. Students waste a lot of time identifying material to write, and the experience is generally that of frustration and time delay. Methodology: Paper reviews literature to identify levels of information helpful for writing the literature review chapter: prerequisites, corequisites, and iteration process. Contribution: Paper identifies and explains the prerequisites, the corequisites, and iteration steps that go into organizing the reviewed literature and suggests putting them into use when starting the literature review chapter of a doctoral dissertation. Findings: Writing a doctoral dissertation literature review is long and complicated be-cause some delve into the writing without much preparation. By identifying wh...

Andrew Johnson

This chapter describes the process of writing a literature review and what the product should look like

Amanda Bolderston

A literature review can be an informative, critical, and useful synthesis of a particular topic. It can identify what is known (and unknown) in the subject area, identify areas of controversy or debate, and help formulate questions that need further research. There are several commonly used formats for literature reviews, including systematic reviews conducted as primary research projects; reviews written as an introduction and foundation for a research study, such as a thesis or dissertation; and reviews as secondary data analysis research projects. Regardless of the type, a good review is characterized by the author’s efforts to evaluate and critically analyze the relevant work in the field. Published reviews can be invaluable, because they collect and disseminate evidence from diverse sources and disciplines to inform professional practice on a particular topic. This directed reading will introduce the learner to the process of conducting and writing their own literature review.

Frances Slack

This article offers support and guidance for students undertaking a literature review as part of their dissertation during an undergraduate or Masters course. A literature review is a summary of a subject field that supports the identification of specific research questions. A literature review needs to draw on and evaluate a range of different types of sources including academic and professional journal articles, books, and web-based resources. The literature search helps in the identification and location of relevant documents and other sources. Search engines can be used to search web resources and bibliographic databases. Conceptual frameworks can be a useful tool in developing an understanding of a subject area. Creating the literature review involves the stages of: scanning, making notes, structuring the literature review, writing the literature review, and building a bibliography .

International Journal of P R O F E S S I O N A L Business Review

With a view to examining the entire proposed structure for an empirical article, this editorial focuses on the Literature Review, also known as the Theoretical Framework. The literature review may be defined as “a documented review of published or unpublished works (articles, books, etc.) in specific fields of interest to the work of the researcher” (Ferreira, 2015: 36). It is to be found in conceptual articles such as empirical articles, whether qualitative or quantitative. It has a clear link to the article as a whole and provides support for the section on the development of the concept and the hypotheses/propositions that follow it in the structure of an empirical article.

Diane Keeble-Ramsay

PS: Political Science & Politics

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Publications

Cherley C Du Plessis

Christopher N Lawrence

tecnico emergencias

KABASO OLIVER

Dr. oliver kabaso

Journal of Asian Development

Erni Murniarti

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Guidelines for the General Format of a Ph.D. Thesis

The production of a thesis should follow the following guidelines. For further details, or in case of uncertainty, please refer to the administrative assistant who organizes the defence. Researchers should send the thesis as  one PDF file .

General format and layout

Page format Use the standard A4 format and set the same margins all around (e.g. 2.5 cm, top/bottom, right/left). Remember that the thesis will be printed and boud and that margins should thus be large enough

Text size and line spacing The text should be in 11 or 12 point character and 1.5 spaced lines. Footnotes should be in 10 point character and single spaced lines. Text and footnotes should be justified

Font Choose a commonly used font that provides a full character set, for example Arial or Times (especially when using languages other than English)

Tables & pictures Insert tables, graphs and other images directly where they belong in the text. Should it be necessary to introduce coloured pictures, contact the organizing admin. assistant. Tables should always be on one page: never divide a table between different pages. Do not use colours in tables or graphs: use instead bold, punctuated or dashed lines for graphical images 

Pagination :   The text should be paginated throughout (including notes, bibliographies, annexes). The final thesis will be printed double-sided so you must ensure that blank pages are inserted where necessary in order that new chapters, sections, bibliography etc. fall on the right hand side, on an odd-numbered page (i.e. if the last page of a chapter is 171, insert page 172 as a blank page before starting the new chapter with 173). The page numbering for the title, table of contents and acknowledgements is ususally in Roman numbers. The page numbering in Arabic letters should start with page 1 on the first page of the text. If you have an automatized Table of Contents, check carefully that it is correct, otherwise you may have to insert additional blank pages

Cover-pages The title-pages should be produced according to the rules of the Institute using a specific template:  download the template cover-page for PhD theses in English , or ask the administrative assistant if the thesis is in a language other than English. It is important to respect the font type and paragraph formatting of these cover-pages. Remember that theses should be sent in as one pdf file: it is advisable to format the thesis and the title-pages independently, then transform them into pdf and merge them into a single file

Language correction Theses that have been submitted for language correction should specify this in the 'Researcher declaration to accompany the submission of written work' that is part of the cover-page template 

Thesis abstract Insert the thesis summary (up to 300 words) after the 'Researcher declaration to accompany the submission of written work' and before the Table of Contents

Table of contents Use capital letters, highlighting or indenting to differentiate between main and sub-chapters. Page numbering should be always in the same size.

Acknowledgements Acknowledgements follow the Table of contents. Before writing the acknowledgements you may want to read this blogpost by Prof. Nouwen  

Style-sheets It is advisable to prepare the general style-sheets and formatting of the thesis in a sample chapter and then write/insert the text into the pre-defined files. This is more consistent and makes it easier to handle the work, rather than having to format each chapter.

Note: The final title of the thesis has to be agreed upon together with the Supervisor

While proofreading the thesis, it may be useful to double-check our  Brief Guide for Academic English

Page last updated on 27 July 2023

• Share on twitter
• Share on facebook

How not to write a PhD thesis

In this guide, tara brabazon gives her top 10 tips for doctoral failure.

• Share on linkedin
• Share on mail

My teaching break between Christmas and the university’s snowy reopening in January followed in the footsteps of Goldilocks and the three bears. I examined three PhDs: one was too big; one was too small; one was just right. Put another way, one was as close to a fail as I have ever examined; one passed but required rewriting to strengthen the argument; and the last reminded me why it is such a pleasure to be an academic.

Concurrently, I have been shepherding three of my PhD students through the final two months to submission. These concluding weeks are an emotional cocktail of exhaustion, frustration, fright and exhilaration. Supervisors correct errors we thought had been removed a year ago. The paragraph that seemed good enough in the first draft now seems to drag down a chapter. My postgraduates cannot understand why I am so picky. They want to submit and move on with the rest of their lives.

There is a reason why supervisors are pedantic. If we are not, the postgraduates will live with the consequences of “major corrections” for months. The other alternative, besides being awarded the consolation prize of an MPhil, is managing the regret of three wasted years if a doctorate fails. Every correction, each typographical error, all inaccuracies, ambiguities or erroneous references that we find and remove in these crucial final weeks may swing an examiner from major to minor corrections, or from a full re-examination to a rethink of one chapter.

Being a PhD supervisor is stressful. It is a privilege but it is frightening. We know – and individual postgraduates do not – that strange comments are offered in response to even the best theses. Yes, an examiner graded a magnificent doctorate from one of my postgraduates as “minor corrections” for one typographical error in footnote 104 in the fifth chapter of an otherwise cleanly drafted 100,000 words. It was submitted 10 years ago and I still remember it with regret.

Another examiner enjoyed a thesis on “cult” but wondered why there were no references to Madonna, grading it as requiring major corrections so that Madonna references could be inserted throughout the script.

Examiners have entered turf wars about the disciplinary parameters separating history and cultural studies. Often they look for their favourite theorists – generally Pierre Bourdieu or Gilles Deleuze these days – and are saddened to find citations to Michel Foucault and Félix Guattari.

Then there are the “let’s talk about something important – let’s talk about me” examiners. Their first task is to look for themselves in the bibliography, and they are not too interested in the research if there is no reference to their early sorties with Louis Althusser in Economy and Society from the 1970s.

