Writing a Dissertation

The aim of the dissertation or thesis is to produce an original piece of research work on a clearly
defined topic.

Usually a dissertation is the most substantial piece of independent work in the undergraduate
programme, while a thesis is usually associated with master's degrees, although these terms can
be interchangeable and may vary between countries and universities.

A dissertation or thesis is likely to be the longest and most difficult piece of work a student has
ever completed. It can, however, also be a very rewarding piece of work since, unlike essays and
other assignments, the student is able to pick a topic of special interest and work on their own
initiative.

Writing a dissertation requires a range of planning and research skills that will be of great value
in your future career and within organisations.

The dissertation topic and question should be sufficiently focused that you can collect all the
necessary data within a relatively short time-frame, usually about six weeks for undergraduate
programmes.

You should also choose a topic that you already know something about so that you already have
a frame of reference for your literature search and some understanding and interest in the theory
behind your topic.

There are many ways to write a dissertation or thesis.

Most universities and colleges provide very specific guidance to their students about their
preferred approach.

This page, and those that follow, are designed to give you some ideas about how you might carry
out your literature review, and then write each of the various sections of your dissertation in the
absence of, or in addition to, any specific guidance from your university.

Organising your Time

However organised you are, writing your dissertation is likely to be one of the most challenging
tasks you have ever undertaken.

Take a look at our pages on Organising your Study Time and Organisation Skills, as well as
Project Management Skills and Project Planning, to give you some ideas about how to
organise your time and energy for the task ahead.
General Structure

Like an academic paper for journal publication, dissertations generally follow a fairly standard
structure. The following pages discuss each of these in turn, and give more detailed advice about
how to prepare and write each one:

 Research Proposal
 Introduction
 Literature Review
 Methodology
 Results and Discussion
 Conclusions and Extra Sections

Particularly for master's programmes, your university may ask for your thesis to be submitted in
separate sections, rather than as a single document. One breakdown that is often seen is three-
fold:

 Introduction and/or Research Proposal, which should set out the research question that
you plan to explore and give some ideas about how you might go about it. If you are
submitting it as a research proposal, it will be fairly sketchy as you won’t have had a
chance to review the literature thoroughly, but it should contain at least some theoretical
foundation, and a reasonable idea of why you want to study this issue;
 Literature Review and Methodology, which are often combined because what you plan
to do should emerge from and complement the previous literature; and
 Results and Discussion, which should set out what you actually did, the results you
obtained, and discuss these in the context of the literature.

Warning!

You will probably have an overall word count for the total dissertation or thesis. If you are
required to submit in sections, ensure that you have left yourself enough words for the Results
and Discussion. It is easy to get carried away with the literature review.

As a general guide, use the marking scheme to show you the approximate split for the word
count. For example, if the introduction is worth 20%, and each of the other two submissions
40%, for a total word count of 10,000 words, the introduction should be at most 2,000 words,
and each of the other two around 4,000 words.

If you’re submitting your dissertation as a single piece of work, and not in separate submissions,
you may find it easier not to write it in order.

It is often easier to start with the literature review and then write the methodology.
The introduction may be the last part you write, or you may wish to rewrite it once you’ve
finished to reflect the flow of your arguments as they developed.

Top Tip

One of the best ways to write a dissertation is as you go along, especially the literature review.

As you read each reference, summarise it and group it by themes. Don’t forget to reference it as
you go!

You should be used to referencing by the time you write your dissertation but if you need a
refresher then see our page: Academic Referencing.

Writing Style
Dissertations and academic articles used always to be written in the third person, and in the
passive voice; as an example, you might write ‘An experiment was carried out to test…’

However, many journals have now moved away from that convention and request first person
and active voice, which would require you to write ‘I carried out an experiment to test…’

Check with your university about their requirements before you start to write.

If you cannot find any guidelines, then ask your supervisor and/or the person who will be
marking your thesis about their preferences. Make sure that the voice and person are consistent
throughout.

Whatever style is preferred, aim to keep your language simple and jargon-free. Use shorter,
simpler words and phrases wherever possible. Short sentences are good as they are easier to
follow. Any sentence that runs to more than three lines needs to be cut down or split.

Phrases to avoid include:

Phrase Use instead

Due to the fact that… Because
In addition Additionally (or also)
In order to To
In the first place First
A considerable number Many
Whether or not Whether
Remember the Golden Rule

K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid

The Role of your Academic Supervisor

The role of your supervisor is to supervise your work. It is not to do it for you, nor to tell you
how to do it.

However, their academic reputation is bound up in the results of the students that they supervise
so they have a vested interest in helping you to get the best possible marks. You should therefore
not feel shy or embarrassed about asking them for help if you get into difficulties, or if you need
some advice.

Academics tend to take a highly personal approach to supervision. Some will be prepared to
spend a lot of time with you, talking about what you are planning to do by way of research and
your emerging findings. Others will have very little contact with you, apart from being prepared
to read a draft of your dissertation.

It’s worth spending a bit of time building up your relationship with your supervisor (have a look
at our page on Building Rapport for help). It’s also worth discussing and clarifying with them
exactly what they are prepared to do to support you, and in particular practical details such as:

 How often are they prepared to meet with you during your research?
 How quickly will they respond to emails asking for advice and/or guidance?
 How much time do they need to review drafts of work?
 How many drafts of your work are they prepared to read? University guidelines usually
say ‘a first draft’ but many academics are prepared to read a preliminary draft to check
that you are on the right track, and then a more polished version.
 Having reviewed a draft, will they send you comments by email, or would they prefer to
meet to discuss it?

