how to write dissertation phd

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 ...

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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.

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• Dissertation

How to Write a Dissertation | A Guide to Structure & Content

A dissertation or thesis is a long piece of academic writing based on original research, submitted as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

The structure of a dissertation depends on your field, but it is usually divided into at least four or five chapters (including an introduction and conclusion chapter).

The most common dissertation structure in the sciences and social sciences includes:

• An introduction to your topic
• A literature review that surveys relevant sources
• An explanation of your methodology
• An overview of the results of your research
• A discussion of the results and their implications
• A conclusion that shows what your research has contributed

Dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an argument by analysing primary and secondary sources . Instead of the standard structure outlined here, you might organise your chapters around different themes or case studies.

Other important elements of the dissertation include the title page , abstract , and reference list . If in doubt about how your dissertation should be structured, always check your department’s guidelines and consult with your supervisor.

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review / theoretical framework, methodology, reference list.

The very first page of your document contains your dissertation’s title, your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date. Sometimes it also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and the university’s logo. Many programs have strict requirements for formatting the dissertation title page .

The title page is often used as cover when printing and binding your dissertation .

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The acknowledgements section is usually optional, and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, participants in your research, and friends or family who supported you.

The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about 150-300 words long. You should write it at the very end, when you’ve completed the rest of the dissertation. In the abstract, make sure to:

• State the main topic and aims of your research
• Describe the methods you used
• Summarise the main results
• State your conclusions

Although the abstract is very short, it’s the first part (and sometimes the only part) of your dissertation that people will read, so it’s important that you get it right. If you’re struggling to write a strong abstract, read our guide on how to write an abstract .

In the table of contents, list all of your chapters and subheadings and their page numbers. The dissertation contents page gives the reader an overview of your structure and helps easily navigate the document.

All parts of your dissertation should be included in the table of contents, including the appendices. You can generate a table of contents automatically in Word.

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If you have used a lot of tables and figures in your dissertation, you should itemise them in a numbered list . You can automatically generate this list using the Insert Caption feature in Word.

If you have used a lot of abbreviations in your dissertation, you can include them in an alphabetised list of abbreviations so that the reader can easily look up their meanings.

If you have used a lot of highly specialised terms that will not be familiar to your reader, it might be a good idea to include a glossary . List the terms alphabetically and explain each term with a brief description or definition.

In the introduction, you set up your dissertation’s topic, purpose, and relevance, and tell the reader what to expect in the rest of the dissertation. The introduction should:

• Establish your research topic , giving necessary background information to contextualise your work
• Narrow down the focus and define the scope of the research
• Discuss the state of existing research on the topic, showing your work’s relevance to a broader problem or debate
• Clearly state your objectives and research questions , and indicate how you will answer them
• Give an overview of your dissertation’s structure

Everything in the introduction should be clear, engaging, and relevant to your research. By the end, the reader should understand the what , why and how of your research. Not sure how? Read our guide on how to write a dissertation introduction .

Before you start on your research, you should have conducted a literature review to gain a thorough understanding of the academic work that already exists on your topic. This means:

• Collecting sources (e.g. books and journal articles) and selecting the most relevant ones
• Critically evaluating and analysing each source
• Drawing connections between them (e.g. themes, patterns, conflicts, gaps) to make an overall point

In the dissertation literature review chapter or section, you shouldn’t just summarise existing studies, but develop a coherent structure and argument that leads to a clear basis or justification for your own research. For example, it might aim to show how your research:

• Addresses a gap in the literature
• Takes a new theoretical or methodological approach to the topic
• Proposes a solution to an unresolved problem
• Advances a theoretical debate
• Builds on and strengthens existing knowledge with new data

The literature review often becomes the basis for a theoretical framework , in which you define and analyse the key theories, concepts and models that frame your research. In this section you can answer descriptive research questions about the relationship between concepts or variables.

The methodology chapter or section describes how you conducted your research, allowing your reader to assess its validity. You should generally include:

• The overall approach and type of research (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, experimental, ethnographic)
• Your methods of collecting data (e.g. interviews, surveys, archives)
• Details of where, when, and with whom the research took place
• Your methods of analysing data (e.g. statistical analysis, discourse analysis)
• Tools and materials you used (e.g. computer programs, lab equipment)
• A discussion of any obstacles you faced in conducting the research and how you overcame them
• An evaluation or justification of your methods

Your aim in the methodology is to accurately report what you did, as well as convincing the reader that this was the best approach to answering your research questions or objectives.

Next, you report the results of your research . You can structure this section around sub-questions, hypotheses, or topics. Only report results that are relevant to your objectives and research questions. In some disciplines, the results section is strictly separated from the discussion, while in others the two are combined.

For example, for qualitative methods like in-depth interviews, the presentation of the data will often be woven together with discussion and analysis, while in quantitative and experimental research, the results should be presented separately before you discuss their meaning. If you’re unsure, consult with your supervisor and look at sample dissertations to find out the best structure for your research.

In the results section it can often be helpful to include tables, graphs and charts. Think carefully about how best to present your data, and don’t include tables or figures that just repeat what you have written  –  they should provide extra information or usefully visualise the results in a way that adds value to your text.

Full versions of your data (such as interview transcripts) can be included as an appendix .

The discussion  is where you explore the meaning and implications of your results in relation to your research questions. Here you should interpret the results in detail, discussing whether they met your expectations and how well they fit with the framework that you built in earlier chapters. If any of the results were unexpected, offer explanations for why this might be. It’s a good idea to consider alternative interpretations of your data and discuss any limitations that might have influenced the results.

The discussion should reference other scholarly work to show how your results fit with existing knowledge. You can also make recommendations for future research or practical action.

The dissertation conclusion should concisely answer the main research question, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of your central argument. Wrap up your dissertation with a final reflection on what you did and how you did it. The conclusion often also includes recommendations for research or practice.

In this section, it’s important to show how your findings contribute to knowledge in the field and why your research matters. What have you added to what was already known?

You must include full details of all sources that you have cited in a reference list (sometimes also called a works cited list or bibliography). It’s important to follow a consistent reference style . Each style has strict and specific requirements for how to format your sources in the reference list.

The most common styles used in UK universities are Harvard referencing and Vancouver referencing . Your department will often specify which referencing style you should use – for example, psychology students tend to use APA style , humanities students often use MHRA , and law students always use OSCOLA . M ake sure to check the requirements, and ask your supervisor if you’re unsure.

To save time creating the reference list and make sure your citations are correctly and consistently formatted, you can use our free APA Citation Generator .

Your dissertation itself should contain only essential information that directly contributes to answering your research question. Documents you have used that do not fit into the main body of your dissertation (such as interview transcripts, survey questions or tables with full figures) can be added as appendices .

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Authoring a PhD

How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation

• © 2003
• Latest edition
• Patrick Dunleavy 0

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

• Covers all the core aspects of doctoral research, from forming research questions through to final submission
• Includes a chapter on getting published, with practical guidance on writing and submitting journal papers and reshaping a thesis into a monograph
• Draws on the author’s own experience of supervising over 30 PhD students

Part of the book series: Macmillan Study Skills (MASTSK)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Front matter, becoming an author.

Patrick Dunleavy

Envisioning the Thesis as a Whole

Planning an integrated thesis: the macro-structure, organizing a chapter or paper: the micro-structure, writing clearly: style and referencing issues, developing your text and managing the writing process, handling attention points: data, charts and graphics, the end-game: finishing your doctorate, publishing your research, back matter.

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About this book

This engaging and highly regarded book takes readers through the key stages of their PhD research journey, from the initial ideas through to successful completion and publication. It gives helpful guidance on forming research questions, organising ideas, pulling together a final draft, handling the viva and getting published. Each chapter contains a wealth of practical suggestions and tips for readers to try out and adapt to their own research needs and disciplinary style.

Authors and Affiliations

About the author, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Authoring a PhD

Book Subtitle : How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation

Authors : Patrick Dunleavy

Series Title : Macmillan Study Skills

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80208-7

Publisher : Red Globe Press London

eBook Packages : Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies Collection , Social Sciences (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2003

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIII, 297

Additional Information : Previously published under the imprint Palgrave

Topics : Research Methods in Education

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Guide to writing your thesis/dissertation, definition of dissertation and thesis.

The dissertation or thesis is a scholarly treatise that substantiates a specific point of view as a result of original research that is conducted by students during their graduate study. At Cornell, the thesis is a requirement for the receipt of the M.A. and M.S. degrees and some professional master’s degrees. The dissertation is a requirement of the Ph.D. degree.

Formatting Requirement and Standards

The Graduate School sets the minimum format for your thesis or dissertation, while you, your special committee, and your advisor/chair decide upon the content and length. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, and other mechanical issues are your sole responsibility. Generally, the thesis and dissertation should conform to the standards of leading academic journals in your field. The Graduate School does not monitor the thesis or dissertation for mechanics, content, or style.