I understand the angst, worry and stress of supervisors, but I have experienced the other side of the doctoral divide. Examining PhDs is both a pleasure and a curse. It is a joy to nurture, support and help the academy’s next generation , but it is a dreadful moment when an examiner realises that a script is so below international standards of scholarship that there are three options: straight fail, award an MPhil or hope that the student shows enough spark in the viva voce so that it may be possible to skid through to major corrections and a full re-examination in 18 months.

When confronted by these choices, I am filled with sadness for students and supervisors, but this is matched by anger and even embarrassment. What were the supervisors thinking? Who or what convinced the student that this script was acceptable?

Therefore, to offer insights to postgraduates who may be in the final stages of submission, cursing their supervisors who want another draft and further references, here are my 10 tips for failing a PhD. If you want failure, this is your road map to getting there.

1. Submit an incomplete, poorly formatted bibliography

Doctoral students need to be told that most examiners start marking from the back of the script. Just as cooks are judged by their ingredients and implements, we judge doctoral students by the calibre of their sources.

The moment examiners see incomplete references or find that key theorists in the topic are absent, they worry. This concern intensifies when in-text citations with no match in the bibliography are located.

If examiners find 10 errors, then students are required to perform minor corrections. If there are 20 anomalies, the doctorate will need major corrections. Any referencing issues over that number and examiners question the student's academic abilities.

If the most basic academic protocols are not in place, the credibility of a script wavers. A bibliography is not just a bibliography; it is a canary in the doctoral mine.

2. Use phrases such as ‘some academics’ or ‘all the literature’ without mitigating statements or references

Generalisations infuriate me in first-year papers, but they are understandable. A 19-year-old student who states that “all women think that Katie Price is a great role model” is making a ridiculous point, but when the primary reading fodder is Heat magazine, the link between Jordan’s plastic surgery and empowered women seems causal. In a PhD, generalisations send me off for a long walk to Beachy Head.

The best doctorates are small. They are tightly constituted and justify the student's choice of one community of scholars over others while demonstrating that they have read enough to make the decision on academic rather than time-management grounds.

Invariably, there is a link between a thin bibliography and a high number of generalisations. If a student has not read widely, then the scholars they have referenced become far more important and representative than they actually are.

I make my postgraduates pay for such statements. If they offer a generalisation such as: “Scholars of the online environment argue that democracy follows participation”, I demand that they find at least 30 separate references to verify their claim. They soon stop making generalisations.

Among my doctoral students, these demands have been nicknamed “Kent footnotes” after one of my great (post-) postgraduates, Mike Kent (now Dr Kent). He relished compiling these enormous footnotes, confirming the evidential base for his arguments. As he would be the first to admit, it was slightly obsessive behaviour, but it certainly confirmed the scale of his reading. In my supervisory processes, students are punished for generalisations by being forced to assemble a “Kent footnote”.

3. Write an abstract without a sentence starting: ‘My original contribution to knowledge is…’

The way to relax an examiner is to feature a sentence in the first paragraph of a PhD abstract that begins: “My original contribution to knowledge is…” If students cannot compress their argument and research findings into a single statement, then it can signify flabbiness in their method, theory or structure. It is an awful moment for examiners when they – desperately – try to find an original contribution to knowledge through a shapeless methods chapter or loose literature review. If examiners cannot pinpoint the original contribution, they have no choice but to award the script an MPhil.

The key is to make it easy for examiners. In the second sentence of the abstract, ensure that an original contribution is nailed to the page. Then we can relax and look for the scaffolding and verification of this statement.

I once supervised a student investigating a very small area of “queer” theory . It is a specialist field, well worked over by outstanding researchers. I remained concerned throughout the candidature that there was too much restatement of other academics’ work. The scholarship is of high quality and does not leave much space for new interpretations.

Finally, we located a clear section in one chapter that was original. He signalled it in the abstract. He highlighted it in the introduction. He stressed the importance of this insight in the chapter itself and restated it in the conclusion. Needless to say, every examiner noted the original contribution to knowledge that had been highlighted for them, based on a careful and methodical understanding of the field. He passed without corrections.

4. Fill the bibliography with references to blogs, online journalism and textbooks

This is a new problem I have seen in doctorates over the past six months. Throughout the noughties, online sources were used in PhDs. However, the first cycle of PhD candidates who have studied in the web 2.0 environment are submitting their doctorates this year. The impact on the theses I have examined recently is clear to see. Students do not differentiate between refereed and non-refereed or primary and secondary sources. The Google effect – the creation of a culture of equivalence between blogs and academic articles – is in full force. When questioned in an oral examination, the candidates do not display that they have the capacity to differentiate between the calibre and quality of references.

This bibliographical flattening and reduction in quality sources unexpectedly affects candidates’ writing styles. I am not drawing a causal link here; major research would need to be undertaken to probe this relationship. But because the students are not reading difficult scholarship, they are unaware of the specificities of academic writing. The doctorates are pitched too low, filled with informalities, conversational language, generalisations, opinion and unreflexive leaps between their personal “journeys” (yes, it is like an episode of The X Factor ) and research protocols.

I asked one of these postgraduates in their oral examination to offer a defence of their informal writing style, hoping that the student would pull out a passable justification through the “Aca-Fan”, disintermediation, participatory culture or organic intellectual arguments. Instead, the student replied: “I am proud of how the thesis is written. It is important to write how we speak.”

Actually, no. A PhD must be written to ensure that it can be examined within the regulations of a specific university and in keeping with international standards of doctoral education. A doctorate may be described in many ways, but it has no connection with everyday modes of communication.

5. Use discourse, ideology, signifier, signified, interpellation, postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism or deconstruction without reading the complete works of Foucault, Althusser, Saussure, Baudrillard or Derrida

How to upset an examiner in under 60 seconds: throw basic semiotic phrases into a sentence as if they are punctuation. Often this problem emerges in theses where “semiotics” is cited as a/the method. When a student uses words such as “discourse” and “ideology” as if they were neutral nouns, it is often a signal for the start of a pantomime of naivety throughout the script. Instead of an “analysis”, postgraduates describe their work as “deconstruction”. It is not deconstruction. They describe their approach as “structuralist”. It is not structuralist. Simply because they study structures does not mean it is structuralist. Conversely, simply because they do not study structures does not mean it is post-structuralist.

The number of students who fling names around as if they were fashion labels (“Dior”, “Derrida”, “Givenchy”, “Gramsci”) is becoming a problem. I also feel sorry for the students who are attempting a deep engagement with these theorists.

I am working with a postgraduate at the moment who has spent three months mapping Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge over media-policy theories of self-regulation. It has been frustrating and tough, creating – at this stage – only six pages of work from her efforts. Every week, I see the perspiration on the page and the strain in the footnotes. If a student is not prepared to undertake this scale of effort, they must edit the thesis and remove all these words. They leave themselves vulnerable to an examiner who knows their ideological state apparatuses from their repressive state apparatuses.

6. Assume something you are doing is new because you have not read enough to know that an academic wrote a book on it 20 years ago

Again, this is another new problem I have seen in the past couple of years. Lazy students, who may be more kindly described as “inexperienced researchers”, state that they have invented the wheel because they have not looked under their car to see the rolling objects beneath it. After minimal reading, it is easy to find original contributions to knowledge in every idea that emerges from the jarring effect of a bitter espresso.

More frequently, my problem as a supervisor has been the incredibly hard-working students who read so much that they cannot control all the scholarly balls they have thrown into the air. I supervise an inspirational scholar who is trying to map Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid” research over neoconservative theory. This is difficult research, particularly since she is also trying to punctuate this study with Stan Aronowitz’s investigations of post-work and Henry Giroux’s research into working-class education. For such students, supervisors have to prune the student's arguments to ensure that all the branches are necessary and rooted in their original contributions to knowledge.