One final piece of advice about your supervisor: if you don’t get on, then change supervisor. But
do so as early as possible. Nobody wants you or your supervisor to struggle with the relationship,
but they won’t be very sympathetic if you’re asking for a change a month before your deadline.

Formatting and Templates

If your university has a required format for a dissertation, and particularly if they supply a
template, then use it! Start your writing straight into the template, or format your work correctly
from the start. There is very little worse than cutting and pasting your work frantically into a
template 10 minutes before your submission deadline. Templates are designed to make your life
easier, not harder.

You will also need to format the references in the university’s preferred style. It is easier to do
this as you go along. If the format is MLA, APA or Chicago, you can use Google Scholar to
format it for you: search for the article title, then click on ‘cite’. This will save you typing out all
the names, and can also be used, with minor tweaks, for other formats. But beware: it’s not
always right! If it looks odd, check the original source.

Proof-reading

You’ll need to give yourself plenty of time to proof-read your work, to make sure that you
haven’t made any stupid errors, and that it all flows correctly. This is likely to take longer than
you think. You’ll also need to do this when you’re fresh, not last thing at night when you’re
tired.

If possible, try to find a friend or fellow-student in the same position with whom you can swap
dissertations for proof-reading. Fresh eyes are likely to spot errors much more effectively than
those who already know what it should say.

Language Editing

The international language of academic publishing is English and many universities require their
students to publish their dissertations in English. If your first language is not English, this is
going to be a problem because your English will almost certainly not be up to the task. You have
two choices about how you approach this:

 You find a native English speaker, perhaps a fellow student, who is prepared to read
your thesis for you and help you improve the English (preferably for free, or at least for
the price of not much more than a meal and a few drinks); or
 You pay an editor to do the work for you. This will not be cheap; the going rate for
high quality academic language editing is about $7 per 250 words. You can find
professional language editors via the websites of publishers of academic journals such as
Emerald and Springer.

You will need to ensure that you build in sufficient time to allow someone else to read over your
work. Nobody, not even if you are paying them, is going to want to stay up all night to edit your
work because you left it too late. Many will also prefer not to work at weekends. Allow at least
two weeks for professional language editing.

A Note on Plagiarism

DO NOT PLAGIARISE
If you are found to have plagiarised you will be heavily penalised and will probably lose your
degree.

Ways to avoid being caught out inadvertently include:

 Never copy and paste from a journal article. Always summarise it in your own words,
which also helps to make sure that you have understood it.
 If, for the sake of time, you want to copy and paste specific sentences which sum up the
argument particularly well, always put them in quotation marks in your summary, with
the source, so that you will remember that they are direct quotes and need to be
acknowledged as such.

See our page: Academic Referencing for more information.

Conclusion

This page sets out general advice on issues connected with writing a dissertation, also known as
a thesis.

The following pages set out in more detail how to approach each section of your dissertation,
including the Literature Review, Methodology, Results and Discussion.

Writing a Dissertation: 
The Introduction
From our: Dissertation Writing guide.

The introduction to your dissertation or thesis may well be the last part that you complete,
excepting perhaps the abstract. However, it should not be the last part that you think about.

You should write a draft of your introduction very early on, perhaps as early as when you submit
your research proposal, to set out a broad outline of your ideas, why you want to study this area,
and what you hope to explore and/or establish.

You can, and should, update your introduction several times as your ideas develop. Keeping the
introduction in mind will help you to ensure that your research stays on track.

The introduction provides the rationale for your dissertation, thesis or other research project:
what you are trying to answer and why it is important to do this research.
Your introduction should contain a clear statement of the research question and the aims of the
research (closely related to the question).

It should also introduce and briefly review the literature on your topic to show what is already
known and explain the theoretical framework. If there are theoretical debates in the literature,
then the introduction is a good place for the researcher to give his or her own perspective in
conjunction with the literature review section of the dissertation.

The introduction should also indicate how your piece of research will contribute to the
theoretical understanding of the topic.

Drawing on your Research Proposal

The introduction to your dissertation or thesis will probably draw heavily on your research
proposal.

If you haven't already written a research proposal see our page Writing a Research Proposal for
some ideas.

The introduction needs to set the scene for the later work and give a broad idea of the arguments
and/or research that preceded yours. It should give some idea of why you chose to study this
area, giving a flavour of the literature, and what you hoped to find out.

Warning!

Don’t include too many citations in your introduction: this is your summary of why you want to
study this area, and what questions you hope to address. Any citations are only to set the context,
and you should leave the bulk of the literature for a later section.

Unlike your research proposal, however, you have now completed the work. This means that
your introduction can be much clearer about what exactly you chose to investigate and the
precise scope of your work.

Remember, whenever you actually write it, that, for the reader, the introduction is the start of
the journey through your work. Although you can give a flavour of the outcomes of your
research, you should not include any detailed results or conclusions.

Some good ideas for making your introduction strong include:

 An interesting opening sentence that will hold the attention of your reader.
  Don’t try to say everything in the introduction, but do outline the broad thrust of your
work and argument.
 Make sure that you don’t promise anything that can’t be delivered later.
 Keep the language straightforward. Although you should do this throughout, it is
especially important for the introduction.

Top Tip:

Your introduction is the reader’s ‘door’ into your thesis or dissertation. It therefore needs to
make sense to the non-expert. Ask a friend to read it for you, and see if they can understand it
easily.

At the end of the introduction, it is also usual to set out an outline of the rest of the dissertation.

This can be as simple as ‘Chapter 2 discusses my chosen methodology, Chapter 3 sets out my
results, and Chapter 4 discusses the results and draws conclusions’.