“Papers Option” Dissertation or Thesis

A “papers option” is available only to students in certain fields, which are listed on the Fields Permitting the Use of Papers Option page , or by approved petition. If you choose the papers option, your dissertation or thesis is organized as a series of relatively independent chapters or papers that you have submitted or will be submitting to journals in the field. You must be the only author or the first author of the papers to be used in the dissertation. The papers-option dissertation or thesis must meet all format and submission requirements, and a singular referencing convention must be used throughout.

ProQuest Electronic Submissions

The dissertation and thesis become permanent records of your original research, and in the case of doctoral research, the Graduate School requires publication of the dissertation and abstract in its original form. All Cornell master’s theses and doctoral dissertations require an electronic submission through ProQuest, which fills orders for paper or digital copies of the thesis and dissertation and makes a digital version available online via their subscription database, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses . For master’s theses, only the abstract is available. ProQuest provides worldwide distribution of your work from the master copy. You retain control over your dissertation and are free to grant publishing rights as you see fit. The formatting requirements contained in this guide meet all ProQuest specifications.

Copies of Dissertation and Thesis

Copies of Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses are also uploaded in PDF format to the Cornell Library Repository, eCommons . A print copy of each master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation is submitted to Cornell University Library by ProQuest.

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5 Tips for Writing Your Ph.D. Dissertation

Somewhere around the end of the first year of your Ph.D. program, you will probably start (or have already begun) thinking about your Ph.D. dissertation — that all-encompassing body of work that is the pinnacle getting a doctorate .

Your Ph.D. dissertation can seem intimidating. After all, it is the culmination of years of sacrifice and dedication and something that is a representation of those efforts. But, rest assured, with a well-thought-out plan, ample time, a strong support system, and some effort and determination you can confidently write a dissertation to be proud of.

To help you along the way, we’ve put together five tips for writing your dissertation. Read on to get started!

Plan WAY Ahead: Develop A Dissertation Timeline

The whole Ph.D. dissertation process can vary greatly from person to person, depending on the topic you have chosen, your writing abilities, and the number of drafts and revisions you have to do. Typically, after 1 to 2 years of coursework, Ph.D. students are able to complete their dissertations in an additional 3 to 5 years.

One of the best ways to ensure that you will cross your dissertation finish line is to develop a plan to get there. From the very beginning of your Ph.D. program, outline a tentative timeline that will take you from the start of your topic search, through the end of your dissertation defense. Although you might deviate from your schedule, planning far in advance will ensure that you don’t get too far off track.

For example, here is a rough outline of what students need to accomplish every semester in order to complete their dissertation in 4 years:

Semester 1 — Acquaint yourself with your school’s resources, databases, and libraries.

Semester 2 — Begin looking at topics that interest you and reading the relevant literature.

Semester 3 — Continue with your review of the literature, while you search for and choose a dissertation topic.

Semester 4 — Search for and choose an advisor/committee.

Semester 5 — Develop your topic, meet with your advisor, and craft your proposal.

Semester 6 — Defend your proposal and make edits if necessary. Begin conducting research.

Semester 7 — Analyze the data and begin drafting and revising the dissertation. Consult with your advisor and ask for feedback.

Semester 8 — Finalize the dissertation and defend it.

Don’t live and die by this timeline. This is just an example. If your research takes you two semesters instead of one, that is okay! If you are able to complete your review of the literature over the summer, that’s fine too. Develop a schedule for yourself, but also be flexible and understanding if things don’t move at the planned pace.

Meet with Your Advisor (Then Meet Again, and Again)

Your advisor is your best friend throughout the dissertation process. You have never written a Ph.D. dissertation before, but they have! A great place to start is to begin by reading (or skimming) their dissertation. This will give you a good idea of what they will expect from your body of work.

It is easier to seek advice and counsel at the beginning of the writing process (and at several check-points throughout) then to charge ahead unguided and have to make major course-corrections in the final stretch of your degree. Plan a few meetings a year with your advisor and stick to them. You don’t need to update your advisor every step of the way, but it is good to check-in at regular intervals.

Don’t be afraid to look to them for advice, but do be mindful of their time. While they are here to help you, your dissertation is not their only responsibility. Be sure to give them enough time to read your work and provide feedback, and ask questions that are direct and specific so they know exactly how to help you.

Write the Easiest Sections First

Not all sections of a dissertation are created equal — there are some that are more challenging to write, and several that are easier because they require less in-depth analysis. The sections of a dissertation can vary greatly based on your field and subject, as well as your school’s procedures. It is best to determine with your advisor what sections are expected of you at the beginning of the dissertation process. Here are the most commonly required sections of a Ph.D. dissertation:

Introduction

Literature Review

Methodology

Chapters/Articles

Bibliography/Works Cited

Among these sections, you should start by writing the methodology section. This is the easiest to write and the quickest to finish. Accomplishing this section will give you a confidence boost to dive into more challenging writing. Similarly, leave editing your abstract for last. The abstract is the section that provides an overview of your entire body of work, so it is simple to finalize once the major writing and organizing is complete.

Write Small Sections Every Single Day

Writing a little every day is a much better plan for success then cramming thousands of words into a few short months. It takes discipline and dedication, but committing to writing a small portion of your dissertation every day will not only strengthen your writing skills, but it will also help you avoid writer's block and keep you from feeling overwhelmed as your deadline approaches.

Another tip is to break each of the larger sections of the dissertation into smaller, more manageable pieces. Staring down the nose of a 20-page literature review is daunting and discouraging, but break that into 10 two-page chunks and suddenly that you can accomplish one in an afternoon.

Take Criticism Constructively and Learn from It

Finally, ask as many people as possible to read pieces (don’t give them the whole thing at once) of your dissertation and ask for their honest feedback. Employ the help of not only your advisor but your study and research partners, family and friends, and other professors within your field. The more people you can get to look at your dissertation, the better.

Also, don’t be discouraged by the feedback you receive in your formal committee reviews. Rather, take it as an opportunity to improve and learn from the best and brightest in your discipline. Your dissertation committee wants you to succeed and to help you produce your best possible work.

Your Ph.D. dissertation is an opportunity to showcase the work that you have done and highlight how your contributions have furthered the limits and understanding within your discipline. It is a great opportunity to present your best efforts for recognition, so don’t let the gravity of the document deter you. With a solid plan, a thorough understanding of what is expected, and people to support you, you are well on your way to succeeding!

Learn more about earning your Ph.D. by downloading our Guide to Choosing, Applying for and Thriving in a Ph.D. Program! 

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10 tips for writing a PhD thesis

Ingrid curl shares simple rules for keeping your work clear and jargon-free.

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Writing up a PhD can often take place in a frenzy of activity in the last few months of your degree study, after years of hard work. But there are some steps that you can take to increase your chances of success.

• Do not be daunted by the task of “writing up”. Work on the text as your PhD takes shape, remember that all writers need editing, and help yourself by using these basic tips to make life easier. Read what great writers say about how to write before you start, and take their advice to heart. There is no dark art to clear, concise work; it is mostly a result of editing, and editing again. Above all, keep Elmore Leonard’s advice in mind: “If it reads like writing…rewrite it.”
• Plan the structure of your thesis carefully with your supervisor. Create rough drafts as you go so that you can refine them as you become more focused on the write-up. Much of writing comprises rewriting so be prepared to rework each chapter many times. Even Ernest Hemingway said: “The first draft of everything is shit.”
• Academic writing does not have to be dry. Inject some flair into your work. Read advice on writing and remember George Orwell’s words in Why I Write : “Never use the passive where you can use the active”; and Mark Twain’s on adjectives: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.” If you prefer, Stephen King said: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
• Do not write up in chronological order. Work on each chapter while it is fresh in your mind or pertinent to what you are doing at that moment, but come back to it all later and work it up into a consistent, coherent piece, restructuring sections where necessary.
• Think carefully about your writing. Write your first draft, leave it and then come back to it with a critical eye. Look objectively at the writing and read it closely for style and sense. Look out for common errors such as dangling modifiers, subject-verb disagreement and inconsistency. If you are too involved with the text to be able to take a step back and do this, then ask a friend or colleague to read it with a critical eye. Remember Hemingway’s advice: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” Clarity is key.
• Most universities use a preferred style of references. Make sure you know what this is and stick to it. One of the most common errors in academic writing is to cite papers in the text that do not then appear in the bibliography. All references in your thesis need to be cross-checked with the bibliography before submission. Using a database during your research can save a great deal of time in the writing-up process. Helpful software includes EndNote or Paperpile. Managing your bibliography from day one may seem obsessive but it will save you a great deal of time and stress by the end of the PhD process.
• Use a house style. Professional publications such as Times Higher Education use a house style guide to ensure consistency in spelling. For example, do not use both -ise spellings and -ize spellings, stick to British spelling and be consistent when referring to organisations or bodies. Because dictionaries vary in their use of hyphenation, use one dictionary and stick to it throughout the writing process. If you consult the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors , you will note the extraordinary number of words with alternative spellings. It can also be a very useful guide to preferred spellings, use of italicisation and foreign phrases.
• Take care when quoting from other sources. Ensure you note whether the italic emphasis is in the original and take careful notes when you are collecting quotes for your thesis. Transcribe them accurately to save work later and keep original spellings (even if they differ from your chosen style) to ensure fidelity to your source.
• Think about plagiarism. If you are quoting from works, quote from them accurately and paraphrase where necessary for your argument. This is where careful note-taking and use of references is invaluable and will help you to avoid even inadvertently plagiarising another work.
• Remember that your thesis is your chance to present your work in the best possible light. Consider your opening paragraphs, entice your reader with your writing and above all be clear about your hypothesis and your conclusion. Append material where it adds value but not where it merely bulks out your work. Consider your reader at all times. This is your chance to showcase your work.

