The Dissertation and Thesis are very important for higher study which provides students seeking a Master’s degree in MBA or PHD with an additional chance to grow within their chosen specialization via the preparation and presentation of a research-based dissertation. Another objective is to expand on earlier research and incorporate it into a significant piece of study pertaining to their chosen subject’s problem or issues.
A student may effectively show a critical awareness of various research methodologies and approaches by completing a thesis or dissertation. Additionally, they may show their knowledge and ability to do a critical literature evaluation on an international company or subject. Additionally, they may use their research talents to do an empirical study on a company or selected topic, which includes data collection, analysis, and interpretation. They may improve their writing abilities and ability to provide an independently researched and rational argument in written correspondence by using dissertations and theses.
There are some components of the research paper that include a title page, copyright statement, abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, abbreviations pages and the main pages. The main pages are consist of the introduction, literature review, research methodology, findings, analysis, evaluation, discussion, conclusion, recommendation, references and appendices. To write a dissertation or thesis paper, the main functions needed are discussed below:
Table of Contents
Research Title
Perhaps the most critical component of your research paper is the title. It is the first item that journal reviewers see when they look at your manuscript, and it is the sole piece of information that other academics will see when they do a database or search engine inquiry. As such, you want to ensure that the title conveys all of the relevant parts of your research while also making them accessible and enticing to readers. To design an ideal title for your research paper, follow these steps.
One of the most important tasks for this section is to select a topic and its title. This focus on the purpose of the study in one short sentence. Some questions to consider in this regard are:
- Is the topic appropriate for your course?
- Is it sufficiently in-depth or difficult to qualify as a Master’s course?
- Does it allow you to investigate, develop, and show important skills and knowledge for your course at a level that surpasses prior coursework?
- Is it a tool that enables you to be creative and generate unique or distinctive work?
- Do you have sufficient knowledge of the topic to feel confident in your ability to finish the research?
1. Abstract
An abstract is a concise description of a longer work, such as a research article or a scientific paper, or a common academic document. The abstract, which is often included at the beginning of such works, serves as a “preview” of the larger piece. This assists the reader and other researchers in locating pertinent information and comprehending the scope of the discussion. The primary goal of an abstract is to persuade readers to read the complete academic work. Similarly, abstracts may help raise funds for grant bids and fundraisers.
Additionally, abstracts are quite beneficial for indexing. They enable researchers to quickly get the information they want without spending time scanning real documents. Abstracts are especially critical for search engine optimization (SEO) these days—specifically, for ensuring that digital versions of your article show in search engine results.
Abstracts are generally between 100 and 250 words in length and consist of one or two paragraphs. Abstracts are classified into two types: informative and descriptive. The majority of abstracts are instructive, whereas descriptive descriptions are reserved for less formal works. Due to the fact that this is a summary of the whole dissertation, thesis, or research paper, it is recommended to write it last among all themes.
2. Introduction
The introduction of a research paper is the section in which you introduce your subject and method to the reader of your article. Its primary objectives are as follows: Introduce your subject matter and pique the reader’s curiosity. Provide background information or a summary of previous studies.
Topic Introduction
The introduction should initially inform the reader about your issue and its importance. A powerful opening hook usually achieves this.
The hook is a powerful first line that indicates the topic’s importance. Think of an intriguing fact, statistic, forceful remark, question, or story that will pique the reader’s attention. Your hook doesn’t have to be spectacular or original. Clarity and significance still trump catchiness. The goal is to introduce and place your thoughts.
Background of the research
This element of the introduction varies based on your paper’s approach. In a more contentious paper, you’ll go over some of this. In an empirical article, here is where you examine prior research and explain your own. After grabbing the reader’s attention, provide background and restrict the subject. Don’t provide unnecessary background information. The introduction isn’t the place to go into detail; that may be done in the body.