However, if your thesis is ordered by themes, then a more complex outline may be necessary.

Drafting and Redrafting

As with any other piece of writing, redrafting and editing will improve your text.

This is especially important for the introduction because it needs to hold your reader’s attention
and lead them into your research.

The best way to ensure that you can do this is to give yourself enough time to write a really good
introduction, including several redrafts.

Do not view the introduction as a last minute job.

Read more at: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/dissertation-introduction.html

Researching and Writing a Literature
Review
Part of our: Dissertation Writing guide.

A literature review demonstrates that you have read around your topic and have a broad
understanding of previous research, including its limitations.

In the literature review, you summarise the main viewpoints and important facts that you
encountered in your reading as they relate to your chosen topic.  You will also use the literature
review to justify the value of doing research on your topic by showing what is already known,
what is not yet known, and how it is relevant. 

Your literature review should not simply be descriptive but should also provide a critical analysis
of the body of work, and demonstrate that you understand how it fits together as a whole and
how your own research fits with previous studies.

A key aspect of a literature review is what sources you select to include, and which you exclude.

Finding Sources

Thanks to the internet, literature searches are now relatively easy, and can be done from the
comfort of your own laptop without needing to go anywhere near a library.

However, a word of warning is in order here. The ease with which anybody can access and
publish to the internet means that many items published online have not been scrutinised by
anybody other than the author. 

In other words, content has not necessarily been checked, you have no way of knowing whether
the author’s facts and claims are at all accurate and you could easily land yourself in trouble by
blindly following or citing from online sources. 

Furthermore, because items on the internet are frequently changed, you may find that something
you read yesterday is no longer available in the same form today. However, internet sources can
be very useful for up-to-date information, especially current affairs or ongoing or very recent
research.

Blogs and sites like the encyclopaedia Wikipedia are particularly prone to these problems.  For
these reasons, a general rule of thumb is that you should only rely on internet resources from the
websites of organisations whose information you already know to be reputable, like
SkillsYouNeed. 

Do not underestimate how much physical libraries and librarians may be able to help you.
Librarians are usually hugely experienced in using all the search tools and databases, and can
often show you much quicker ways of doing things, as well as tips and tricks to help you refine
your search.

Furthermore, libraries may have copies of books and academic journals that are not available
online. So a trip to your library may prove to be very helpful.

Top Tip

If you haven’t already done so, get yourself an ATHENS account through your university and/or
school library. Spend time working out which of the available databases are going to be most
useful for your topic, including asking the librarians for advice.

A simple way to get started with finding appropriate materials is simply to ask people who are
likely to know.

You might for example ask your tutor or supervisor, or an expert or practitioner working on your
chosen topic. Often, they will be able to give you some very helpful ideas about where to begin
your reading.

However, be aware that some professionals may find constant requests for information intrudes
on their time. Always be courteous and sensitive to the level of demand you may be making on
someone’s time.

See our page: Sources of Information for more about the types of resources that you might use
and how to access them.

Choosing and Refining your Search Terms

Your search terms are one of the most important elements of finding the right sources for your
research project and developing them is an ongoing process.

It’s a good idea to start with a phrase that you think others will have used about the topic,
perhaps that you have identified from your lectures and/or earlier study. You will probably find
that your first few searches don’t turn up much that’s useful.

Use the one or two articles that you find that are on the right lines to identify alternative search
terms, and continue to search until you turn up useful articles.

You can also use a tool such as Google Adword Keyword Research Tool to identify phrases and
keywords that are similar to your chosen term(s). This tool is usually used by internet marketing
professionals to help them find keywords similar to their own but can be useful for academic
research too.

If you’re really struggling to find articles on the right topic, but you’re certain that they must be
out there, drop your supervisor a note asking about possible search terms. Tell them what you’ve
already used, and ask them for a few alternatives to get you started. However, this should be a
last resort, as you don’t want to demonstrate your ignorance too obviously!

Finally, keep searching. You need to read a lot of sources to find the most relevant and will
probably end up discarding more than half of what you read. Use abstracts to decide which
articles are worth reading, and don’t read those that aren’t relevant: keep checking back to your
research questions and decide whether each article is useful. If not, move on.

Critical Reading

Your literature review should not only show that you have been reading a range of materials
related to your topic, but also that you have been reading them critically and have thought about
the wider contexts and how they apply to your own area of research.

Critical reading is a skill that, like any other skill, is acquired with practice.

In essence, reading critically means that you do not take the claims at face value: you question
the basis for claims, why the author may have done and said things in the particular way he or
she did, what the wider context is, and whose interests are being served by the claims you
encounter.

See our page, Critical Reading for more information.

How Many Sources?

Your university or college supervisor will be able to give you an idea of how many sources you
should include in your literature review.

You will probably need to read at least double that number to find enough that are suitable for
inclusion. You should also try to find several different sorts of sources: books, journal articles,
dissertations, conference papers, working papers, and so on.

You need to make sure that you identify the key texts for the subject. Check a few references,
and see which texts are cited most often, or ask the librarians how to use the databases to check
how often each article is cited. A good way to identify when you have read enough is if your
reading keeps turning up the same points and you’re not learning anything new.

A Note on Dates
There are some theories or articles which are so important in a particular field that they need to
be cited, however long ago they were originally published. But those apart, you should generally
prefer more recent sources published in the last five or ten years. As a rough guide, the balance
of publication dates should be about two thirds from the last 10 years, and no more than one third
older than that.

Writing your Literature Review

For general advice about academic writing, see our page on Writing an Essay.