If you stick to these simple rules, your writing will be clear and jargon-free. Above all, take to heart Orwell’s advice: “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

Ingrid Curl is associate editor of  Times Higher Education , and a former PhD student.

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Thesis and Dissertation: Getting Started

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The resources in this section are designed to provide guidance for the first steps of the thesis or dissertation writing process. They offer tools to support the planning and managing of your project, including writing out your weekly schedule, outlining your goals, and organzing the various working elements of your project.

Weekly Goals Sheet (a.k.a. Life Map) [Word Doc]

This editable handout provides a place for you to fill in available time blocks on a weekly chart that will help you visualize the amount of time you have available to write. By using this chart, you will be able to work your writing goals into your schedule and put these goals into perspective with your day-to-day plans and responsibilities each week. This handout also contains a formula to help you determine the minimum number of pages you would need to write per day in order to complete your writing on time.

Setting a Production Schedule (Word Doc)

This editable handout can help you make sense of the various steps involved in the production of your thesis or dissertation and determine how long each step might take. A large part of this process involves (1) seeking out the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding specific document formatting requirements, (2) understanding research protocol limitations, (3) making note of deadlines, and (4) understanding your personal writing habits.

Creating a Roadmap (PDF)

Part of organizing your writing involves having a clear sense of how the different working parts relate to one another. Creating a roadmap for your dissertation early on can help you determine what the final document will include and how all the pieces are connected. This resource offers guidance on several approaches to creating a roadmap, including creating lists, maps, nut-shells, visuals, and different methods for outlining. It is important to remember that you can create more than one roadmap (or more than one type of roadmap) depending on how the different approaches discussed here meet your needs.

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Know How to Structure Your PhD Thesis

• 4 minute read

Table of Contents

In your academic career, few projects are more important than your PhD thesis. Unfortunately, many university professors and advisors assume that their students know how to structure a PhD. Books have literally been written on the subject, but there’s no need to read a book in order to know about PhD thesis paper format and structure. With that said, however, it’s important to understand that your PhD thesis format requirement may not be the same as another student’s. The bottom line is that how to structure a PhD thesis often depends on your university and department guidelines.

But, let’s take a look at a general PhD thesis format. We’ll look at the main sections, and how to connect them to each other. We’ll also examine different hints and tips for each of the sections. As you read through this toolkit, compare it to published PhD theses in your area of study to see how a real-life example looks.

Main Sections of a PhD Thesis

In almost every PhD thesis or dissertation, there are standard sections. Of course, some of these may differ, depending on your university or department requirements, as well as your topic of study, but this will give you a good idea of the basic components of a PhD thesis format.

• Abstract : The abstract is a brief summary that quickly outlines your research, touches on each of the main sections of your thesis, and clearly outlines your contribution to the field by way of your PhD thesis. Even though the abstract is very short, similar to what you’ve seen in published research articles, its impact shouldn’t be underestimated. The abstract is there to answer the most important question to the reviewer. “Why is this important?”
• Introduction : In this section, you help the reviewer understand your entire dissertation, including what your paper is about, why it’s important to the field, a brief description of your methodology, and how your research and the thesis are laid out. Think of your introduction as an expansion of your abstract.
• Literature Review : Within the literature review, you are making a case for your new research by telling the story of the work that’s already been done. You’ll cover a bit about the history of the topic at hand, and how your study fits into the present and future.
• Theory Framework : Here, you explain assumptions related to your study. Here you’re explaining to the review what theoretical concepts you might have used in your research, how it relates to existing knowledge and ideas.
• Methods : This section of a PhD thesis is typically the most detailed and descriptive, depending of course on your research design. Here you’ll discuss the specific techniques you used to get the information you were looking for, in addition to how those methods are relevant and appropriate, as well as how you specifically used each method described.
• Results : Here you present your empirical findings. This section is sometimes also called the “empiracles” chapter. This section is usually pretty straightforward and technical, and full of details. Don’t shortcut this chapter.
• Discussion : This can be a tricky chapter, because it’s where you want to show the reviewer that you know what you’re talking about. You need to speak as a PhD versus a student. The discussion chapter is similar to the empirical/results chapter, but you’re building on those results to push the new information that you learned, prior to making your conclusion.
• Conclusion : Here, you take a step back and reflect on what your original goals and intentions for the research were. You’ll outline them in context of your new findings and expertise.

Tips for your PhD Thesis Format

As you put together your PhD thesis, it’s easy to get a little overwhelmed. Here are some tips that might keep you on track.

• Don’t try to write your PhD as a first-draft. Every great masterwork has typically been edited, and edited, and…edited.
• Work with your thesis supervisor to plan the structure and format of your PhD thesis. Be prepared to rewrite each section, as you work out rough drafts. Don’t get discouraged by this process. It’s typical.
• Make your writing interesting. Academic writing has a reputation of being very dry.
• You don’t have to necessarily work on the chapters and sections outlined above in chronological order. Work on each section as things come up, and while your work on that section is relevant to what you’re doing.
• Don’t rush things. Write a first draft, and leave it for a few days, so you can come back to it with a more critical take. Look at it objectively and carefully grammatical errors, clarity, logic and flow.
• Know what style your references need to be in, and utilize tools out there to organize them in the required format.
• It’s easier to accidentally plagiarize than you think. Make sure you’re referencing appropriately, and check your document for inadvertent plagiarism throughout your writing process.

PhD Thesis Editing Plus

Want some support during your PhD writing process? Our PhD Thesis Editing Plus service includes extensive and detailed editing of your thesis to improve the flow and quality of your writing. Unlimited editing support for guaranteed results. Learn more here , and get started today!

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How to plan, structure and write every chapter in your PhD

In this collection, we’ll walk you through each chapter of your thesis. You’ll learn what goes where and how it fits together. 

The PhD Discussion Chapter: What It Is & How To Write It

  Your PhD discussion chapter is your thesis's intellectual epicenter. Think of it as the scholarly equivalent of a courtroom closing argument, where you summarise the evidence and make your case. Perhaps that’s why it’s so tricky - the skills you need in your...

Everything you wanted to know about structuring your PhD but were too afraid to ask

Understanding how to structure your PhD is tough. It helps to break it down into four distinct sections. In this guide, we explain how.

How to find the thread that runs through your PhD thesis

You probably worry about finding the thread that runs through the PhD thesis. In this guide we walk you through what’s required.

How to edit a PhD thesis (without going mad)

Your thesis takes a lot of time to research, ideate, and write. Here’s how to properly edit a PhD thesis such that you impress your examiners and achieve even greater success.

The 9 most effective ways to achieve PhD success

  Writing a PhD is physically, intellectually and emotionally daunting. You may spend each day doubting yourself, not sure if you’re making the right choices and unsure whether you’ve got what it takes. During my life, I’ve helped thousands of PhD students like...

How To Structure A PhD Thesis

Struggling to understand what goes where? Let us walk you through a non-nonsense guide that’ll teach you how to structure a PhD thesis.

The difference between empirical and discussion chapters (and how to write them)

There is a very important distinction that needs to be made between the empirical and discussion sections/chapters. It is a common misconception that the empirical chapters are the place for your analysis. Often this confuses the reader.

Five tips to improve your PhD thesis

Regardless of what stage of the writing process you are at, there are five overarching tips you need to keep in mind if you want to improve your PhD thesis.

What are you doing and how are you doing it? Articulating your aims and objectives.

How long does it take the person reading your thesis to understand what you’re doing and how you’re doing it? If the answer is anything other than ’in the the opening lines of the thesis’, keep reading.

Learn how to write a PhD proposal that will stand out from the rest

When stripped down to its basic components, the PhD proposal explains the what and the why of your research. What it will be about and why it will be important.

Easily understand how to write a PhD thesis introduction

Get the introduction right and the rest of your dissertation will follow. Mess it up and you’ll be struggling to catch up. The introduction is the place to factually recount what it is you will be discussing in the thesis. Learn more in this detailed guide.