In a publication detailing novel research, you should offer an overview of the most relevant prior research. This is a brief summary of the current status of research on your subject. A true reading of the literature should inform this. Unlike a thorough literature review, your search may be limited to relevant information that informs your own work.
Decide on your research problem The next stage is to define your research’s purpose and issue. In an argumentative research paper, just outline the issue and what is unique or significant about your case. In an empirical study, attempt to introduce the topic via a review of the literature.
Consider these questions:
- What research gap does your study address?
- What past flaws does it address?
- What does it add to knowledge?
Define your objectives, hypothesis and questions
Now you’ll go into the details of your research paper’s purpose. The wording changes. An argumentative paper has a thesis, while an empirical article has a research topic.
The thesis statement conveys the perspective supported by facts and reasoning. It should convey your opinion plainly and immediately, without presenting detailed justifications. In an empirical research paper, you seek to address a research topic.
Present your research question directly, with little debate. The remainder of the article will debate and investigate this topic; here you just state it. Your research question should include any hypotheses you want to test. They are frequently stated in the past tense since the hypothesis has previously been tested.
Dissertation structure
The conclusion of the introduction generally includes a summary of the remainder of the work. This isn’t necessarily required in a conventional scientific publication (introduction, methodology, findings, discussion). If your paper’s structure isn’t predictable, explain it to the reader.
3. Literature Review
Each research report/thesis/article of research starts with an introduction to the subject of the study. This serves as the article’s literature review. The review’s primary objective is to educate readers on the importance of performing the aforementioned research. A literature review should begin with a comprehensive search of relevant internet databases, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, and others, using the primary keywords. After collecting all pertinent material, it should be categorized as follows:
- Background literature on the wide research subject serves as an introduction to the area of study for the readers.
- Recent advancements in the subject of the study, which might be categorized thematically or chronologically.
- Separate topics should ideally be covered chronologically to illustrate how research in the subject has changed over time and to highlight the field’s development.
- A comparison and contrast of various research should be included in the review. Discussing contentious issues enables the identification of critical gaps that need attention. This is critical for identifying the study’s issue statement and emphasizing the study’s relevance.
Here are some sources of literature review:
Once a problem statement has been created, it is necessary to analyze the merits and weaknesses of previous studies that have addressed the issue statement. This is critical for emphasizing the research’s need and uniqueness. A literature review should not be a list of all accessible sources of information. It should be a critical and analytical overview of the chosen literature that leads the reader through the research’s key subject. This review might be narrative in nature or systemic in nature.
Here is the process of writing a literature review:
4. Research Methodology
The methods chapter should fully explain and defend your study design decisions. Your study design (qualitative or quantitative), data collection methods, data analysis methods, and sources of data (sampling). Second, the methods chapter is vital.
First, it exhibits your knowledge of study design theory, which is graded. This chapter is crucial since it helps you to demonstrate the marker that you know what you’re doing and that your findings are genuine.
Second, the methods chapter makes your study repeatable, allowing other researchers to conduct similar studies and compare their results to yours. This is vital in academic research, as each study builds on the preceding.
The methodology chapter also enables you to identify and analyze any methodological flaws or problems (i.e. constraints) and explain how you addressed them. Every research effort has flaws, therefore it’s crucial to admit them and emphasize the study’s worth despite them. This again exhibits your study design knowledge and earns you points.
1 – Introduction
An introduction to the methodology chapter, as with other chapters in your dissertation or thesis. In this section, you should remind your readers of the study’s emphasis and goals. As we’ve covered many times on this site, your research design has to fit with your study goals, objectives, and research questions.
2 – Research Design
The reader should be presented with your study design in the following part. In this part, you must explain and defend all major design decisions. This is the core of your methodology chapter, so be detailed. This is not a case of “less is more”. The most prevalent design options are examined.
Design Option #1– Research Philosophy
The fundamental assumptions (i.e. world view) about how data concerning a phenomenon should be collected, examined and utilised. Your research philosophy will inform all other research design decisions, therefore it’s crucial to understand which philosophy you’ll choose and why. If you’re unsure, clarify before making any study design decisions.