The over-readers present their own challenges. For our under-readers, the world is filled with their own brilliance because they do not realise that every single sentence they write has been explored, extended, tested and applied by other scholars in the past. Intriguingly, these are always the confident students, arriving at the viva voce brimming with pride in their achievements. They are the hardest ones to assess (and help) through an oral exam because they do not know enough to know how little they know.

Helpful hand-balled questions about the most significant theorists in their research area are pointless because they have invented all the material in this field. The only way to create an often-debilitating moment of self-awareness is by directly questioning the script: “On p57, you state that the academic literature has not addressed this argument. Yet in 1974, Philippa Philistine published a book and a series of articles on that topic. Why did you decide not to cite that material?”

Invariably, the answer to this question – often after much stuttering and stammering – is that the candidate had not read the analysis. I leave the question hanging at that point. We could get into why they have not read it or the consequences of leaving out key theorists. But one moment of glimpsing into the abyss of failure is enough to summon doubt that their “originality” is original.

7. Leave spelling mistakes in the script

Spelling errors among my own PhD students leave me seething. I correct spelling errors. They appear in the next draft. I correct spelling errors. They appear in the next draft. The night before they bind their theses, I stare at the ceiling, summoning the doctoral gods and praying that they have removed the spelling errors.

Most examiners will accept a few spelling or typographical mistakes, but in a word-processing age, this tolerance is receding. I know plenty of examiners who gain great pleasure in constructing a table and listing all the typographical and spelling errors in a script. Occasionally, I do it, and then I know I need to get out more.

Spelling mistakes horrify students. They render supervisors in need of oxygen. Postgraduates may not fail doctorates because of them, but such errors end any chance of passing quickly and without corrections. These simple mistakes also create doubt in the examiner’s mind. If superficial errors exist, it may be necessary to drill more deeply into the interpretation, methods or structure chosen to present the findings.

8. Make the topic of the thesis too large

The best PhDs are small. They investigate a circumscribed area rather than over-egging the originality or expertise. The most satisfying theses – and they are rare – emerge when students find small gaps in saturated research areas and offer innovative interpretations or new applications of old ideas.

The nightmare PhD for examiners is the candidate who tries to compress a life’s work into 100,000 words. They take on the history of Marxism or, more commonly these days, feminism. They attempt to distil 100 years of history, theory, dissent and debate into a literature review and end up applying these complex ideas to Beyoncé’s video for Single Ladies .

The best theses not only state their original contribution to knowledge but also confirm in the introduction what they do not address. I know that many supervisors disagree with me on this point. Nevertheless, the best way to protect candidates and ensure that examiners understand the boundaries and limits of the research is to state what is not being discussed. Students may be asked why they made those determinations, and there must be scholarly and strategic answers to such questions.

The easiest way to trim and hem the ragged edges of a doctorate is historically or geographically. The student can base the work on Belgium, Brazil or the Bahamas, or a particular decade, governmental term or after a significant event such as 11 September 2001. Another way to contain a project is theoretically, to state that there is a focus on Henry Giroux’s model of popular culture and education rather than Henry Jenkins’ configurations of new media and literacy. Such a decision can be justified through the availability of sources, or the desire to monitor one scholar’s pathway through analogue and digital media. Examiners will feel more comfortable if they know that students have made considered choices about their area of research and understand the limits of their findings.

9. Write a short, rushed, basic exegesis

An unfair – but occasionally accurate – cliché of practice-led doctorates is that students take three and a half years to make a film, installation or soundscape and spend three and a half weeks writing the exegesis. Doctoral candidates seem unaware that examiners often read exegeses first and engage with the artefacts after assessing if candidates have read enough in the field.

Indeed, one of my students recommended an order of reading and watching for her examiners, moving among four chapters and films. The examiner responded in her report – bristling – that she would not be told how to evaluate a thesis; she always read the full exegesis and then decided whether or not to bother seeing the films. My student – thankfully – passed with ease, but this examiner told a truth that few acknowledge.

Most postgraduates I talk with assume that the examiners rush with enthusiasm to the packaged DVD or CD, or that they will not read a word of the doctorate until they have seen the exhibition. This is the same assumption that inhibits these students in viva voces. They think that they will be able to talk about “art” and “process” for two hours. I have never seen that happen. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the exegesis and how it articulates the artefact.

Postgraduates entering a doctoral programme to make a film or create a sonic installation subject themselves to a time-consuming and difficult process. If the student neglects the exegesis until the end of the candidature and constructs a rushed document about “how” rather than “why” it was made, there will be problems.

The best students find a way to create “bonsai” exegeses. They prepare perfectly formed engagements with theory, method and scholarship but in miniature. They note word limits, demonstrate the precise dialogue between the exegesis and artefact, and show through a carefully edited script that they hold knowledge equivalent to the “traditional” doctoral level.

10. Submit a PhD with a short introduction or conclusion

A quick way to move from a good doctoral thesis to one requiring major corrections is to write a short introduction and/or conclusion. It is frustrating for examiners. We are poised to tick the minor corrections box, and then we turn to a one- or two-page conclusion.

After reading thousands of words, students must be able to present effective, convincing conclusions, restating the original contribution to knowledge, the significance of the research, the problems and flaws and further areas of scholarship. Short conclusions are created by tired doctoral students. They run out of words.

Short introductions signify the start of deeper problems: candidates are unaware of the research area or the theoretical framework. In the case of introductions and conclusions in doctoral theses, size does matter.

Hope washes over the start of a PhD candidature, but desperation and fear often mark its conclusion. There are (at least) 10 simple indicators that prompt examiners to recommend re-examination, major corrections or – with some dismay – failure. If postgraduates use these guidelines, they will be able to make choices and realise the consequences of their decisions.

The lessons of scholarship begin with intellectual generosity to the scholars who precede us. Ironically – although perhaps not – candidatures also conclude there.

Like what you’re reading? Get 8 issues of THE free with our PhD student and researcher special offer

Register to continue.

Why register?

• Registration is free and only takes a moment
• Once registered, you can read 3 articles a month
• Sign up for our newsletter

Or subscribe for unlimited access to:

• Unlimited access to news, views, insights & reviews
• Digital editions
• Digital access to THE’s university and college rankings analysis

Already registered or a current subscriber? Login

Related articles

Essential PhD tips: 10 articles all doctoral students should read

PhD advice: from choosing the right topic to getting through your thesis

Reader's comments (10)

You might also like.

Korean PhD overwork culture ‘getting worse’ as research cuts bite

Postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers say they are often subject to supervisors’ whims, leaving some feeling exploited

Sexual harassment of PhDs linked to academia’s ‘leaky pipeline’

Women who complete their PhDs in workplaces with high harassment rates less likely to remain in research, Danish study finds

Research jobs growth ‘going gangbusters’ – but not in universities

Australian study finds good prospects for research degree graduates, so long as they look beyond academia

To justify or not? Formatting

So I've checked all the formal requirements regarding the thesis in my institution but there is no mention of whether left hand aligned or justified text is better. Any views? Also where do people stand on indenting the first line of a paragraph? At the moment I'm going with left hand aligned and no indent but I'm not sure if it looks tidy enough.

Think this just personal choice if your institute has no guidelines. I like to justify with no indent.

Thanks TreeofLife!

Just to be different I left justified mine and indented each paragraph! :) All my colleagues justified theirs and didn't indent the paragraphs. Also, because I had to use some IUPAC names for my compounds I found that justifying a body of text can sometimes leave huge gaps of space between some words which I didn't like. With left justification all spaces are equal. But like tol said it's all down to personal preference in the end!

agree that it's personal preference. That said I think justified both sides looks much tidier. I justify, no indent, double space between paragraphs.