Last impressions count – writing your PhD thesis conclusion

The conclusion is the last thing your examiner will read before they write their viva report. You need to make sure it stands out.

What is a dissertation abstract and how do I write one for my PhD?

Don’t underestimate how hard it is to write a PhD thesis abstract. When I wrote mine I though it’d be straightforward. Far from it. It’s tricky. You have to condense hundred of pages and years of work into a few hundred words.

Russian (dolls) to the rescue – how to structure an argument in your PhD

At the core of the PhD are arguments. Lots of them. Some more important and some very specific. When you understand how to structure an argument, your thesis reads clearly and logically. If you don’t the reader ends up confused and your thesis suffers.

Drowning in a sea of authors – How to be critical in a PhD literature review.

Don’t get lost in a sea of authors when you write your PhD literature review. Instead be critical. In this guide we explain how.

Wrestling an elephant into a cupboard: how to write a PhD literature review in nine easy steps

When I was writing my PhD I hated the literature review. I was scared of it. I thought it would be impossible to grapple. So much so that it used to keep me up at night. Now I know how easy it can be and I’m sharing my top tips with you today.

A Template To Help You Structure Your PhD’s Theoretical Framework Chapter

In this guide, I explain how to use the theory framework template. The focus is on the practical things to consider when you’re working with the template and how you can give your theory framework the rockstar treatment.

How To Structure A PhD With Our PhD Writing Template

Our PhD Writing Template allows you to visualise your PhD on one page. Here we explain how to fill it in and how it can help you structure each chapter.

Eureka! When I learnt how to write a theoretical framework

The theoretical framework is so important, but so misunderstood. Here we explain it is in simple terms: as a toolbox.

Explore Other PhD Knowledge Base Collections

Eight collections of free resources to help you along the phd journey.

Mastering your theory and literature review chapters

How to structure and write every chapter of the PhD

How to stay motivated and productive

Techniques to improve your writing and fluency

Advice on maintaining good mental health

Resources designed for non-native English speakers

Explore our back-catalogue of motivational advice

Each week we send out a short, motivational email to over 4,000 students. Here you can sign up and access the archive.

A free one-page PhD structure template

This page is about how to turn your research (once it's done) into a readable multi-chapter document. You need to figure out what to include, how to organize it, and how to present it.

Following this advice will make me happier about reading your submitted or draft dissertation. You may find it useful even if I'm not going to read your dissertation.

Many others have written usefully on this subject , including someone in the Annals of Improbable Research . There's also advice on writing a thesis proposal . However, this page focuses on what a finished dissertation should look like. You could also skim good dissertations on the web.

What Goes Into a Dissertation?

A typical thesis will motivate why a new idea is needed, present the cool new idea, convince the reader that it's cool and new and might apply to the reader's own problems, and evaluate how well it worked. Just like a paper!

The result must be a substantial, original contribution to scientific knowledge. It signals your official entrance into the community of scholars. Treat it as an chance to make a mark, not as a 900-page-tall memorial to your graduate student life.

Beyond stapling

The cynical view is that if you've written several related papers, you staple them together to get a dissertation. That's a good first-order approximation -- you should incorporate ideas and text from your papers. But what is it missing?

First, a thesis should cohere -- ideally, it should feel like one long paper. Second, it should provide added value: there should be people who would prefer reading it to simply reading your papers. Otherwise writing it would be a meaningless exercise.

Here's what to do after stapling:

Taking Responsibility

Don't expect your advisor to be your co-author. It's your Ph.D.: you are sole author this time and the responsibility is on your shoulders. If your prose is turgid or thoughtless, misspelled or ungrammatical, oblivious or rude to related research, you're the one who looks bad.

You can do it! Your advisor and committee are basically on your side -- they're probably willing to make suggestions about content and style -- but they are not obligated to fix problems for you. They may send your dissertation back and tell you to fix it.

In the following sections, I'll start with advice about the thesis as a whole, and work downward, eventually reaching small details such as typography and citations.

Know Your Audience

First, choose your target audience. That crucial early decision will tell you what to explain, what to emphasize, and how to phrase and organize it. Checking it with your advisor might be wise.

Pretty much everything in your thesis should be relevant to your chosen audience. Think about them as you write. Ask yourself:

What does your audience already know?

You can also safely assume that your readers have some prior familiarity with your research area. Just how much familiarity, and with which topics, is a judgment call -- again, you have to decide who your intended audience is.

In practice, your audience will be somewhat mixed. Up to a point, it is possible to please both beginners and experts -- by covering background material crisply and in the service of your own story . How does that work? As you lay out the motivation for your own work, and provide notation, you'll naturally have to discuss background concepts and related work. But don't give a generic review that someone else could have written! Discuss the background in a way that motivates and clarifies your ideas. Present your detailed perspective on the intellectual landscape and where your own work sits in it -- a fresh (even opinionated) take that keeps tying back to your main themes and will be useful for both experts and beginners.

In short, be as considerate as you can to beginners without interrupting the flow of your main argument to your established colleagues. A good rule of thumb is to write at the level of the most accessible papers in the journals or conference proceedings that you read.

What do you want your audience to learn from the thesis?

You should set clear goals here. Just like a paper or a talk, your dissertation needs a point: it should tell a story. Writing the abstract and chapter 1 at the start will help you work out what that story is.

You may find that you have to do further work to really support your chosen story: more experiments, more theorems, reading more literature, etc.

What does your audience hope to get out of the thesis?

Why does anyone crack open a dissertation, anyway? I sometimes do. Especially for areas that I know less well, a dissertation is often more accessible than shorter, denser papers. It takes a more leisurely pace, provides more explicit motivation and background, and answers more of the questions that I might have.

There are other reasons I might look at your dissertation:

For students, reading high-quality dissertations is a good way to learn an area and to see what a comprehensive treatment of a problem looks like. Noah A. Smith once ran a graduate CS seminar in which the students read 8 dissertations together. Each student was also required to select and summarize yet another dissertation and write a novel research proposal based on it.

Readers with different motivations may read your thesis in different ways. The strong convention is that it's a single document that must read well from start to finish -- your committee will read it that way. But it's worth keeping other readers in mind, too. Some will skim from start to finish. Some will read only the introductory and concluding chapters (so make sure those give a strong impression of what you've done and why it's important). Some will read a single chapter in the middle, going back for definitions as needed. Some will scan or search for what they need: a definition, example, table of results, or literature review. Some will flip through to get a general sense of your work or of how you think, reading whatever catches their eye.

High-Level Organization

Once you've chosen your target audience, you should outline the structure of the thesis. Again, the convention is that the document must read well from start to finish.

The "canonical organization" is sketched by Douglas Comer near the end of his advice . Read that: you'll probably want something like it. A few further tips:

Keep your focus

Keep your focus. Length is not a virtue unless the content is actually interesting. You do have as much space as you need, but the reader doesn't have unlimited time and neither do you.

Get to the good stuff

A newspaper, like a dissertation, is a hefty chunk of reading. So it puts the most important news on page one, and leads each article with the most important part. You should try to do the same when reasonable.

Get to the interesting ideas as soon as possible. A good strategy is to make Chapter 1 an overview of your main arguments and findings. Tell your story there in a compelling way, including a taste of your results. Refer the reader to specific sections in later chapters for the pesky details. Chapter 1 should be especially accessible (use examples): make it the one chapter that everyone should read.

Include a road map

Chapter 1 traditionally ends with a "road map" to the rest of the thesis, which rapidly summarizes what the remaining chapters or sections will contain. That's useful guidance for readers who are looking for something specific and also for those who will read the whole thesis. It also exhibits in one place what an awful lot of work you've done. Here's a detailed example .

Where to put the literature review

I recommend against writing "Chapter 2: Literature Review." Such chapters are usually boring: they're plonked down like the author's obligatory list of what he or she was "supposed" to cite. They block the reader from getting to the new ideas, and can't even be contrasted with the new ideas because those haven't been presented yet.

A better plan is to discuss related literature in conjunction with your own ideas. As you motivate and present your ideas, you'll want to refer to some related work anyway.

Each chapter might have its own related work section or sections, covering work that connects to yours in different ways.

Where to define terminology and notation

Basic terminology, concepts, and notation have to be defined somewhere. But where? You can mix the following strategies:

Retail. You can define some terms or notation individually, when the reader first needs them. Then they will be well-motivated and fresh in the reader's mind. If you use them again later, you can refer back to the section where you first defined them.

Wholesale. On the other hand, there are advantages to aggregating some of your fundamental definitions into a "Definitions" section near the start of the chapter, or a chapter near the start of the dissertation:

The downside is that such sections or chapters can seem boring and full of not-yet-motivated concepts. Unless your definitions are novel and interesting in themselves, they block the reader from getting to the new and interesting ideas. So if you write something like "Chapter 2: Preliminaries," keep it relatively concise -- the point is to get the reader oriented.