Design Option #2 – Research Type
The research kind is usually discussed next in the methods section. The first step is to identify if your study was inductive or deductive. Inductive research builds theory from the ground up (from obtained data), hence these investigations tend to be exploratory in nature. On the other hand, deductive research builds on the known theory and tends to be confirmatory in nature.
Design Option #3 – Research Strategy
Next, outline your research approach (or “action plan”). This research design option is based on the study’s objectives. Studies such as phenomenology and phenomenology have been conducted. Let’s compare two, experimental and ethnographic.
Design Choice #4 – Time Horizon
The time horizon is the following topic in your approach chapter. There are two alternatives here — cross-sectional and longitudinal. Whether your study’s data were gathered all at once (cross-sectional) or at different times (multi-point) (i.e. longitudinal).
Design Option #5 – Sampling
Next, decide on a sample approach. Sampling is divided into two types: probability and non-probability. A non-probability sampling includes choosing individuals in a non-randomized (and hence non-representative) method. So, you’ve chosen your research subject and conducted a literature evaluation; now it’s time to compose your methods section. But what is a methodology chapter and how do you write one? We’ll take it to step by step in this article.
Design Option #6: Data Collection
Next, you must describe how you will acquire the required data for your research. Your data gathering approach will rely on the data you want to acquire – qualitative or quantitative.
Design Option #7 – Data Analysis Methods
The third key design decision is analytical methodologies. That is, how will you analyze your data after you have acquired it? Specify your analytical methodologies and/or procedures here — leave no room for interpretation. Also, as in this chapter, you must defend your decisions.
3–Methodological Limitations
The next stage is to examine the design’s constraints. There will always be trade-offs between the “ideal” design and what is realistic and viable given your restrictions. So, in this portion of your methodology chapter, you’ll explain the trade-offs you had to make and why they were justified.
4 – Summary
Finally, summarize the methods chapter. This section should summarize the chapter’s content. Especially if your institution suggests a certain model (like Saunders’ Research Onion), a diagram might help summarize critical design considerations.
Additionally, the methodology chapter is critical since it enables you to identify and describe any methodological concerns or problems that you experienced (i.e. constraints), as well as to explain how you reduced their effects. Each research endeavour has limits and faults, and it is critical to address them honestly and emphasize the significance of your work despite these constraints. Once again, this indicates your command of study design, which earns you points. See more in detail here for the methodology chapter.
5. Findings & Discussion
Because each research project is unique, it is reasonable for each researcher to utilize somewhat different tactics while creating and writing the results portion of a research report. Every aspect of a study’s design, from the topic to the author(s) and journal/publisher may have a big effect on how it’s published. The techniques mentioned below may be used to properly write about the results of the most sophisticated research and will be particularly useful for early-career researchers publishing their first research article.
Step 1
Read the research papers published by the desired journal and look for ones that are comparable in subject, methodologies, or findings to your own. The published papers will give good examples of effective techniques. Keep an eye out for content and duration limits. However, background information and procedure details are generally often found early in a study report. Although it is usually acceptable to make basic comparisons between your study’s findings and those of other studies, understanding what the journal expects is critical. It is also beneficial to learn about the journal’s purpose, scope, and readers’ interests.
Step 2
While planning your findings section, consider your study findings in connection to the journal’s standards. Include experimental findings and other research discoveries that are unexpected or do not support your thoughts and theories. Using subheadings can assist you to avoid writing unnecessary information and will help your reader comprehend and recall your results.
Consider appendices for raw data that may be useful to experts but distracting to general readers. To provide a seamless intellectual transition to the interpretation and discussion that follows most research papers, the first paragraph of a results section typically restates research questions or seeks to redirect the reader’s attention. There are several methods to organize study results. Your results part might be organized around your study questions and hypotheses or around your techniques section.