In general, your literature review should start with one or two broad paragraphs, demonstrating
your understanding of the breadth of your area of study.

You should then discuss the literature that deals with your area of research and, finally, consider
and critique the studies that are most directly relevant.

You should spend most time on the latter.

Writing your literature review should be an iterative process.

The best way to do it is probably to summarise each source as you go along, referencing it
carefully, and grouping your sources by themes.

You will almost certainly find that the themes develop as you go along, and so do your search
terms. Use headings to store your summaries and then write a more polished section under that
heading when you have enough sources to be able to ‘compare and contrast’ opposing views, and
particularly to draw out areas where there is disagreement and/or conflicting evidence as these
are the most fruitful for further research.

Where there are gaps, you can then go back and search for more sources on that area. The best
literature reviews are not only descriptive, but draw together similar thinking and provide a
critical analysis of the previous research, including highlighting really good studies, or
identifying flaws and gaps.

Top Tips

To make sure that you carrying out a critical analysis, make sure that you ask yourself the
question ‘Do I agree with this viewpoint? Why?’, and also consider whether the methods used
are strong or weak and why. This will also help you to decide on your own methodology.
Another way of checking whether you are evaluating or merely describing is to look at whether
you have discussed work chronologically (likely to be descriptive) or in terms of whether there is
general agreement on a topic (much more likely to be evaluative).

Checklist of Questions for Critical Reading

Ask yourself the following questions to decide whether or not a particular piece of work is worth
including in your literature review.

The Author

 Who is the author? What can I find out about him/her? Has he/she written other books,
articles etc.?
 What is the author’s position in the research process, e.g., gender, class, politics, life
experience, relationship to research participants?

The Medium

 Where and when was the document produced? What type of document is it?
 Is it reporting original research that the author has done, or is it presenting second-hand
information about a topic?
 Is it formal or informal?
 Is it 'authoritative' (e.g., academic, scientific) or 'popular' (newspaper or magazine
article)?
 How has it been produced? Is it glossy, with lots of pictures, diagrams, etc.?
 If it is contained on a website, is the website from a reputable organisation, or is the
document drawn from some other reputable source?

The Message

 What is being said?

 What is not being said?
 How is the argument presented? Why?
 What use has been made of diagrams, pictures etc.?
 Who was or is the intended audience?
 Whose interests are being served by this message? Are there political implications, for
instance?
 What evidence is presented to support the claims that are made?
 Does the evidence actually support the claims? Is the evidence presented in enough detail
for you to make up your own mind whether you agree with the claims?
 Are there errors or inconsistencies?
 What is the significance to my topic and the research that I wish to carry out?
Your literature review should also demonstrate how your study does or will relate to previous
work, and how it either fills gaps, or responds to calls for further work.

Your literature review will help you to refine your research question. It should also help you to
explain how your methodology fits with previous work, and help you to identify and evaluate
possible research methods.

A Note on Tense

When you are describing someone’s findings or opinions, it is probably best to use the past tense.

For example:

“Jones (2001) argued that…”.

Many authors of academic papers prefer the present tense when describing opinions or views
(“Jones (2001) argues that…”). However, it is always possible that Jones has subsequently
changed his/her view, and therefore the past tense is preferable.

The past tense is always going to be correct for something that was expressed in the past; the
present tense may no longer be true.

Citations and References

Your university will almost certainly have a preferred style for citations and references that you
will need to use. Make sure you understand how this works before you start writing your
literature review and use it consistently throughout.

Keep your references up to date as you go, and make sure that you always cite the reference as
you write: it’s much easier than trying to build a reference list at the end.

See our page on Academic Referencing for more information

Warning!

For scientific subjects, Vancouver (numerical) referencing is often preferred.

However, it is much harder to check that your references are correct using this system. It is
therefore better to use a (name, date) system of citations until you are certain that you have
finished revising the document.
Alternatively, use a system of end-notes which will automatically update the numbering if you
move a citation as you will otherwise end up hopelessly confused.

Draft, Draft and Redraft

Finally, once you have written each section by theme, go back and read the whole thing to check
that the sections flow logically one from another, and that the whole literature review reads
sensibly and coherently.

As with any essay or extended piece of writing, editing and redrafting will improve the quality of
your writing, as will asking someone else to read it over and check for errors or inconsistencies.

You should also do a search to check for consistent use of British or American spellings (-ise and
-ize, for example), double spaces after words, and double/single inverted commas around
quotations. You might think such details are less important than the content, but the marker may
not share your view.

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Writing your Dissertation: Methodology

From our: Dissertation Writing guide.

A key part of your dissertation or thesis is the methodology. This is not quite the same as
‘methods’.

The methodology describes the broad philosophical underpinning to your chosen research
methods, including whether you are using qualitative or quantitative methods, or a mixture of
both, and why.

You should be clear about the academic basis for all the choices of research methods that you
have made. 'I was interested' or 'I thought...' is not enough; there must be good academic reasons
for your choice.

What to Include in your Methodology

If you are submitting your dissertation in sections, with the methodology submitted before you
actually undertake the research, you should use this section to set out exactly what you plan to
do.
The methodology should be linked back to the literature to explain why you are using certain
methods, and the academic basis of your choice.

If you are submitting as a single thesis, then the Methodology should explain what you did, with
any refinements that you made as your work progressed. Again, it should have a clear academic
justification of all the choices that you made and be linked back to the literature.

Common Research Methods for the Social Sciences

There are numerous research methods that can be used when researching scientific subjects, you
should discuss which are the most appropriate for your research with your supervisor.