Thrift shop. Use well-known notation and terminology whenever you can, either with or without a formal definition in your thesis. The point of your thesis is not to re-invent notation or to re-present well-known material, although sometimes you may find it helpful to do so.

Make Things Easy on Your Poor Readers

Now we get down to the actual writing. A dissertation is a lot to write. But it's also an awful lot to read and digest at once! You can keep us readers turning pages and following your argument. But it's a bigger and more complicated argument than usual, so you have to be more disciplined than usual.

Break it down

Long swaths of text are like quicksand for readers (and writers!). To keep us moving without sinking, use all the devices at your disposal to break the text down into short chunks. Ironically, short chunks are more helpful in a longer document. They keep your argument tightly organized and keep the reader focused and oriented.

If a section or subsection is longer than 1 double-spaced page , consider whether you could break it down further. I'm not joking! This 1-page threshold may seem surprisingly short, but it really makes writing and reading easier. Some devices you can use:

subsectioning Split your section into subsections (or subsubsections) with meaningful titles that keep the reader oriented.

lists If you're writing a paragraph and feel like you're listing anything (e.g., advantages or disadvantages of some approach), then use an explicit bulleted list. Sometimes this might yield a list with only 2 or 3 rather long bullet points, but that's fine -- it breaks things down. ( Note: To replace the bullets with short labels, roughly as in the list you're now reading, LaTeX's itemize environment lets you write \item[my label] .)

labeled paragraphs Label a series of paragraphs within the section, as a kind of lightweight subsectioning. Your experimental design section might look like this (using the LaTeX \paragraph command):

Participants. The participants were 32 undergraduates enrolled in ... Apparatus. Each participant wore a Star Trek suit equipped with a Hasbro-brand Galactic Translator, belt model 3A ... Procedure. The subjects were seated in pairs throughout the laboratory and subjected to Vogon poetry broadcast at 3-minute intervals ... Dataset. The Vogon poetry corpus (available on request) was obtained by passing the later works of T. S. Eliot through the Systran translation system ...

footnotes Move inessential points to footnotes. If they're too long for that, you could move them into appendices or chapters near the end of the thesis. (Here's my take on footnotes .)

captions Move some discussion of figures and tables into their captions. Figures and tables should be clearly structured in the first place: e.g., graphs should have labeled axes with units. But a helpful caption provides guidance on how to interpret the figure or table and what interesting conclusions to draw from it. The figure or table should itself include helpful labels (axis

(In LaTeX, you can write \caption[short version]{long version} . The optional short version argument will be used for the "List of Tables" or "List of Figures" at the start of the thesis.)

theorems Even simple formal results can be stated as a theorem or lemma. The theorem (and proof, if included) form a nice little chunk, using the LaTeX theorem enviroment.

Breaking down equations

Long blocks of equations are even more intimidating than long swaths of text. You can break those apart, too:

Intersperse short bits of text for guidance (perhaps using LaTeX \intertext ). You might introduce line 3 of your formula with

A change of variable from x to log x now allows us to integrate by parts:

Distinguish conceptually important steps from finicky steps that just push symbols around. You can even move finicky steps to a footnote, like this:

Some algebraic manipulation 5 allows us to simplify to the following:

Use visual devices like color, boldface, underlining, boxes, or \underbrace to call attention to significant parts of a formula:

Simplify the formulas in the first place by defining intermediate quantities or adopting notational conventions (e.g., "the t subscript will be dropped when it is clear from context").

Now tie it back together

Now that you've chopped your prose into bite-sized chunks, what binds it together?

Coherent and explicit structure

Your paragraphs and chunks have to tie together into a coherent argument. Do everything you can to highlight the structure of this argument. The structure should jump out at the reader, making it possible to read straight through your text, or skim it. Else the reader will get stuck puzzling out what you meant and lose momentum.

Make sure your readers are never perplexed about the point of the paragraph they're reading. Make them want to keep turning the page because you've set up questions to which they want to know the answers. Don't make them rub their eyes in frustration or boredom and wander off to the fridge or the web browser.

So how exactly do you "highlight the structure" and "set up questions"?

Ask questions explicitly and then answer them, as I just did. This is a great device for breaking up boring prose, communicating your rhetorical goals, and making the reader think.

Explicitly refer back to previous text, as when I wrote, "So how exactly do you 'highlight the structure' and 'set up questions'?"

Use lots of transitional phrases (discourse connectives). Note that it's fine to use these across chunk boundaries; that is, feel free to start a new subsection with "For this reason, ...", picking up where the previous subsection left off.

As you come to the end of a section, remind the reader what the point was. If possible, this should lead naturally into the next section.

If a section is skippable, or chapters can be read out of order, do say so. (But don't use this as an excuse for poor organization or long distractions. Some readers tend to read straight through, and in particular, your advisor or committee may feel that they must do this.)

Lots of internal cross-references

A thesis deals with a lot of ideas at once. Readers can easily lose track. Help them out:

Each figure or table should be mentioned in the main text, so that the reader knows to go look at it. Conversely, the figure's caption may point the reader back to details in the main text (stating the section number). A caption may also refer to other figures or tables that the reader should be sure to compare.

Boldface terms that you are defining, as a textbook would. This makes the definitions easy to spot when needed. You may also want to generate an index of boldfaced terms.

Be very consistent in your terminology. Never use two terms for the same idea; never reuse one term or variable for two ideas.

Be cautious about using pronouns like "it," or other anaphors such as "this" or "this technique." With all the ideas flying around, it won't always be obvious to everyone what you're referring to. Use longer, unambiguous phrases instead, when appropriate.

Try saying "the time t " instead of just " t " or just "the time." Similarly, "the image transformation T ," "the training example x i ," etc. This style reminds the reader of which variables are connected to which concepts. You can further do this for expressions: "the total probability Σ i p i " instead of just "the total probability" or "the sum."

Feel free to lavish space where it confers extra understanding. Don't hesitate to give an example or a caveat, or repeat an earlier equation, or crisply summarize earlier work that the reader needs to understand.

Be concrete

As I read a thesis, or a long argument or construction within a thesis, I often start worrying whether I am keeping the pieces together correctly in my head. Something that has become deeply familiar and natural to you (the world expert) may be rougher going for me. If I can see some concrete demonstration of how your idea works, it helps me check and deepen my understanding.

Examples keep the reader, and you, from getting lost in a morass of abstractions. Example cases figured in your thinking; they can help the reader, too. Invented examples are okay, but using "real" examples will also show off what your methods should or can do.

Running examples greet the reader like old friends. The reader will grasp a point more quickly and completely, and remember it better, when it is applied to a familiar example rather than a new one. So if possible, devise one or two especially nice examples that you can keep revisiting to make a series of points.

Pictures serve much the same role as examples: they're concrete and they share how the ideas really look inside your head. A picture is worth at least a thousand words (= 2.5 double-spaced thesis pages).

Pseudocode is a concrete way to convey an algorithm. It is often more concise, precise, and direct than a prose description, and may be closer to your own thinking. It will also make other people much more likely to understand and adopt your methods.

Theorems , too, are concise and precise. They are also self-contained chunks, because they formally state all their assumptions. A reader sloshing through a long, complicated, contextual argument can always grab onto a theorem as an island of certainty.

Experimental results are also concrete. You don't have to wait for the experimental section: it is okay to foreshadow your experiments before you present them in full. When you are developing the theory, you can say "Indeed, we will find experimentally in section 5.6 that ..." You can even showcase an example from your experiments or give some summary statistics; these might not even show up later in the experimental section.

Commitments keep the reader anchored. As noted earlier, your dissertation should discuss alternative solutions that you rejected or are leaving to future work. That's scholarship. But make it clear from the start what you actually did and didn't do. Don't have section 2.3 chatter on about everything one could do -- that reads like a proposal, not a thesis! -- while waiting till section 4.5 or even 2.5 to reveal what you actually did.

Placing these concrete elements early is best, other things equal. Either embed them early in the section or just tell the reader early on to go look at Figure X. (If you continue the section by discussing Figure X, the reader is more likely to actually go look. Figure X or its caption can refer back to the text in turn.)

For example, consider pseudocode. Some readers prefer code to prose, and it's concise. So you may want to give pseudocode early in the section, before you ramble on about why it works. An alternative is to intersperse fragments of pseudocode with your prose explanation, as in literate programming . Of course, the pseudocode itself should also include some brief comments; where necessary these can just point to the text, as in "implements equation (5)" or "see section 3.2."

Sentences. The previous section dealt with sections and paragraphs, but how about sentences? Yours should read well. The best advice in The Elements of Style : "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise." To learn how to improve your sentences, read Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace , by Joseph M. Williams, and do the exercises. Another classic is On Writing Well , by William Zinsser.

Computers are getting exponentially faster (Moore, 1965). However, Biddle (1971) showed ...