I'm pretty sure I've read some research that says from a readability perspective left-justified is better and easier to read. I'll try to dig out the paper.

Quote From ady: agree that it's personal preference. That said I think justified both sides looks much tidier. I justify, no indent, double space between paragraphs. I do above too! I think it comes down to personal preference.

I like block justified text cos it looks more tidy to me, BUT I heard that it's hard for people with dyslexia to read because of the variation in word spacing, so now I avoid. I've only ever indented paragraphs when handwriting. I never bother when typing.

Post your reply

Postgraduate Forum

Masters Degrees

PhD Opportunities

Postgraduate Forum Copyright ©2024 All rights reserved

PostgraduateForum Is a trading name of FindAUniversity Ltd FindAUniversity Ltd, 77 Sidney St, Sheffield, S1 4RG, UK. Tel +44 (0) 114 268 4940 Fax: +44 (0) 114 268 5766

Welcome to the world's leading Postgraduate Forum

An active and supportive community.

Support and advice from your peers.

Your postgraduate questions answered.

Use your experience to help others.

Sign Up to Postgraduate Forum

Enter your email address below to get started with your forum account

Login to your account

Enter your username below to login to your account

Reset password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password

An email has been sent to your email account along with instructions on how to reset your password. If you do not recieve your email, or have any futher problems accessing your account, then please contact our customer support.

or continue as guest

Postgrad Forum uses cookies to create a better experience for you

To ensure all features on our website work properly, your computer, tablet or mobile needs to accept cookies. Our cookies don’t store your personal information, but provide us with anonymous information about use of the website and help us recognise you so we can offer you services more relevant to you. For more information please read our privacy policy

AI For Dissertation: Best AI Tools For Masters & PhD Thesis Writing

Writing a dissertation can be a daunting task for master’s and PhD students, but AI tools are transforming this challenging process.

From generating detailed mind maps to providing accurate citations and real-time research insights, AI-powered writing assistants streamline every aspect of thesis writing.

In this article, we explore the best AI tools available, highlighting how they can:

• enhance your academic writing,
• simplify complex tasks, and
• help produce high-quality, well-structured content.

Best AI Tools For Masters & PhD Thesis Writing

Heuristi.ca – Mind Map Maker

Heuristi.ca is an AI-powered writing tool designed to streamline your dissertation writing process.

This AI tool helps you write your thesis or research paper by creating detailed mind maps tailored to academic writing.

You input a topic, like “organic photovoltaics,” and the AI generates related concepts and real-time insights. This assists in organising your literature review and structuring your academic writing.

The AI assistant ensures coherence by connecting related ideas, making writing more manageable and efficient. It helps avoid plagiarism by providing original content and AI-driven citation suggestions. 

By automating and streamlining aspects of the writing process, Heuristi.ca helps you meet deadlines and maintain academic standards.

Open Read – Generate Summaries 

Open Read is an AI-powered writing tool designed to enhance your thesis writing process. With Open Read, you can upload research papers and receive AI-generated summaries, making literature reviews more manageable.

The tool offers real-time features like paper Q&A and AI summaries, which streamline your academic writing tasks.

For example, you can upload a PDF and get a concise summary, along with detailed insights into the paper’s background and significance.

This AI tool helps you write your dissertation by breaking down complex information into bite-sized chunks, saving you time and effort.

Open Read also helps ensure academic integrity by providing accurate citations and checking for plagiarism. 

Explain Paper

Explain Paper is an AI tool that simplifies the academic writing process.E xplain Paper supports dissertation writing by making research more digestible and manageable. 

To use Explain Paper, simply:

• upload a research paper,
• select the text you want to understand, and
• choose an explanation level. 

The AI provides clear explanations tailored to different educational levels, making complex research accessible. 

You can select a dense paragraph and have it explained as if to a middle schooler or a college student. This helps in breaking down intricate concepts, streamlining your literature review.

The tool also ensures your writing adheres to academic standards by providing coherent summaries and related resources.

Paper Brain

Paper Brain is an AI tool designed to streamline your academic writing process. You upload a research paper, and the AI analyzes and generates concise summaries, making it easier to grasp complex topics.

This AI-powered assistant helps you write your dissertation by providing clear and concise explanations, ensuring coherence and adherence to academic standards.

You can upload a paper on graphene thickness measurement, and Paper Brain will summarise its key points and answer specific questions about the research.

This tool is invaluable for literature reviews, as it simplifies the extraction of relevant information. Graduate students writing a thesis can benefit from Paper Brain’s AI technology, which makes writing tasks more manageable and efficient. 

Einblick is an AI-powered writing tool that simplifies data visualisation for your dissertation or thesis.

Einblick can analyze and present data coherently, helping you write your dissertation with accurate, well-organized charts and graphs.

This tool is simple to use – you upload your dataset, describe the chart you need, and Einblick generates it.

This tool helps you visualise complex data quickly and efficiently, which is crucial for academic writing and literature reviews.

Let’s say if you need a scatterplot of N2O versus CH4 emissions. Einblick creates it in seconds. This AI assistant streamlines the thesis writing process by providing clear, tailored visual aids, ensuring your research paper meets academic standards.

Tavily is an AI-powered research assistant designed to streamline your dissertation writing process. You simply input your research topic, and Tavily creates an AI agent that scours the internet for relevant information.

This AI tool ensures that the data you receive is accurate and up-to-date, helping you write your dissertation or thesis with confidence.

If you’re researching organic photovoltaic devices, Tavily will provide:

• detailed summaries,
• key findings, and
• relevant sources.

This AI writing assistant makes the literature review process more manageable by automating and streamlining the search for academic papers.

It also offers tailored content that adheres to academic standards, ensuring coherence and quality in your writing.

Graduate students find Tavily invaluable for meeting deadlines and enhancing academic writing skills. The tool’s ability to analyse and synthesise vast amounts of data in real-time allows you to focus on the writing process. 

Using AI technology, Tavily helps you achieve academic success by providing a solid foundation for your thesis or dissertation.

Power Drill

Power Drill is an AI-powered writing tool designed to assist you in the dissertation writing process. To use Power Drill, you start by uploading your data sets, which can be:

• web pages, or
• files. 

The AI then analyses these data sources, providing insightful summaries and answers to specific questions.

This helps streamline the research and writing process, making it easier to organize your thoughts and structure your thesis.

You can upload a research paper, and Power Drill will highlight key points and generate concise summaries. This AI tool helps you write your dissertation by breaking down complex information into manageable parts, saving you time and effort.

Graduate students find Power Drill particularly helpful for meeting deadlines and adhering to academic standards.

The tool ensures coherence in your writing by offering accurate citations and reducing the risk of plagiarism.

Power Drill can also scan vast databases and provide real-time insights, helping you achieve academic success and write a compelling thesis or dissertation.

SciSpace is an AI-powered writing tool designed to simplify the academic writing process for dissertations and theses.

You upload your research papers, and SciSpace provides detailed summaries and key insights, making literature reviews more manageable. This AI tool uses natural language processing to extract essential information, helping you organise and streamline your writing tasks.

When you upload a PDF, SciSpace offers a concise “too long; didn’t read” summary, highlighting conclusions and significant points.

This is especially useful for graduate students who need to write their dissertation or thesis efficiently.

SciSpace also includes an AI writing assistant, which helps ensure coherence and adherence to academic standards by generating accurate citations and checking for plagiarism.

Using AI technology, SciSpace can analyze vast databases and provide real-time insights, making your writing process more manageable.

This tool helps you meet deadlines and achieve academic success by automating and streamlining various aspects of academic writing, ultimately supporting you in creating well-structured and high-quality written content.

Next Net – For Drug & Health Research

Next Net is an AI-powered tool tailored for those in the drug and health research fields. This AI assistant helps you write your dissertation or thesis by providing comprehensive, real-time searches of the latest literature and research data.