The following research methods are commonly used in social science, involving human subjects:

Interviews

One of the most flexible and widely used methods for gaining qualitative information about
people’s experiences, views and feelings is the interview. 

An interview can be thought of as a guided conversation between a researcher (you) and

somebody from whom you wish to learn something (often referred to as the ‘informant’). 

The level of structure in an interview can vary, but most commonly interviewers follow a semi-
structured format.  This means that the interviewer will develop a guide to the topics that he or
she wishes to cover in the conversation, and may even write out a number of questions to ask. 

However, the interviewer is free to follow different paths of conversation that emerge over the
course of the interview, or to prompt the informant to clarify and expand on certain
points. Therefore, interviews are particularly good tools for gaining detailed information where
the research question is open-ended in terms of the range of possible answers.

Interviews are not particularly well suited for gaining information from large numbers of people.
Interviews are time-consuming, and so careful attention needs to be given to selecting informants
who will have the knowledge or experiences necessary to answer the research question.  

See our page: Interviews for Research for more information.

Observations

If a researcher wants to know what people do under certain circumstances, the most
straightforward way to get this information is sometimes simply to watch them under those
circumstances.
Observations can form a part of either quantitative or qualitative research.  For instance, if a
researcher wants to determine whether the introduction of a traffic sign makes any difference to
the number of cars slowing down at a dangerous curve, she or he could sit near the curve and
count the number of cars that do and do not slow down.  Because the data will be numbers of
cars, this is an example of quantitative observation.

A researcher wanting to know how people react to a billboard advertisement might spend time
watching and describing the reactions of the people.  In this case, the data would be descriptive,
and would therefore be qualitative.

There are a number of potential ethical concerns that can arise with an observation study. Do the
people being studied know that they are under observation?  Can they give their consent?  If
some people are unhappy with being observed, is it possible to ‘remove’ them from the study
while still carrying out observations of the others around them?

See our page: Observational Research and Secondary Data for more information.

Questionnaires

If your intended research question requires you to collect standardised (and therefore
comparable) information from a number of people, then questionnaires may be the best method
to use.

Questionnaires can be used to collect both quantitative and qualitative data, although you will
not be able to get the level of detail in qualitative responses to a questionnaire that you could in
an interview.

Questionnaires require a great deal of care in their design and delivery, but a well-developed
questionnaire can be distributed to a much larger number of people than it would be possible to
interview. 

Questionnaires are particularly well suited for research seeking to measure some parameters for a
group of people (e.g., average age, percentage agreeing with a proposition, level of awareness of
an issue), or to make comparisons between groups of people (e.g., to determine whether
members of different generations held the same or different views on immigration).

See our page: Surveys and Survey Design for more information.

Documentary Analysis

Documentary analysis involves obtaining data from existing documents without having to
question people through interview, questionnaires or observe their behaviour. Documentary
analysis is the main way that historians obtain data about their research subjects, but it can also
be a valuable tool for contemporary social scientists.
Documents are tangible materials in which facts or ideas have been recorded.  Typically, we
think of items written or produced on paper, such as newspaper articles, Government policy
records, leaflets and minutes of meetings.  Items in other media can also be the subject of
documentary analysis, including films, songs, websites and photographs.

Documents can reveal a great deal about the people or organisation that produced them and the
social context in which they emerged. 

Some documents are part of the public domain and are freely accessible, whereas other
documents may be classified, confidential or otherwise unavailable to public access.  If such
documents are used as data for research, the researcher must come to an agreement with the
holder of the documents about how the contents can and cannot be used and how confidentiality
will be preserved.

See our page: Observational Research and Secondary Data for more information.

How to Choose your Methodology and Precise Research

Methods
Your methodology should be linked back to your research questions and previous research.

Visit your university or college library and ask the librarians for help; they should be able to help
you to identify the standard research method textbooks in your field. See also our section on
Research Methods for some further ideas.

Such books will help you to identify your broad research philosophy, and then choose methods
which relate to that. This section of your dissertation or thesis should set your research in the
context of its theoretical underpinnings.

The methodology should also explain the weaknesses of your chosen approach and how you plan
to avoid the worst pitfalls, perhaps by triangulating your data with other methods, or why you do
not think the weakness is relevant.

For every philosophical underpinning, you will almost certainly be able to find researchers who
support it and those who don’t.

Use the arguments for and against expressed in the literature to explain why you have chosen to
use this methodology or why the weaknesses don’t matter here.

Structuring your Methodology

It is usually helpful to start your section on methodology by setting out the conceptual
framework in which you plan to operate with reference to the key texts on that approach.

You should be clear throughout about the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen approach and
how you plan to address them. You should also note any issues of which to be aware, for
example in sample selection or to make your findings more relevant.

You should then move on to discuss your research questions, and how you plan to address each
of them.

This is the point at which to set out your chosen research methods, including their theoretical
basis, and the literature supporting them. You should make clear whether you think the method is
‘tried and tested’ or much more experimental, and what kind of reliance you could place on the
results. You will also need to discuss this again in the discussion section.

Your research may even aim to test the research methods, to see if they work in certain
circumstances.

You should conclude by summarising your research methods, the underpinning approach, and
what you see as the key challenges that you will face in your research. Again, these are the areas
that you will want to revisit in your discussion.

Conclusion

Your methodology, and the precise methods that you choose to use in your research, are crucial
to its success.

It is worth spending plenty of time on this section to ensure that you get it right. As always, draw
on the resources available to you, for example by discussing your plans in detail with your
supervisor who may be able to suggest whether your approach has significant flaws which you

Writing your Dissertation: 

Results and Discussion
See also: Writing Your Methodology

When writing a dissertation or thesis, the results and discussion sections can be both the most
interesting as well as the most challenging sections to write.