Bandura's (1977) theory ... ... (e.g., Butcher, 1954; Baker, 1955; Candlestick-Maker, 1957, and others). The work of Minor (2001, pp. 50-75; but see also Adams, 1999; Storandt, 1997) ... According to Manning and Schütze, 1999 (henceforth M&S), ...

(Another option is the apacite package, which precisely follows the style manual of the American Psychological Association. It is nearly as flexible in its citation format, but APA style has some oddities, including lowercasing the titles of proceedings volumes. One nice thing about APA style is that if you have multiple Smiths in your bibliography, it will distinguish them where necessary, using first and middle initials. Another nice thing is the use of "&" rather than "and" in author lists; however, you can easily hack plainnat.bst to mimic this behavior.)

\usepackage[colorlinks]{ hyperref } \usepackage{ url }

\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table]{xcolor} \usepackage{soul} \newcommand{\todo}[1]{\hl{[TODO: #1]}} \todo{Either prove this or back away from the claim. I think Fermat's Last Theorem might be the key ...}

\newcommand{\todo}[1]{}

... only 58 words in the dictionary have this property. % to get that count: % perl -ne 'print if blah blah' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l

Version control. It's probably wise to use git (or CVS or RCS or Subversion or mercurial or darcs) to keep the revision history of your dissertation files. This lets you roll back to an earlier version in case of disaster. Furthermore, if you host the repository on your cs.jhu.edu account, it will be backed up by the department.

Sharing your thesis. When you're willing to open up for comments from fellow students, your advisor, or your committee, give them a secret URL from which they can always download the latest, up-to-date release of your thesis, as well as earlier versions. (This is probably friendlier than just pointing them to your git repository.)

Keep this URL up to date with your changes. Each distinct version should bear a visible date or version number, to avoid confusion. For each new version (or on request), you should probably also supply a PDF that marks up the differences from an appropriate earlier version, using the wonderful latexdiff program (available here or as an Linux package; plays nicely with git via latexdiff-git or other scripts ) or a similar technique . (Note: If you use a makefile to build your document by running latex, gnuplot, etc., then you can also make it run latexdiff and update the URL for you.)

If you use Overleaf , just give your committee a view URL for your project. They will be able to see the PDF, visit different versions, and leave comments in the source file.

Planning Your Dissertation

Every dissertation is a little different. Talk to your advisor to draft a specific, written plan for what the thesis will contain, how it will be organized, and whom it will address. Discuss the plan with each of your committee members, who may suggest changes. They might disagree with advice on this page; find out.

As the dissertation takes shape, your plan may need some revision. Your advisor and committee may be willing to provide early feedback. But no one will want to slog through more than a version or two in detail. So ask them each how many drafts of each chapter they're willing to read, and in what state and on what schedule. Some of them nmay prefer to influence your writeup while it's still in an early, outline form. Others may prefer to wait until your prose is fairly polished and easy to read.

In addition to your advisor's goals and your committee's goals, you may have some goals of your own, e.g.,

GOOD LUCK!!! Now, download that LaTeX template , and take the first step toward filling it in today ...

Time Management

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• 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.

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How to write a masters dissertation or thesis: top tips.

It is completely normal to find the idea of writing a masters thesis or dissertation slightly daunting, even for students who have written one before at undergraduate level. Though, don’t feel put off by the idea. You’ll have plenty of time to complete it, and plenty of support from your supervisor and peers.

One of the main challenges that students face is putting their ideas and findings into words. Writing is a skill in itself, but with the right advice, you’ll find it much easier to get into the flow of writing your masters thesis or dissertation.

We’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to write a dissertation or thesis for your masters degree, with top tips to consider at each stage in the process.

1. Understand your dissertation or thesis topic

There are slight differences between theses and dissertations , although both require a high standard of writing skill and knowledge in your topic. They are also formatted very similarly.

At first, writing a masters thesis can feel like running a 100m race – the course feels very quick and like there is not as much time for thinking! However, you’ll usually have a summer semester dedicated to completing your dissertation – giving plenty of time and space to write a strong academic piece.

By comparison, writing a PhD thesis can feel like running a marathon, working on the same topic for 3-4 years can be laborious. But in many ways, the approach to both of these tasks is quite similar.

Before writing your masters dissertation, get to know your research topic inside out. Not only will understanding your topic help you conduct better research, it will also help you write better dissertation content.

Also consider the main purpose of your dissertation. You are writing to put forward a theory or unique research angle – so make your purpose clear in your writing.

Top writing tip: when researching your topic, look out for specific terms and writing patterns used by other academics. It is likely that there will be a lot of jargon and important themes across research papers in your chosen dissertation topic. 

2. Structure your dissertation or thesis

Writing a thesis is a unique experience and there is no general consensus on what the best way to structure it is. 

As a postgraduate student , you’ll probably decide what kind of structure suits your research project best after consultation with your supervisor. You’ll also have a chance to look at previous masters students’ theses in your university library.

To some extent, all postgraduate dissertations are unique. Though they almost always consist of chapters. The number of chapters you cover will vary depending on the research. 

A masters dissertation or thesis organised into chapters would typically look like this: 

Write down your structure and use these as headings that you’ll write for later on.

Top writing tip : ease each chapter together with a paragraph that links the end of a chapter to the start of a new chapter. For example, you could say something along the lines of “in the next section, these findings are evaluated in more detail”. This makes it easier for the reader to understand each chapter and helps your writing flow better.

3. Write up your literature review

One of the best places to start when writing your masters dissertation is with the literature review. This involves researching and evaluating existing academic literature in order to identify any gaps for your own research.

Many students prefer to write the literature review chapter first, as this is where several of the underpinning theories and concepts exist. This section helps set the stage for the rest of your dissertation, and will help inform the writing of your other dissertation chapters.

What to include in your literature review

The literature review chapter is more than just a summary of existing research, it is an evaluation of how this research has informed your own unique research.

Demonstrate how the different pieces of research fit together. Are there overlapping theories? Are there disagreements between researchers?

Highlight the gap in the research. This is key, as a dissertation is mostly about developing your own unique research. Is there an unexplored avenue of research? Has existing research failed to disprove a particular theory?

Back up your methodology. Demonstrate why your methodology is appropriate by discussing where it has been used successfully in other research.

4. Write up your research

For instance, a more theoretical-based research topic might encompass more writing from a philosophical perspective. Qualitative data might require a lot more evaluation and discussion than quantitative research. 

Methodology chapter

The methodology chapter is all about how you carried out your research and which specific techniques you used to gather data. You should write about broader methodological approaches (e.g. qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods), and then go into more detail about your chosen data collection strategy. 

Data collection strategies include things like interviews, questionnaires, surveys, content analyses, discourse analyses and many more.

Data analysis and findings chapters

The data analysis or findings chapter should cover what you actually discovered during your research project. It should be detailed, specific and objective (don’t worry, you’ll have time for evaluation later on in your dissertation)

Write up your findings in a way that is easy to understand. For example, if you have a lot of numerical data, this could be easier to digest in tables.

This will make it easier for you to dive into some deeper analysis in later chapters. Remember, the reader will refer back to your data analysis section to cross-reference your later evaluations against your actual findings – so presenting your data in a simple manner is beneficial.

Think about how you can segment your data into categories. For instance, it can be useful to segment interview transcripts by interviewee. 

Top writing tip : write up notes on how you might phrase a certain part of the research. This will help bring the best out of your writing. There is nothing worse than when you think of the perfect way to phrase something and then you completely forget it.

5. Discuss and evaluate

Once you’ve presented your findings, it’s time to evaluate and discuss them.

It might feel difficult to differentiate between your findings and discussion sections, because you are essentially talking about the same data. The easiest way to remember the difference is that your findings simply present the data, whereas your discussion tells the story of this data.

Your evaluation breaks the story down, explaining the key findings, what went well and what didn’t go so well.

In your discussion chapter, you’ll have chance to expand on the results from your findings section. For example, explain what certain numbers mean and draw relationships between different pieces of data.

Top writing tip: don’t be afraid to point out the shortcomings of your research. You will receive higher marks for writing objectively. For example, if you didn’t receive as many interview responses as expected, evaluate how this has impacted your research and findings. Don’t let your ego get in the way!

6. Write your introduction

Your introduction sets the scene for the rest of your masters dissertation. You might be wondering why writing an introduction isn't at the start of our step-by-step list, and that’s because many students write this chapter last.

Here’s what your introduction chapter should cover:

Problem statement

Research question

Significance of your research

This tells the reader what you’ll be researching as well as its importance. You’ll have a good idea of what to include here from your original dissertation proposal , though it’s fairly common for research to change once it gets started.

Writing or at least revisiting this section last can be really helpful, since you’ll have a more well-rounded view of what your research actually covers once it has been completed and written up.

Masters dissertation writing tips

When to start writing your thesis or dissertation.

When you should start writing your masters thesis or dissertation depends on the scope of the research project and the duration of your course. In some cases, your research project may be relatively short and you may not be able to write much of your thesis before completing the project. 