You input your query, and Next Net uses advanced AI technology to scan vast databases for relevant information.

For example, if you’re researching new drugs, Next Net offers detailed insights into recent developments, gene expressions, and clinical trials.

This AI tool streamlines the literature review process by organizing complex data into manageable, easy-to-understand summaries.

Graduate students find Next Net invaluable for its ability to generate accurate citations and ensure academic integrity.

Next Net’s AI-driven approach makes writing a thesis more efficient, allowing you to focus on creating well-structured, high-quality content. This AI tool is essential for achieving academic success in the health research domain.

Chat GPT, Perplexity, Bing

ChatGPT , Perplexity, and Bing are AI-powered writing tools that significantly enhance the academic writing process. Each tool leverages artificial intelligence to assist with various aspects of dissertation and thesis writing.

ChatGPT uses advanced natural language processing to generate coherent, detailed responses to research queries. You can ask it to help:

• outline your thesis,
• draft sections of your dissertation, or
• provide insights on complex topics.

It’s particularly useful for brainstorming and refining ideas, making writing tasks more manageable. You can also create templates to help you generate texts faster.

Perplexity , another AI tool, excels at providing real-time, accurate references for your research paper. By asking Perplexity detailed questions, you get precise, sourced answers that streamline your literature review. 

Bing, integrated with AI, offers a balanced approach to research. You can specify the type of response you need—creative, balanced, or precise—making it a versatile assistant for academic writing.

Bing’s AI can scan vast databases to find relevant information, helping you write your dissertation or thesis with comprehensive, up-to-date data.

By automating and streamlining the writing process, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing help you achieve academic success with well-researched and well-written content.

AI Tools For Thesis and Dissertation Writing

From Heuristi.ca’s mind mapping to ChatGPT’s brainstorming capabilities, these AI-powered assistants streamline literature reviews, ensure academic standards, and provide accurate citations.

Tools like Open Read and Explain Paper simplify complex concepts, while Einblick and Next Net offer data visualization and real-time research insights.

By leveraging these AI tools, graduate students can enhance their academic writing skills, meet deadlines, and achieve academic success efficiently.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

Thank you for visiting Academia Insider.

We are here to help you navigate Academia as painlessly as possible. We are supported by our readers and by visiting you are helping us earn a small amount through ads and affiliate revenue - Thank you!

2024 © Academia Insider

Along with Stanford news and stories, show me:

• Student information
• Faculty/Staff information

We want to provide announcements, events, leadership messages and resources that are relevant to you. Your selection is stored in a browser cookie which you can remove at any time using “Clear all personalization” below.

Twelve Stanford doctoral students are the newest recipients of Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity (DDRO) awards from the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE).

DDRO awards funding annually to applicants whose doctoral dissertation research engages aspects of diversity, broadly defined to include culture, socioeconomic background, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disabilities, religion, and life experience.

The funding supports the university’s commitment to supporting diversity-related research, and recipients are selected each year by a review committee composed of Stanford faculty and VPGE campus partners. To date, more than 100 doctoral students from over 25 degree programs across Stanford’s seven schools have received DDRO research grants totaling over $500,000.

Meet Elliott Reichardt, 2023 DDRO recipient and PhD student in anthropology, and how DDRO funds help in his research. | Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

The following students received 2024 DDRO awards:

Noor Amr , Anthropology, School of Humanities and Sciences Church Asylum: Religion, Migration, and the Boundaries of Political Belonging

Camille DeJarnett , Political Science, School of Humanities and Sciences Language Policy Choice and Civic Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Paula Gaither , Classics, School of Humanities and Sciences What Does an Aethiopian Look Like? An Investigation into the Creation, Display, and Function of the Aethiopian-Type in Ancient Roman Art

Marina Johnson , Theater and Performance Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences On This Land: Disruption in Palestinian Theatre from 2015-2025

Rita Kamani-Renedo , Graduate School of Education Imagining Ethnic Studies with and for Racialized Multilingual Newcomer Im/migrant Youth

Leslie Luqueño , Graduate School of Education College Is a Familia Occasion: How Latinx Immigrant Families Navigate the Transition to College

Tamar “Tamri” Matiashvili , Economics, School of Humanities and Sciences Does Diversity Matter? Evidence from First Female Physicians

Lloyd May , Music, School of Humanities and Sciences Centering D/deaf and Disabled Joy in Musical Experiences

Westley Montgomery , Theater and Performance Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences Vox Ex Machina: Race, Gender, and the Voice in Technology

Kenisha Puckett , Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, School of Medicine Exploring Early Implantation Dynamics Using Bioengineered Trophoblast Stem Cells

Kia Turner , Graduate School of Education Letters of Otherwise Worlds: Composing Abolitionist Legal and Educational Futures Through Black Poetic Praxis

Emma Williams-Baron , Sociology, School of Humanities and Sciences Explain Yourself: Harnessing Accountability to Disrupt Motherhood Bias in Hiring

Dissertations in geography and electrical & computer engineering receive Lancaster awards for excellence

Doctoral students S. Shailja and Evan Greenberg have received the Winifred and Louis Lancaster Dissertation Award for their dissertations in electrical and computer engineering and geography, respectively. 

“It is always so exciting to see the amazing research our students are doing in different fields,” said Interim Graduate Dean Leila J. Rupp. “The Lancaster Award recognizes the best of the best, showcasing the diversity of talent across campus.”

Shailja received the mathematics, physical sciences and engineering award for her dissertation, “Reeb graphs for topological connectomics of the human brain.”  Advised by B. S. Manjunath, chair of UCSB’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Shailja builds mathematical tools for modeling neuronal fibers in human brains as geometrical objects in three-dimensional space. Modeling connectivity of the human brain is critical to understanding and treating neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and strokes.

“What an honor,” said Shailja, an incoming postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. “It added to the feeling of accomplishment, marking a spectacular finish to this long journey.” 

For Shailja, the award has additional significance because her mother will make her first trip to the U.S. to attend the commencement ceremony. “I feel so proud that I will be named a Lancaster Dissertation Award winner in front of her. This has made the commencement day very special for us. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been selected from a pool of such talented peers and I felt grateful to the award committee for deeming my thesis worthy of this award.”

Greenberg received the social sciences award for his dissertation, “Remote Sensing of River Mobility: Quantifying the Controls, Timescales, and Stratigraphic Record of River Movement.” His advisor is Vamsi Ganti, who leads the UCSB Surface Processes Group in the Department of Geography. Greenberg’s dissertation focuses on terrestrial geomorphic processes using multi-spectral time series. 

“I'm broadly interested in remote sensing methods and have worked with both multi-spectral and hyper-spectral methods on data handling and correction as well as scientific applications,” said Greenberg, who recently published a paper in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters that presents an account of what drives the migration rates of meandering rivers.

The award includes a $1,000 prize to be presented at the Graduate Division commencement ceremony on June 14. The awardees will also serve as UCSB’s entrants in the national competition sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools and ProQuest.

Two Lancaster awards are given annually to doctoral degree recipients or candidates from two broad academic areas. The four fields of competition alternate each year, as specified by the National Council of Graduate Schools.  