A meaningful grouping of primary topics or categories may be useful. Explaining the outcomes of each experiment or test immediately after reporting them may make the information simpler and more intelligible for your readers. Keep in mind your target audience, key evidence, and study aims.
Step 3
To improve your textual report, create excellent visual displays of your study findings. It is customary to include tables and figures of all types in research reports, but check the journal’s requirements for specifics on how many are permitted, needed design features, and recommended formats for numbering and labelling. For the reader to understand what is provided and what they may anticipate seeing in a specific visual element, tables and figures should be numbered according to their initial reference in the main text of the document.
In order for a reader to comprehend the conclusions you aim to display without returning to your text, tables and figures should be self-explanatory. Tables and figures may help you tell a clear and interesting tale about your results and minimize needless repetition if you create them before writing your findings section. Some writers concentrate on tables and figures before organizing the results section (Step 2), which may be quite useful, but the textual description of findings should always be key. Visual aids may enhance and explain language, but not replace it.
Step 4
Write a factual and objective results section. Clearly, correctly, and precisely conveying information – often a lot of it – requires well-constructed sentences with a straightforward structure. Publishers and writing handbook writers typically advise the active voice, and the past tense is suitable since the study is done. Make sure your grammar, spelling, and punctuation are proper and effective. Descriptive or unclear language frequently confuses and misleads readers, and a verbose style adds nothing but fluff while squandering important words that may be better used in clear and logical explanations.
While some specialized language may be necessary when describing results, anything that is ambiguous or confusing should be explained for readers, and the same goes for uncommon or nonstandard acronyms. Your readers won’t want to invest time seeking words only to grasp what you’re saying. Step 2: Organize your findings section logically to assist readers to comprehend the discussion portion that follows.
Step 5
Edit and update your results section draft until it accurately presents your important findings to your audience. Verify data correctness and consistency throughout the section and all graphic components. Transmit your text aloud to identify grammatical faults, odd sentences, and jar Organize your findings in a way that helps readers concentrate on your study goals and prepare for your interpretations, guesses, suggestions, and other discussion components.
Now will require examining the paper’s introduction and background information, as well as anticipating the discussion and conclusion parts, and this is the perfect time to do it. Your study findings took time to gather and analyze, so taking a step back to see the bigger picture is a worthwhile investment. Any extra readers, whether professional mentors and colleagues or family and friends, will frequently be beneficial.
6. Evaluation & Analysis
When writing the discussion section of your dissertation, be sure to include an introduction outlining the chapter. When presenting your analysis, be sure to include a reference to your literature review, since the majority of your sources will come from there. When writing your analytical thesis, adhere to the format you employed when writing your literature review. If they do not have any citations to the literature, recognize them and just link to the relevant conclusion.
When drafting your analysis, avoid using jargon and unfamiliar phrases. Keep it as straightforward as possible to ensure that it is comprehensive for your viewers. Make in mind that you should only incorporate material that is really important to your dissertation in order to keep your article focused and cohesive. Presenting irrelevant facts will simply confuse your readers and have a detrimental effect on your findings.
The techniques you use must be suitable for the data you want to utilize and the dissertation’s objective. The objective is to demonstrate to your readers that these strategies have a purpose and were not chosen at random. Amass pertinent statistical data. You will be able to make inferences from this data that are not yet apparent in the data you now have. Your qualitative work is just as critical as your quantitative statistics. Rather than statistical conclusions, you will be able to gain a more nuanced, transportable understanding from your qualitative data.
The prevalent belief is that data will speak for itself, yet this is incorrect.
Each piece of data must be evaluated to ensure that it answers the issue raised in your abstract and introduction. While writing analysis, keep in mind to be open and to explain both the merits and faults of your dissertation. Your ability to create charts, graphs, and diagrams may be quite beneficial when presenting your analysis, especially if you used a huge amount of data. With these visual aids, your viewers will have an easier time comprehending your results. Additional data that is pertinent but does not have to be included in your primary dissertation might be put in your appendices for your readers to examine.