But regardless of the nature of your research project and of the scope of your course, you should start writing your thesis or at least some of its sections as early as possible, and there are a number of good reasons for this:

Academic writing is about practice, not talent. The first steps of writing your dissertation will help you get into the swing of your project. Write early to help you prepare in good time.

Write things as you do them. This is a good way to keep your dissertation full of fresh ideas and ensure that you don’t forget valuable information.

The first draft is never perfect. Give yourself time to edit and improve your dissertation. It’s likely that you’ll need to make at least one or two more drafts before your final submission.

Writing early on will help you stay motivated when writing all subsequent drafts.

Thinking and writing are very connected. As you write, new ideas and concepts will come to mind. So writing early on is a great way to generate new ideas.

How to improve your writing skills

The best way of improving your dissertation or thesis writing skills is to:

 Finish the first draft of your masters thesis as early as possible and send it to your supervisor for revision. Your supervisor will correct your draft and point out any writing errors. This process will be repeated a few times which will help you recognise and correct writing mistakes yourself as time progresses.

If you are not a native English speaker, it may be useful to ask your English friends to read a part of your thesis and warn you about any recurring writing mistakes. Read our section on English language support for more advice. 

Most universities have writing centres that offer writing courses and other kinds of support for postgraduate students. Attending these courses may help you improve your writing and meet other postgraduate students with whom you will be able to discuss what constitutes a well-written thesis.

Read academic articles and search for writing resources on the internet. This will help you adopt an academic writing style, which will eventually become effortless with practice.

Keep track of your bibliography 

The easiest way to keep the track of all the articles you have read for your research is to create a database where you can summarise each article/chapter into a few most important bullet points to help you remember their content. 

Another useful tool for doing this effectively is to learn how to use specific reference management software (RMS) such as EndNote. RMS is relatively simple to use and saves a lot of time when it comes to organising your bibliography. This may come in very handy, especially if your reference section is suspiciously missing two hours before you need to submit your dissertation! 

Avoid accidental plagiarism

Plagiarism may cost you your postgraduate degree and it is important that you consciously avoid it when writing your thesis or dissertation. 

Occasionally, postgraduate students commit plagiarism unintentionally. This can happen when sections are copy and pasted from journal articles they are citing instead of simply rephrasing them. Whenever you are presenting information from another academic source, make sure you reference the source and avoid writing the statement exactly as it is written in the original paper.

What kind of format should your thesis have?

Read your university’s guidelines before you actually start writing your thesis so you don’t have to waste time changing the format further down the line. However in general, most universities will require you to use 1.5-2 line spacing, font size 12 for text, and to print your thesis on A4 paper. These formatting guidelines may not necessarily result in the most aesthetically appealing thesis, however beauty is not always practical, and a nice looking thesis can be a more tiring reading experience for your postgrad examiner .

When should I submit my thesis?

The length of time it takes to complete your MSc or MA thesis will vary from student to student. This is because people work at different speeds, projects vary in difficulty, and some projects encounter more problems than others. 

Obviously, you should submit your MSc thesis or MA thesis when it is finished! Every university will say in its regulations that it is the student who must decide when it is ready to submit. 

However, your supervisor will advise you whether your work is ready and you should take their advice on this. If your supervisor says that your work is not ready, then it is probably unwise to submit it. Usually your supervisor will read your final thesis or dissertation draft and will let you know what’s required before submitting your final draft.

Set yourself a target for completion. This will help you stay on track and avoid falling behind. You may also only have funding for the year, so it is important to ensure you submit your dissertation before the deadline – and also ensure you don’t miss out on your graduation ceremony ! 

To set your target date, work backwards from the final completion and submission date, and aim to have your final draft completed at least three months before that final date.

Don’t leave your submission until the last minute – submit your work in good time before the final deadline. Consider what else you’ll have going on around that time. Are you moving back home? Do you have a holiday? Do you have other plans?

If you need to have finished by the end of June to be able to go to a graduation ceremony in July, then you should leave a suitable amount of time for this. You can build this into your dissertation project planning at the start of your research.

It is important to remember that handing in your thesis or dissertation is not the end of your masters program . There will be a period of time of one to three months between the time you submit and your final day. Some courses may even require a viva to discuss your research project, though this is more common at PhD level . 

If you have passed, you will need to make arrangements for the thesis to be properly bound and resubmitted, which will take a week or two. You may also have minor corrections to make to the work, which could take up to a month or so. This means that you need to allow a period of at least three months between submitting your thesis and the time when your program will be completely finished. Of course, it is also possible you may be asked after the viva to do more work on your thesis and resubmit it before the examiners will agree to award the degree – so there may be an even longer time period before you have finished.

How do I submit the MA or MSc dissertation?

Most universities will have a clear procedure for submitting a masters dissertation. Some universities require your ‘intention to submit’. This notifies them that you are ready to submit and allows the university to appoint an external examiner.

This normally has to be completed at least three months before the date on which you think you will be ready to submit.

When your MA or MSc dissertation is ready, you will have to print several copies and have them bound. The number of copies varies between universities, but the university usually requires three – one for each of the examiners and one for your supervisor.

However, you will need one more copy – for yourself! These copies must be softbound, not hardbound. The theses you see on the library shelves will be bound in an impressive hardback cover, but you can only get your work bound like this once you have passed. 

You should submit your dissertation or thesis for examination in soft paper or card covers, and your university will give you detailed guidance on how it should be bound. They will also recommend places where you can get the work done.

The next stage is to hand in your work, in the way and to the place that is indicated in your university’s regulations. All you can do then is sit and wait for the examination – but submitting your thesis is often a time of great relief and celebration!

Some universities only require a digital submission, where you upload your dissertation as a file through their online submission system.

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The doctoral program is primarily designed to prepare its graduates for careers in both the academic field and scholarly research, including research-informed translation. It offers individualized interdisciplinary tracks to accommodate a variety of backgrounds. The doctoral program offers the following features:

• Inclusive curriculum comprising, but not limited to, history and traditions of translation studies, literary studies, cultural and postcolonial studies and philosophy;
• Individualized interdisciplinary tracks, with the option to take courses in other academic departments; and
• Learner-centered atmosphere through discussion seminars and independent studies, to make learning an enriching exchange among students and faculty.

Admission Requirements

Students pursuing the PhD in translation studies must follow the standard Graduate School matriculation procedures. Admission decisions are made by the TRIP director in consultation with the advisory committee and any other faculty member whose expertise seems appropriate for the applicant. 

Graduate applicants should demonstrate the following background, as attested by transcripts, standard exam scores, letters of recommendation, personal statement and a writing sample.

• Near-native fluency in English, as well as (and especially) the ability to write academic texts in English, as demonstrated by high GREs (310+) (GMAT or LSAT will be accepted in place of the GRE), and high TOEFL scores (100+);
• Near-native fluency in a second language;
• Optionally, but desirable: a good reading knowledge of a third language, meaning the applicant can read reliably with a dictionary;
• Previous immersion in a culture where the second language is spoken;
• A master’s degree in a relevant area; applicants with no graduate course work in languages should also be prepared for a diagnostic examination during the application process.
• Background in translation studies; applicants who do not have a documented background in translation studies, or who do not have any formal certification in translation, may be provisionally admitted; full admission will be granted after passing the certificate examination.

Program Requirements

Course requirements.

Students pursuing the PhD in Translation Studies must complete 36 credits of graduate coursework (48 credits for those entering the program without a previous master’s degree in a related field), which includes:

A. Translation Practice (8 credits total):

• TRIP 572 - Translation Workshop: Literary *
• TRIP 573 - Translation Workshop:Non-Litry *

B. Translation Theory (8 credits total):

• TRIP 560 - Intro to Translation Studies
• TRIP 562 - Scholarly Methods in Translati

C. Allied and Disciplinary Electives (20 credits total):

• Depending on their interests, students will be able to choose electives from a variety of courses in other academic departments

D. Dissertation Courses (2+ credits total):

• TRIP 698 - Pre-Dissertation Research
• TRIP 699 - Dissertation Research

* Students who present workshop credits from Binghamton University or elsewhere may petition to have the required workshop courses waived. However, if a waiver is granted, these credits must still be fulfilled with other relevant classes.

Comprehensive Examination Requirement

The comprehensive examination consists of four parts, detailed below: a dissertation prospectus, two written take-home exams and an oral examination. Students need to form an exam committee consisting of an academic advisor (who will usually serve as their dissertation director - the chair of the committee - and who supervises the dissertation prospectus) and two additional faculty members from Binghamton University, whose work is relevant to their project, each of whom will be responsible for one of the written take-home exams.