Debra Herrick Associate Editorial Director (805) 893-2191 [email protected]

Share this article

About UC Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara is a leading research institution that also provides a comprehensive liberal arts learning experience. Our academic community of faculty, students, and staff is characterized by a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration that is responsive to the needs of our multicultural and global society. All of this takes place within a living and learning environment like no other, as we draw inspiration from the beauty and resources of our extraordinary location at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Related Stories

June 7, 2024

How a passion for math drove this College of Creative Studies grad to distinction

June 6, 2024

UCSB’s ÉXITO Program graduates third cohort of future ethnic studies teachers amidst rising attacks on ethnic studies

Commencement returns to the Green

Exploring the meaning and significance of monuments

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS. A lock ( Lock Locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Search Awards
• Recent Awards
• Presidential and Honorary Awards
• About Awards
• How to Manage Your Award
• Grant General Conditions
• Cooperative Agreement Conditions
• Special Conditions
• Federal Demonstration Partnership
• Policy Office Website

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

This research project explores the relationship between race and voting behavior in Brazil.  Despite comprising a majority of the Brazilian population, Brazilians of African descent are rarely elected. Some scholars contend that the racial gap between the electorate and those elected in Brazil is explained by differences in campaign resources while others indicate that voters discriminate against nonwhite political candidates. This project investigates the connection between candidate race and electoral success by focusing on voter behavior.

Project/Outcomes to date: We conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with elected national, state and local level politicians as well as more than 50 semi-structured interviews with nonelected candidates. We have also conducted more than 150 semi-structured interviews with Brazilian voters. Finally, we analyzed public opinion polls on vote-choice and vote intention. 

We report here preliminary findings as they relate to the relationship between candidate race and electoral success. In interviews, politicians and political elites commonly express the view that candidate race affects vote choice.  Their comments suggest that white, as well as nonwhite voters, have a preference for whiteness that leads them to reject nonwhite candidates. Most voters, however, do not claim that candidate race affects how they vote. Among the subset of voters that admit to casting their ballot on the basis of race, most indicate that they voted for nonwhite candidates. Due to growing racial tensions and the rising influence of Brazil’s black movement, racial voting may become more prevalent in the future.

Last Modified: 08/13/2019 Modified by: Andrew Janusz

Please report errors in award information by writing to: [email protected] .

Doctoral conferment ceremony in Joensuu saw academic traditions and new experiences, and celebrated the freedom of science

Workshop on neurodevelopmental disorders highlighted translational and participatory approaches, doctoral defence of yasemin kontkanen, m.soc.sc, 28 june 2024: legitimate peripheral entrepreneuring: somali immigrant entrepreneuring in finland and in the united states, kuopio birth cohort symposium, virve pekkarinen, m.ed., doctoral defence in education, espoo, safety and security in diverse society research group seminar ii.

Find more news and events

Refine your search

Doctoral defence of Yasemin Kontkanen, M.Soc.Sc., 28 June 2024: Legitimate Peripheral Entrepreneuring: Somali Immigrant Entrepreneuring in Finland and in the United States

The doctoral dissertation in the field of Sociology will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies at Joensuu campus. The public examination will be streamed online.

• Economy and society

What is the topic of your doctoral research? Why is it important to study the topic?

My doctoral research is about Somali immigrant entrepreneuring in Finland and in the United States. Studies on Somali immigrant communities over the past two decades have provided important information addressing great similarities in group characteristics across the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. Interestingly, entrepreneurship is an area where significant differences come into play. The high levels of Somali immigrant entrepreneurial activity which have emerged in a US context, for example, have been a topic of interest within the Nordic countries. Scholars from the field often arrive at the same question following inquiry into the role of different models of welfare state.

In this study, expanding the questions asked in relation to immigrant entrepreneuring from a pool of resources, opportunities and regulations to a wider context, I approach the host society as a work-learning setting of immigrant entrepreneurship and ask: 1) How do learning and participation in the resettlement society relate to the ways Somali immigrants perceive and construct themselves as legitimate actors of entrepreneurial activity within their resettlement societies?, and 2) What processes shape immigrants’ approaches to entrepreneurial activity? Noting that immigrant entrepreneurship is fast becoming a key strategy for economic and social integration also in Finland, the topic is timely and important to study. What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research? One key finding that stands out from those reported earlier is that Somali immigrants in Finland and in the US, regardless the similarities in group characteristics, enter different cultures of immigrant reception thereby coming to the entrepreneurial practice from different peripheral positionalities. Both economics of labour control and politics of knowledge control come into play as Somali immigrants’ experiences of labour market, integration schemes and public discourses intertwine and shape the periphery from which Somalis approach entrepreneurship. In both contexts, these different experiences accumulate to a substantial resource conveying information about both ‘what makes an immigrant an entrepreneur’ and the value of immigrants’ working selves in the given context. 

Also, community imaginaries seem to play an important role on the immigrant side for marking the conditions of social membership in the host society. In the case of Finland, ‘knowledgeability’ prevails as the most important qualification to fulfil, whereas being ‘industrious’ is given the most weight in the case of the US. These different imaginaries also give direction to Somali immigrants’ articulations of ‘what is essential’ to becoming immigrant entrepreneur in their host societies. From a sociological perspective, we are capturing a process of moral regulation. It is moralisation of both the immigrant agent and the immigrant economic activity. How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice? In this research, the varying contexts of reception immigrants enter (labour markets, immigrant integration schemes and everyday places) unfold as the key learning sites for (Somali) immigrant entrepreneuring. One practical implication thus might be to consider expanding entrepreneurial education designed for immigrant groups to these key learning sites. Such a course of action would rely upon an important shift in the way participation question is addressed in the debates of immigrant entrepreneurship. The insights gained from this study may also be of assistance to understanding ‘participation to host society’ as an integral part of immigrant entrepreneuring, rather than reading it merely as an outcome to entrepreneurial engagement. What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research? Conceptualising immigrant entrepreneurship as an outcome of a learning process where immigrants are learners, and the host society stands for the context of learning, I deployed a work-learning perspective and the theory of situated learning (Lave & Wenger,1991) in this research. In terms of methods, I adopted a case study approach and deployed a qualitative inquiry followed by informed choices in relation to data collection and data analysis. Semi-structured interview method is used for data collection and reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was chosen for working on the data. A case study approach was particularly useful as it allowed approaching ‘Somali immigrant entrepreneuring’ at its entirety of places, actors and activities. It also allowed for the inclusion of a variety of additional data sources such as employment-related integration data, statistics, as well as both academic and non-academic literature existing on the subject. 

The analysis draws upon two separate data sets conducted with Somali immigrant entrepreneurs living in Finland and in the states of Maine and Minnesota in the US. Comparison is used for descriptive purposes, but the data sets are not collected for the purpose of comparison and converge in one presenting Somali immigrant entrepreneurs as the ‘legitimate peripheral participants’ of the entrepreneurial practice in both countries. Increasing theoretical understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship was the main motivation behind this research design. Is there something else about your doctoral dissertation you would like to share in the press release? The findings of this study, I would say, also add to a new, yet rapidly expanding, research paradigm in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship studies – the ‘place’ paradigm. Borrowing from Webster and Kontkanen (2021), I would like to note that: “the process of naming ‘where’ and ‘what’ in relation to spaces and places goes beyond utilizing context: it highlights how space and place may reveal the powerful intricacies and relations of space- and place making in economic activities”– hence place matters.

The doctoral dissertation of Yasemin Kontkanen , M.Soc.Sc, entitled Legitimate Peripheral Entrepreneuring: Somali immigrant entrepreneuring in Finland and in the United States will be examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies. The Opponent in the public examination will be Professor Östen Wahlbeck of the University of South-Eastern Norway, and the Custos will be Professor emerita Leena Koski , of the University of Eastern Finland.

• Doctoral defence

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation

How to Write a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal

Published on September 21, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

When starting your thesis or dissertation process, one of the first requirements is a research proposal or a prospectus. It describes what or who you want to examine, delving into why, when, where, and how you will do so, stemming from your research question and a relevant topic .

The proposal or prospectus stage is crucial for the development of your research. It helps you choose a type of research to pursue, as well as whether to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

You can download our templates in the format of your choice below.

Download Word template Download Google Docs template

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What should your proposal contain, dissertation question examples, what should your proposal look like, dissertation prospectus examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about proposals.