You may choose to write these sections separately, or combine them into a single chapter,
depending on your university’s guidelines and your own preferences.
There are advantages to both approaches.

Writing the results and discussion as separate sections allows you to focus first on what results
you obtained and set out clearly what happened in your experiments and/or investigations
without worrying about their implications.

This can focus your mind on what the results actually show and help you to sort them in your
head.

However, many people find it easier to combine the results with their implications as the two are
closely connected.

Check your university’s requirements carefully before combining the results and discussions
sections as some specify that they must be kept separate.

Results Section
The Results section should set out your key experimental results, including any statistical
analysis and whether or not the results of these are significant.

You should cover any literature supporting your interpretation of significance. It does not have to
include everything you did, particularly for a doctorate dissertation. However, for an
undergraduate or master's thesis, you will probably find that you need to include most of your
work.

You should write your results section in the past tense: you are describing what you have
done in the past.

Warning!

Every result included MUST have a method set out in the methods section. Check back to make
sure that you have included all the relevant methods.

Conversely, every method should also have some results given so, if you choose to exclude
certain experiments from the results, make sure that you remove mention of the method as well.

If you are unsure whether to include certain results, go back to your research questions and
decide whether the results are relevant to them. It doesn’t matter whether they are supportive or
not, it’s about relevance. If they are relevant, you should include them.
Having decided what to include, next decide what order to use. You could choose chronological,
which should follow the methods, or in order from most to least important in the answering of
your research questions, or by research question and/or hypothesis.

You also need to consider how best to present your results: tables, figures, graphs, or text. Try to
use a variety of different methods of presentation, and consider your reader: 20 pages of dense
tables are hard to understand, as are five pages of graphs, but a single table and well-chosen
graph that illustrate your overall findings will make things much clearer.

Make sure that each table and figure has a number and a title. Number tables and figures in
separate lists, but consecutively by the order in which you mention them in the text. If you have
more than about two or three, it’s often helpful to provide lists of tables and figures alongside the
table of contents at the start of your dissertation.

Top Tip

Summarise your results in the text, drawing on the figures and tables to illustrate your points.

The text and figures should be complementary, not repeat the same information. You should
refer to every table or figure in the text. Any that you don’t feel the need to refer to can safely be
moved to an appendix, or even removed.

Make sure that you including information about the size and direction of any changes, including
percentage change if appropriate. Statistical tests should include details of p values or confidence
intervals and limits.

While you don’t need to include all your primary evidence in this section, you should as a matter
of good practice make it available in an appendix, to which you should refer at the relevant point.

For example:

Details of all the interview participants can be found in Appendix A, with transcripts of each
interview in Appendix B.

You will, almost inevitably, find that you need to include some slight discussion of your results
during this section. This discussion should evaluate the quality of the results and their reliability,
but not stray too far into discussion of how far your results support your hypothesis and/or
answer your research questions, as that is for the discussion section.

See our pages: Analysing Qualitative Data and Simple Statistical Analysis for more
information on analysing your results.
Discussion Section
This section has four purposes, it should:

1. Interpret and explain your results

2. Answer your research question

3. Justify your approach

4. Critically evaluate your study

The discussion section therefore needs to review your findings in the context of the literature and
the existing knowledge about the subject.

You also need to demonstrate that you understand the limitations of your research and the
implications of your findings for policy and practice. This section should be written in the
present tense.

The Discussion section needs to follow from your results and relate back to your literature
review. Make sure that everything you discuss is covered in the results section.

Warning!

Some universities require a separate section on recommendations for policy and practice and/or
for future research, while others allow you to include this in your discussion, so check the
guidelines carefully.

Starting the Task

Most people are likely to write this section best by preparing an outline, setting out the broad
thrust of the argument, and how your results support it.

You may find techniques like mind mapping are helpful in making a first outline; check out our
page: Creative Thinking for some ideas about how to think through your ideas. You should start
by referring back to your research questions, discuss your results, then set them into the context
of the literature, and then into broader theory.

Top Tip
This is likely to be one of the longest sections of your dissertation, and it’s a good idea to break it
down into chunks with sub-headings to help your reader to navigate through the detail.

Fleshing Out the Detail

Once you have your outline in front of you, you can start to map out how your results fit into the
outline.

This will help you to see whether your results are over-focused in one area, which is why writing
up your research as you go along can be a helpful process. For each theme or area, you should
discuss how the results help to answer your research question, and whether the results are
consistent with your expectations and the literature.

The Importance of Understanding Differences

If your results are controversial and/or unexpected, you should set them fully in context and
explain why you think that you obtained them.

Your explanations may include issues such as a non-representative sample for convenience
purposes, a response rate skewed towards those with a particular experience, or your own
involvement as a participant for sociological research.

You do not need to be apologetic about these, because you made a choice about them, which you
should have justified in the methodology section. However, you do need to evaluate your own
results against others’ findings, especially if they are different. A full understanding of the
limitations of your research is part of a good discussion section.

Top Tip

At this stage, you may want to revisit your literature review, unless you submitted it as a separate
submission earlier, and revise it to draw out those studies which have proven more relevant.

Conclude by summarising the implications of your findings in brief, and explain why they are
important for researchers and in practice, and provide some suggestions for further work.

You may also wish to make some recommendations for practice. As before, this may be a
separate section, or included in your discussion.

Conclusion
The results and discussion, including conclusion and recommendations, are probably the most
substantial sections of your dissertation. Once completed, you can begin to relax slightly: you are
on to the last stages of writing!