Avoid being verbose and redundant while writing dissertations; instead, be succinct and direct. Avoid jargon and make things simple. Maintain a coherent line of thinking and write facts and preceding research in the past tense. Utilizing subheadings may assist in organizing your analyses and making them more digestible for your viewers. Additionally, refrain from restating outcomes and instead direct people to interpretations. The analysis chapter is not a summary of the findings, but an analysis of them; thus, maintain it that way.
Recommendations may be incorporated in your dissertation’s discussion chapter or in the conclusion — the choice is yours. Recommendations encourage your readers to perform more research to address any gaps in your findings or to simply advance the study of this topic. Make no new findings in your debate; everything must be cited from primary and secondary sources.
7. Conclusion
The conclusion includes features comparable to those found in the discussion, and these two parts are sometimes blended. However, it is customary for a thesis or dissertation to contain a concluding chapter that summarizes your research and provides the reader with a final assessment of your work. The conclusion should normally be between 5-7 per cent of the total word count, depending on the sort of thesis.
A conclusion to empirical scientific research is often brief and summarizes the major results and suggestions, but a conclusion to a humanities thesis may need more length to complete the analysis and tie all the chapters together in an overarching argument. The conclusion should begin with the central issue addressed in your thesis or dissertation. This is your last opportunity to demonstrate that you accomplished your objective, so be sure to provide a succinct response. The conclusion provides a chance to remind the reader why you chose the strategy you did, what you anticipated to discover, and how effectively your expectations were met.
Additionally, you may indicate any limits to your study if you haven’t already done so in the conversation. However, avoid dwelling on them for an extended period of time; instead, concentrate on the good aspects of your job.
8. Recommendation
Recommendations are intended to elicit an action or provide solutions to the issues raised in your research study. Your ideas outline particular solutions and steps that should be taken in light of the study results. Avoid equivocation. You may want to reiterate the issue and then discuss specific steps that may be taken to address it. The remedies or call to action should be tailored to the difficulties you mentioned before. At this time, refrain from introducing new questions or difficulties.
Your suggestion should make sense in light of your results and be attainable. You should restrict your suggestions to a few. A single suggestion may be appropriate for all of your findings. You should not just jot down potential solutions. Additionally, you should describe how it might be used to address the issues raised in your research report. Any study paper’s conclusion and suggestion section are critical. It informs the reader that he has reached the conclusion of the paper. Additionally, it breaks down the content of your research paper into more consumable bits. As previously mentioned, your conclusion and suggestion should not include any new facts.
9. References
There are four frequently used methods or patterns for reference. They are referred to as the MLA (Modern Languages Association), the APA (American Psychological Association), the Harvard, and the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) systems, respectively.
If you are writing essays for a specific school or even a specific department, ensure that you are familiar with the system the institution or department uses. Your instructors may utilize one of the four options indicated above or a different one completely. Certain departments will provide papers outlining the system they like you to utilize.
Additionally, you may get extensive instructions to these systems at the library of your college or on the internet. Additionally, the Modern Humanities Research Association publishes the MHRA Style Book, which is available for roughly £5 in retailers such as Blackwells.
10. Appendices
An appendix provides information that is not required to be included in the body of the paper but may be beneficial in giving a more thorough knowledge of the research subject or is information that is too lengthy to put in the body of the article. Each individual subject or group of data should have its own appendix, which should always have a title that is indicative of its contents. Appendices are usually an optional component of the research report.
As such, your study must be self-contained without the appendices, and the paper must have all material essential to comprehend the research challenges, including tables, diagrams, and findings. The critical aspect to consider when incorporating an appendix or appendices is that the material is not necessary; without it, the reader will still understand the relevance, validity, and ramifications of your study.
So here we described the process of dissertation, thesis paper, research paper or academic report with general guidelines. You can find more education-related articles here.
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