Prior to jumping into the research for your thesis or dissertation, you first need to develop your research proposal and have it approved by your supervisor. It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives .

Depending on your department’s requirements, there may be a defense component involved, where you present your research plan in prospectus format to your committee for their approval.

Your proposal should answer the following questions:

• Why is your research necessary?
• What is already known about your topic?
• Where and when will your research be conducted?
• Who should be studied?
• How can the research best be done?

Ultimately, your proposal should persuade your supervisor or committee that your proposed project is worth pursuing.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Strong research kicks off with a solid research question , and dissertations are no exception to this.

Dissertation research questions should be:

• Focused on a single problem or issue
• Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
• Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
• Specific enough to answer thoroughly
• Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
• Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly
• What are the main factors enticing people under 30 in suburban areas to engage in the gig economy?
• Which techniques prove most effective for 1st-grade teachers at local elementary schools in engaging students with special needs?
• Which communication streams are the most effective for getting those aged 18-30 to the polls on Election Day?

An easy rule of thumb is that your proposal will usually resemble a (much) shorter version of your thesis or dissertation. While of course it won’t include the results section , discussion section , or conclusion , it serves as a “mini” version or roadmap for what you eventually seek to write.

Be sure to include:

• A succinct introduction to your topic and problem statement
• A brief literature review situating your topic within existing research
• A basic outline of the research methods you think will best answer your research question
• The perceived implications for future research
• A reference list in the citation style of your choice

The length of your proposal varies quite a bit depending on your discipline and type of work you’re conducting. While a thesis proposal is often only 3-7 pages long, a prospectus for your dissertation is usually much longer, with more detailed analysis. Dissertation proposals can be up to 25-30 pages in length.

Writing a proposal or prospectus can be a challenge, but we’ve compiled some examples for you to get your started.

• Example #1: “Geographic Representations of the Planet Mars, 1867-1907” by Maria Lane
• Example #2: “Individuals and the State in Late Bronze Age Greece: Messenian Perspectives on Mycenaean Society” by Dimitri Nakassis
• Example #3: “Manhood Up in the Air: A Study of Male Flight Attendants, Queerness, and Corporate Capitalism during the Cold War Era” by Phil Tiemeyer

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

• Survivorship bias
• Self-serving bias
• Availability heuristic
• Halo effect
• Hindsight bias
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims, that you collect high-quality data, and that you use the right kind of analysis to answer your questions, utilizing credible sources . This allows you to draw valid , trustworthy conclusions.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

• Your research questions and/or hypotheses
• Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
• The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
• Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
• Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
• Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
• Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests  or thematic analysis )

A dissertation prospectus or proposal describes what or who you plan to research for your dissertation. It delves into why, when, where, and how you will do your research, as well as helps you choose a type of research to pursue. You should also determine whether you plan to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives , ready to be approved by your supervisor or committee.

Note that some departments require a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally.

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

• Researchability
• Feasibility and specificity
• Relevance and originality

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, July 18). How to Write a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal. Scribbr. Retrieved June 7, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/thesis-dissertation-proposal/

Is this article helpful?

Tegan George

Other students also liked, a step-by-step guide to the writing process, 10 research question examples to guide your research project, dissertation & thesis outline | example & free templates, get unlimited documents corrected.

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Biostatistics Graduate Program

Julia thome dissertation defense – june 21.

Posted by duthip1 on Friday, June 7, 2024 in News .

PhD candidate Julia Thome will defend her dissertation on Friday, June 21, at 10 a.m. Central Time. The defense will be held in the department’s large conference room on the 11th floor (suite 1100, room 11105), at 2525 West End Avenue. Her advisor is Bryan Shepherd . All are invited and encouraged to attend.

Assessing the Impact of Health Policies: Advancements in Causal Inference Methodology and Real-World Application

This dissertation details the methodology and application of analytical methods using observational data to assess the impact of health policies. We first focus on the difference-in-differences (DID) method and its extensions, particularly in the context of staggered treatment adoption over multiple years. We describe these concepts within the context of Medicaid expansion and retention in care among people living with HIV (PWH) in the United States. We highlight the identification and estimation of the average treatment effect among the treated, emphasizing the necessary assumptions for valid estimation. We then introduce an extension of the DID method capable of estimating average, quantile, probability, and Mann-Whitney treatment effects among the treated under a single approach and a universal parallel trends assumption. Our approach uses a semi-parametric cumulative probability model (CPM) to handle complicated, often difficult-to-model outcome distributions. We demonstrate our approach with a simulation study and an application to Medicaid expansion and CD4 cell count at enrollment into care among PWH in the United States. We then shift away from DID and focus on a real-world application to assess the impact of COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders on the reporting of child maltreatment and whether this impact was modified by socioeconomic characteristics. We find that the numbers and rates of reporting after versus before the stay-at-home orders vary by county-level poverty, unemployment, median annual household income, health insurance coverage, and education. These results offer insights for policymakers on how pandemic-related policies may have varied effects across different socioeconomic groups.

Tags: causal inference , child abuse , child maltreatment , COVID-19 , defense , health policy , HIV , Medicaid , real-world applications , socioeconomic

Leave a Response

You must be logged in to post a comment

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Pak J Med Sci
• v.32(2); Mar-Apr 2016

How to write a Doctoral Thesis

Prof. HR Ahmad, Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. E-mail: [email protected]

Note: * Ahmad HR. In: Medical Writing. Eds. SA Jawaid, MH Jafary & SJ Zuberi. PMJA, 1997 Ed II: 133-142.

PATIENT care and teaching are rather well established components of our medical career. However, with the passage of time a third component has started to influence our medical culture, namely research. 1 - 4 How to accept this challenge is a question. 5 Indeed, teaching and research form a dialectic unit, meaning that teaching without a research component is like a soup without salt. It is a well-established fact that the research activity of an institution is directly proportional to the number of qualified and committed PhD candidates. An inspiring infrastructure, laboratory facilities and libraries are pre-requisites for a research culture to grow. 6 - 8 This forms the basis of a generation cycle for an institution, so that research activity and its culture continues to grow from one generation to the next. The main objective of doctoral work in biomedical sciences is to develop a galaxy of scientist physicians and surgeons possessing high degree of humility, selflessness and ethical superiority. Such a programme will add a scholastic dimension to the clinical faculty.

Education in how to write a doctoral thesis or dissertation should be a part of the postgraduate curriculum, parallel to the laboratory work and Journal Club activities during the PhD studies and/or residency levels. 9 , 10 The overall structure of a doctoral thesis is internationally standardized. However, it varies in style and quality, depending upon how original the work is, and how much the author has understood the work. Therefore a thorough discussion with supervisor, colleagues and assistance from other authors through correspondence can be useful sources for consultation.

The choice of a topic for a doctoral thesis is a crucial step. It should be determined by scanning the literature whether the topic is original or similar work has already been done even a hundred years ago. It is the responsibility of both the supervisor and the PhD candidate to sort out this problem by continuous use of internet and a library. 11 The work leading to the PhD degree can originate from research in following spheres: 12

• b) Methodology
• c) Diagnostic
• d) Therapeutic and Management
• e) Epidemiology

The availability of internationally standardized methods, as well as research committed supervisors can enable physicians and surgeons to do PhD work in both basic and clinical health sciences. The importance of research in basic health sciences cannot be overemphasized. It is rather the base of the applied sciences. There are many instances where the elucidation of a mechanism involved in a process awaits the development of an adequate methodology. 13 In such a scenario; a new method is like a new eye. Research activity in the field of (a) and (b) illuminates the research directions for (c) (d) and (e). It is worth noting that sometimes important basic questions can come from (e) and stimulate research activity in the domain of basic health sciences. 14 , 15

Types of Doctoral Thesis

TYPE-I: Book Form: a classical style. The blueprint of this form is shown in Table-I .