Continue to:
Dissertation: Conclusion and Extras
Writing your Methodology

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Writing a Dissertation:
Conclusion and Other Sections
Part of our: Dissertation Writing guide.

Once you have completed the main body of your dissertation or thesis, you then need to worry
about drawing your conclusions, and the additional pages, such as whether to include a table of
contents.

Your university may have guidelines but, otherwise, you will have to use your own judgement.

This page gives some advice about what is often included and why.

Writing your Conclusion

You may have been permitted, and have chosen, to include your conclusions in the discussion
section, see our page on Results and Discussion for some ideas about why you might choose to
do this.

However, it is normal practice to include a short section at the end of your dissertation that draws
out your conclusions.

This section will need to have several elements, including:

 A brief summary, just a few paragraphs, of your key findings, related back to what you expected
to see (essential);
 The conclusions which you have drawn from your research (essential);
 Why your research is important for researchers and practitioners (essential);
 Recommendations for future research (strongly recommended, verging on essential);
 Recommendations for practitioners (strongly recommended in management and business
courses and some other areas, so check with your supervisor whether this will be expected); and
 A final paragraph rounding off your dissertation or thesis.
Your conclusion does not need to be very long; no more than five pages is usually sufficient,
although detailed recommendations for practice may require more space.

Other Elements for Inclusion

Title Page

Your university will almost certainly have formal guidelines on the format for the title page,
which may need to be submitted separately for blind marking purposes.

As a general rule, the title page should contain the title of the thesis or dissertation, your name,
your course, your supervisor and the date of submission or completion.

Abstract

This is a one page summary of your dissertation or thesis, effectively an executive summary.

Not every university requires a formal abstract, especially for undergraduate or master's theses,
so check carefully. If one is required, it may be either structured or unstructured.

A structured abstract has subheadings, which should follow the same format as your dissertation
itself (usually Literature, Methods, Results and Discussion). There will probably also be a word
limit for the abstract.

If an abstract is required, it may be published separately from your thesis, as a way of indexing
it. It will therefore be assessed both as a part of your thesis, and as a stand-alone document that
will tell other researchers whether your dissertation will be useful in their studies. It is generally
best to write the abstract last, when you are sure of the thread of your argument, and the most
important areas to highlight.

Table of Contents

You should include a table of contents, which should include all headings and subheadings.

It is probably best to use the standard software tools to create and update this automatically, as it
leads to fewer problems later on. If you’re not sure how to do this, use the Help function in the
software, or Google it.

The time spent learning how to do it accurately will be more than saved later on when you don’t
have to update it manually.
Table of Figures

You only really need to include this if you have a lot of figures. As with your table of contents,
it’s best to use the tools available in the software to create this, so that it will update
automatically even if you move a table or figure later.

Acknowledgements

This section is used to ensure that you do not inadvertently fall foul of any ‘taking help’
guidance.

Use it to thank:

 Anyone who provided you with information, or who gave you their time as part of your
research, for example, interviewees, or those who returned questionnaires;
 Any person or body who has provided you with funding or financial support that has enabled
you to carry out your research;
 Anyone who has helped you with the writing, including anyone who has read and commented
on a draft such as your supervisor, a proof-reader or a language editor, whether paid or unpaid;
 Anyone to whom you are particularly grateful, like your spouse or family for tolerating your
absence from family occasions for years during your studies.

Appendices

You should not use appendices as a general ‘dumping ground’ for stuff you found interesting,
but couldn’t manage to shoehorn in anywhere else, or which you wanted to include but couldn’t
within the word count.

Appendices should be used for relevant information only, such as copies of your questionnaires
or interview outlines, letters asking people to participate or additional proofs.

You can be reasonably confident that nobody will read them in any detail, so don’t bother to use
an appendix to explain why your argument is correct. Anything that you want to be read should
be included in the main body of your text.

Finishing Off...
Check, Check and Check Again

Every university’s requirements are slightly different in terms of format, what sections need to
be included and so on.
Make sure that you check what you have done against your university’s guidelines and that it
conforms exactly.

If in doubt, check with the administrative staff dealing with submissions or with your supervisor.
You really do not want to be penalised for an error of formatting.

Finally…

Make sure that you put your dissertation together in a single document, and read it over as a
whole before submitting it.

It is also a good idea to get somebody else to proofread your work to check for any mistakes that
you may have missed.

Collating your dissertation may introduce errors of formatting or style, or you may notice
duplication between chapters that you had previously missed.

Allow sufficient time for collating and final checks, and also for any formal binding required by
the university, to avoid any last minute panics.

Continue to:
Assignment Finishing Touches
Reflecting on Marked Work

See Also:
Writing a Research Proposal | Graduate Employability Skills

Ethical Issues in Research

See also: Writing a Research Proposal

Ethics are broadly the set of rules, written and unwritten, that govern our expectations of our own
and others’ behaviour.

Effectively, they set out how we expect others to behave, and why. While there is broad
agreement on some ethical values (for example, that murder is bad), there is also wide variation
on how exactly these values should be interpreted in practice.

Research ethics are the set of ethics that govern how scientific and other research is performed at
research institutions such as universities, and how it is disseminated.

This page explains more about research ethics, and how you can ensure that your research is
compliant.
What are Research Ethics?
When most people think of research ethics, they think about issues that arise when research
involves human or animal subjects.

While these issues are indeed a key part of research ethics, there are also wider issues about
standards of conduct. These include the importance of publishing findings in a transparent way,
not plagiarising others’ work, and not falsifying work.