• Dissertation Prospectus. This is a longer paper (approximately 30-50 pages) devoted to a theoretical issue or sub-area explicitly related to translation studies, which will help students establish the direction of their dissertations. It should involve substantial scholarship and show that students are familiar with the current bibliography on the topic selected and are able to articulate their arguments in an academically acceptable format. The paper serves as a dissertation proposal in that it defines the areas that the student will be focusing on for their research.
• Main Area of Concentration. Students are required to define an area and build a reading list with one of their committee members that reflects students’ main interests in the field. Suitable topics might be, for example, translation pedagogy, political aspects of translation theory, translation and ethics, linguistic approaches to translation, translation criticism or a focus on the literary works of a particular period/language. (This is a 72-hour take-home examination scheduled by the student.)
• Minor Field. This section of the exam focuses on a field that either complements or expands the student’s main area of concentration. Thus, if a student’s main area of concentration is, for example, translation pedagogy, the minor field might be contemporary approaches to education or the training of translators in medieval Spain. Students will build a reading list for this field with one of their committee members that reflects the student’s main interests in the field. (This is a 72-hour take-home examination scheduled by the student.)
• Oral Examination. This final component of the comprehensive exam involves all committee examiners and requires the student to explain choices made in each written exam, including the prospectus.

In order to pass their PhD comprehensive examination, students must achieve a grade of B+ or better on each part. At the discretion of the examiners and in consultation with the graduate advisor, a student who has failed to achieve this standard may retake the part (or those parts) in which the grade was below B+ once. All exam procedures and evaluations follow the Graduate School Manual.

Dissertation Requirement

The dissertation is an original research project, which may consist of a case study, an annotated translation, a speculative essay, a literature survey or some other form approved by the student’s committee, presented and defended in a public form. The dissertation should be at least 200 pages, not including bibliography and appendices. If students choose to include a translation as a part of dissertation, their theory-guided analysis of the translation must comprise at least one-quarter, or 50 pages, of the total dissertation.

Additional Information About the Program

Residency Requirement: Students are expected to be in residence during their formal coursework, which will usually take two academic years. It is also advisable that they stay in residence during the subsequent requirements described below.

For more information on the Translation PhD program, please refer to the TRIP website . To apply to the Translation PhD program, please visit the University Admissions website .

Krista Kennedy 239 H.B. Crouse Hall 315-443-5146

Lois Agnew, Patrick W. Berry, Kevin Adonis Browne, Collin Gifford Brooke, Lenny Grant, Alicia Hatcher, Krista Kennedy, Brice Nordquist, Eileen E. Schell, Tony Scott, Joseph Wilson

This program offers a doctoral degree in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric (CCR) situated in Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition, a departmental unit devoted entirely to writing and rhetoric. Its nationally known undergraduate teaching department provides a laboratory for research and innovation. The independence of the CCR program allows focused study of the pedagogy and cultural practices of written language yet facilitates multidisciplinary study and integrations. In addition to a core faculty and closely associated faculty affiliates, faculty consultants in other disciplines facilitate and advise on students’ interdisciplinary studies, a required element of the program.

The goal of the program is to prepare students for careers blending scholarship, teaching, administration, and consulting on writing and rhetoric in academic, workplace, and community settings. Intellectual themes of the program include studying composition and rhetoric emphasizing social practices of literacy, rhetoric, and writing instruction; and conceiving written language as culturally and historically specific. Students are encouraged to develop disciplinary and interdisciplinary specializations such as writing program administration; cross-cultural literacy studies; professional, technical, and electronic communication; rhetorical history; or feminist studies.

The program admits a class of four to six full-time students a year. Applicants should have satisfactorily completed a master’s degree in a language-related or cognate discipline (counted as 30 credits) and demonstrated a strong commitment and talent in rhetoric and composition. In making decisions about admissions, the faculty considers an applicant’s academic record, career plans and scholarly interests, GRE scores, a scholarly writing sample, and letters of recommendation. Prior teaching experience or practice in communication fields is desirable.

In addition to completing the regular application for graduate study, CCR applicants must submit an essay on their intellectual history and academic interests, as well as a statement on teaching interests and practical experience. Detailed instructions for tailoring the application to the CCR program may be obtained from the Graduate Coordinator, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition, 239 H.B. Crouse Hall, Syracuse NY 13244-1160, 315-443-5146; or from the program’s web site, ccr.syr.edu .

Degree Requirements

To earn the Ph.D., a student must complete a minimum of 45 credits beyond the master’s degree (counted as 30 credits), for a total of 75 required credits. Of these, 36 credits are in required and elective courses. The program is designed to be completed in 4 years. Required credits are distributed as follows:

Students who enter with a master’s degree in rhetoric and composition or have satisfactorily completed graduate courses in appropriate areas of study at Syracuse University or at other institutions may apply up to 12 previously earned credits to course requirements, based on a careful evaluation of their transcripts.

All students must complete all required coursework and pass the qualifying exams. (See ccr.syr.edu .) Students must complete a written dissertation that is a book-length work of scholarship and defend it viva voce.

Core Courses: 18 Credits Required

CCR - 601 - Introduction to Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition Credits / Units: 3

• CCR 611 - Composition Histories/Theories 3 credit(s)
• CCR 631 - Contemporary Rhetorics 3 credit(s)
• CCR 633 - Writing, Rhetorics and Technologies 3 credit(s)
• CCR 634 - Ancient Rhetorics 3 credit(s)
• CCR 635 - Advanced Research Practices 3 credit(s)

Electives: 18 Credits Required

A minimum of 9 credits must be in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric

• CCR 636 - Feminist Rhetoric(s) 3 credit(s)
• CCR 638 - Advanced Creative Nonfiction 3 credit(s)
• CCR 651 - Language and Literacy 3 credit(s)
• CCR 711 - Advanced Theories and Philosophies of Rhetoric 3 credit(s)
• CCR 712 - Advanced Theories and Philosophies of Composition 3 credit(s)
• CCR 732 - Advanced Studies in Writing Curriculum and Pedagogy 3 credit(s)
• CCR 733 - Rhetoric, Composition, and the Digital Humanities 3 credit(s)
• CCR 744 - African American Rhetorics 3 credit(s)
• CCR 745 - Writing Program Administration 3 credit(s)
• CCR 746 - Queer Rhetorics 3 credit(s)
• CCR 747 - Authorship Studies 3 credit(s)
• CCR 751 - Social History of Rhetoric 3 credit(s)
• CCR 760 - Advanced Studies in Composition & Cultural Rhetoric: Selected Topics 3 credit(s)

3 credits in doctoral readings (in preparation for qualifying examinations)

6-18 credits of dissertation, graduate awards.

Students are eligible to apply for the following awards. It is anticipated that all recipients who remain in good standing will continue to receive some form of financial support for up to four years of graduate study.

Graduate Teaching Assistantships:

Offered to approximately four new students each year; nine months; no more than an average of 20 hours of work per week; includes a stipend, tuition scholarship for 9 credits for the fall and spring semester, and 6 credits in the summer. Teaching assistants, appointed by the department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition have full responsibility for 3 sections of writing instruction a year and are expected to attend regular staff meetings and professional development workshops. There is also an ongoing mentorship review of each teaching assistant’s performance as a teacher.

Summer Teaching:

One section offered to some graduate students based on teaching record and availability.

Additional Information

For further details, contact the director or graduate coordinator, or visit the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric web site,  http://wrt.syr.edu/graduate/welcome.html

Student Learning Outcomes

1. Engage with and undertake reading, research, and scholarly writing in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies, becoming familiar with and fluent in the major terms, debates, theories, methods/methodologies, genres, and histories of the field

2. Engage with and undertake reading, research, and writing that allows them to explore additional areas in the field that fall outside the core courses, including elective courses offered by the department and electives in other disciplines

3. Demonstrate their understanding of core texts in the field through a two-part written exam that takes place over two weeks; b) research and write a potentially publishable scholarly essay about an area of the field in which they have a specific interest/research question; c) work through and provide an annotated bibliography on a core set of readings that will prepare them to undertake their dissertation prospectuses and projects

4. Research and write a book-length project that makes an original contribution to scholarship in the field

5. Develop and improve as teachers and writing consultants who offer challenging college-level writing courses/consulting sessions, informed by the latest theories of writing pedagogy and writing center theory

6. Develop as professionals and acquire and practice skills and strategies that will prepare them for their future careers as faculty members

Wagner Student Jo Al Khafaji-King Named 2024 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow

Jo Al Khafaji-King, a PhD candidate in Public Policy and Administration at NYU Wagner, was selected as one of 35  National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Dissertation Fellows , from a highly competitive pool of over 380 applicants. The fellowship supports scholars across disciplines whose dissertation topics focus on the improvement of education. 

In addition to financial support for their dissertation, as an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, Al Khafaji-King will attend two NAEd professional development retreats and receive mentorship from an NAEd member or other esteemed scholar.

Al Khafaji-King is also a Institute of Education Sciences-funded Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) fellow. Framed by the economics of education and sociology literature, their studies focus on discipline policies and behavior management in K-12 schools in the U.S. and their effects on marginalized students.