Type-I: The Classical Book Form

TYPE-II: Cumulative Doctoral thesis: A modem but quite useful practice.

INTRODUCTION

A book containing the pearls of a PhD work has standardized divisions and formats, where the number of pages should be weighted in terms of content rather than container. The book includes summary, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, references and acknowledgements.

Two exercises are mandatory before starting a PhD programme:

• Literature survey using a regular library hours and internet surfing
• Familiarization with the hands-on-experience of methodology involved in the work
• The importance of a continuous literature survey using library, internet and direct correspondence with authors across the globe in the same field cannot be over-emphasized. The main goal of this exercise is to pinpoint the unresolved problem in the literature. An attempt to solve this problem now becomes the topic of the PhD thesis. All the relevant references should be collected, and carefully preserved in the form of a card system arranged alphabetically according to themes and authors. The introduction of the thesis should be styled like a review article with a critical analysis of the work of authors in the literature. The aims of the present PhD work can then also be addressed in the form of questions. The objectives would then deal with how to achieve the aims of the proposed study.

MATERIALS / SUBJECTS AND METHODS

Now comes the most crucial and functional part of the doctoral work, the materials/subjects and methods section. This part can be considered as the motor of the PhD work. The reliability, sensitivity and specificity of the motor must be checked before embarking on a long journey. Controlling the controls is the best guide for a precise and authentic work. Usually materials and methods contain components such as a description of the species involved, their number, age, weight and anthropometric parameters, types of surgical procedures and anesthesia if applied, and a detailed description of methodology. Continuous or point measurements should be thoroughly described. However, a dynamic method should always be preferred to static one.

The experimental protocol should be designed after a small pilot study, which is especially advisable in research on human subjects. A detailed and well-thought experimental protocol forms the basis of conditions under which the results would be obtained. Any deviation from the experimental protocol will affect the outcome, and the interpretation of results. It may be noted that great discoveries are usually accidental and without a protocol, based merely on careful observation! However, for the sake of a publication, a protocol has to be designed after the discovery. After having described the different phases of the experimental protocol with the help of a schematic diagram e.g., showing variables, time period and interventions, the selection of a statistical method should be discussed. Negative results should not be disregarded because they represent the boundary conditions of positive results. Sometimes the negative results are the real results.

It is usual practice that most PhD candidates start writing the methodological components first. This is followed by writing the results. The pre-requisites for writing results are that all figures, tables, schematic diagrams of methods and a working model should be ready. They should be designed in such a way that the information content of each figure should, when projected as a frame be visually clear to audience viewing it from a distance of about fifty feet. It is often observed that the presenters themselves have difficulty in deciphering a frame of the Power-Point being projected in a conference.

The results of a doctoral thesis should be treated like a bride. The flow of writing results becomes easier if all figures and tables are well prepared. This promotes the train of thoughts required to analyze the data in a quantitative fashion. The golden rule of writing results of a thesis is to describe what the figure shows. No explanation is required. One should avoid writing anything which is not there in a figure. Before writing one should observe each diagram for some time and make a list of observations in the form of key words. The more one has understood the information content of a figure; the better will be the fluency of writing. The interruption of the flow in writing most often indicates that an author has not understood the results. Discussion with colleagues or reference to the literature is the only remedy, and it functions sometimes like a caesarean procedure.

Statistical methods are good devices to test the degree of authenticity and precision of results if appropriately applied. The application of statistical technique in human studies poses difficulties because of large standard deviations. Outliers must be discussed, if they are excluded for the sake of statistical significance. Large standard deviations can be minimized by increasing the number of observations. If a regression analysis is not weighted, it gives faulty information. The correlation coefficient value can change from 0.7 to 0.4 if the regression analysis is weighted using Fisher’s test. The dissection of effect from artifact should be analysed in such a way that the signal to noise ratio of a parameter should be considered. A competent statistician should always be consulted in order to avoid the danger of distortion of results.

The legend of a figure should be well written. It contains a title, a brief description of variables and interventions, the main effect and a concluding remark conveying the original message. The writing of PhD work is further eased by a well maintained collection of data in the form of log book, original recordings, analyzed references with summaries and compiling the virgin data of the study on master plan sheet to understand the original signals before submitting to the procedures of statistics. The original data belong to the laboratory of an institution where it came into being and should be preserved for 5-7 years in the archive for the sake of brevity.

This is the liveliest part of a thesis. Its main goal is to defend the work by staging a constructive debate with the literature. The golden rule of this written debate should be that a rigid explanation looks backward and a design looks forward. The object is to derive a model out of a jig-saw puzzle of information. It should be designed in such a way that the results of the present study and those of authors from the literature can be better discussed and interpreted. Agreement and disagreement can be better resolved if one considers under what experimental conditions the results were obtained by the various authors. It means that the boundary conditions for each result should be carefully analyzed and compared.

The discussion can be divided into the following parts:

• criticism of material/subjects and methods
• a list of important observations of the present study
• interpretation and comparison of results of other authors using a literature table
• design of a model
• claim of an original research work
• The criticism of the methodological procedure enables a candidate to demonstrate how precisely the research work has been carried out. The interpretation of results depends critically on the strict experimental protocol and methods. For example, an epidemiological work is a study of a population. However, if the population sampling is done regularly at a specific location; the question arises as to how a result derived from a localized place can be applied to the whole population.
• After having discussed at length the strong and weak points of material/subjects and methods, one should list in a telegraphic design the most important observations of the present study. This may form a good agenda to initiate interpretation, argument, reasoning and comparison with results of other authors. The outcome of this constructive debate should permit the design of a working model in the form of a block diagram. All statements should be very carefully referenced. The ratio of agreement and disagreement should indicate the ability of the author to reconcile conflicting data in an objective and quantitative way. Attempts should be made to design a solution out of the given quantum of information. It is also well known that most of the processes of human physiology can only be understood if their time course is known. The dynamic aspect of interpretation of results is therefore more powerful and superior to the static one. 16 Therefore a continuous record of variables should be preferred and sought to reveal the secrets hidden in the kinetics.
• Finally, the discussion should conclude how far the study was successful in answering the questions being posed at the end of the introduction part. Usually a doctoral thesis raises more questions than it answers. In this way research does not come to a standstill and does become a life time engagement for a committed scientist. Also it is important to note that all scientific theses should be quantifiable and falsifiable, otherwise they lose the spirit and fragrance of a scientific research.
• The author’s claim of original work is finally decided by the critical review of his research work by the literature and the number of times being cited. It can be easily read by a high rate of a citation index of a publication and invitation. When a methodological research clicks, one becomes a star overnight.

Type-II: CUMULATIVE DOCTORAL THESES

Another way of writing a doctoral work is a cumulative type of thesis. 11 It consists of a few original publications in refereed journals of repute. It is supplemented by a concise summary about the research work. This type of thesis is usually practiced in Sweden, Germany and other countries. It has the advantage of being doubly refereed by the journals and the faculty of health sciences. Additionally, papers are published during a doctoral work. A declaration has to be given to the faculty of science about the sharing of research work in publications, provided there are co-authors. The weightage should be in favour of the PhD candidate, so that the thesis can ethically be better defended before the team of august research faculty.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A critical review of this manuscript by Dr. Roger Sutton, Dr. Khalid Khan, Dr. Bukhtiar Shah and Dr. Satwat Hashmi is gratefully acknowledged.

Dedicated to the memory of Mr. Azim Kidwai for his exemplary academic commitment and devotion to the science journalism in Pakistan.

Skip to Content

Other ways to search:

• Events Calendar

Congratulations to Paige for Successfully Defending her PhD Thesis

Paige's PhD work was related to developing multi-scale computational models of electrochemical systems for reduction of carbon dioxide and nitrates. 

Paige is moving to Switzerland for a post-doc. Congratulations Paige, and best of luck on your future endeavors!