The Importance of Research Ethics

Research ethics are important for a number of reasons.

 They promote the aims of research, such as expanding knowledge.

 They support the values required for collaborative work, such as mutual respect and
fairness. This is essential because scientific research depends on collaboration between
researchers and groups.
 They mean that researchers can be held accountable for their actions. Many researchers
are supported by public money, and regulations on conflicts of interest, misconduct, and
research involving humans or animals are necessary to ensure that money is spent
appropriately.
 They ensure that the public can trust research. For people to support and fund research,
they have to be confident in it.
 They support important social and moral values, such as the principle of doing no harm to
others.

Source: Resnick, D. B. (2015) What is Ethics in Research and Why is it Important?

Codes of Ethics
Government agencies who fund or commission research often publish codes of conduct for
researchers, or codes of ethics.

For example, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) both publish ethical codes. Some ethical codes may have the force of law behind them,
while others may simply be advisable.

Be aware that even if you do nothing illegal, doing something unethical may end your
research career.
Many or even most ethical codes cover the following areas:

 Honesty and Integrity

This means that you need to report your research honestly, and that this applies to your
methods (what you did), your data, your results, and whether you have previously
published any of it. You should not make up any data, including extrapolating
unreasonably from some of your results, or do anything which could be construed as
trying to mislead anyone. It is better to undersell than over-exaggerate your findings.

When working with others, you should always keep to any agreements, and act sincerely.

 Objectivity

You should aim to avoid bias in any aspect of your research, including design, data
analysis, interpretation, and peer review. For example, you should never recommend as a
peer reviewer someone you know, or who you have worked with, and you should try to
ensure that no groups are inadvertently excluded from your research. This also means that
you need to disclose any personal or financial interests that may affect your research.

 Carefulness

Take care in carrying out your research to avoid careless mistakes. You should also
review your work carefully and critically to ensure that your results are credible. It is also
important to keep full records of your research. If you are asked to act as a peer reviewer,
you should take the time to do the job effectively and fully.

 Openness

You should always be prepared to share your data and results, along with any new tools
that you have developed, when you publish your findings, as this helps to further
knowledge and advance science. You should also be open to criticism and new ideas.

 Respect for Intellectual Property

You should never plagiarise, or copy, other people’s work and try to pass it off as your
own. You should always ask for permission before using other people’s tools or methods,
unpublished data or results. Not doing so is plagiarism. Obviously, you need to respect
copyrights and patents, together with other forms of intellectual property, and always
acknowledge contributions to your research. If in doubt, acknowledge, to avoid any risk
of plagiarism.

 Confidentiality
 You should respect anything that has been provided in confidence. You should also
follow guidelines on protection of sensitive information such as patient records.

 Responsible Publication

You should publish to advance to state of research and knowledge, and not just to
advance your career. This means, in essence, that you should not publish anything that is
not new, or that duplicates someone else’s work.

 Legality

You should always be aware of laws and regulations that govern your work, and be sure
that you conform to them.

 Animal Care

If you are using animals in your research, you should always be sure that your
experiments are both necessary and well-designed. You should also show respect for the
animals you are using, and make sure that they are properly cared for.

 Human Subjects Protection

If your research involves people, you should make sure that you reduce any possible
harm to the minimum, and maximise the benefits both to participants and other people.

This means, for example, that you should not expose people to more tests than are strictly
necessary to fulfil your research aims. You should always respect human rights, including
the right to privacy and autonomy. You may need to take particular care with vulnerable
groups, which include, but are not limited to, children, older people, and those with
learning difficulties.

Source: Resnick, D. B. (2015) What is Ethics in Research and Why is it Important? List adapted
from Shamoo A and Resnik D. 2015. Responsible Conduct of Research, 3rd ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press).

The Role of the Ethics Committee

Most universities have an ethics committee. This is required to scrutinise all research proposals,
to ensure that they do not raise any ethical issues. This will generally include research for
master’s and undergraduate degrees, although undergraduate research may be covered by a
broader research proposal from your supervisor.
There is likely to be a standard form to complete for ethical approval, which will cover who will
be involved, how you will recruit your participants, and what steps you will take to ensure that
they have provided informed consent.

There is an example form on our page Writing a Research Proposal, which also contains more
detail about how to go about preparing a proposal.

The ethics committee’s role is to consider that what you are doing is appropriate and
proportionate to your research aims.

If a research proposal raises ethical issues, the committee will ask the researcher to look again at
the issue, and consider whether they could do it differently.

For example, if you are proposing to carry out a study on a particular disease, and you want to
ask all your participants whether they are married and have any children, the committee may
want to know why this is relevant. It may be relevant (for example, if you think the disease may
be reduced by living in a family), in which case, you will need to justify this.

The committee may also suggest alternative methods that they think are more suitable for the
target group, or additional precautions that you should take.

You cannot start your research until you have been granted ethical approval, which will be
granted formally, together with an approval number.

When you publish your research, whether as a thesis or in one or more journal articles, you will
need to provide details of the ethical approval, including this number.

If you are unsure how to behave in a particular situation…

…and think you may have an ethical dilemma, then you should always seek advice before you
act.

If you are a student, your supervisor should be happy to help and advise you. If necessary, they
will be able to advise you about who else to ask.

As a researcher, you should consult more senior colleagues around, either at your own institution
or others, who should be happy to help you.

After all, it is in everyone’s interests to promote research ethics, and support the integrity and
reputation of research.
Continue to:
Designing Research
Writing a Methodology

See also:
Writing a Literature Review | Academic Referencing
Learning Styles | Sources of Information

Read more at: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/research-ethics.html