how to write a 5000 word dissertation

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Writing your dissertation - structure and sections

Posted in: dissertations

In this post, we look at the structural elements of a typical dissertation. Your department may wish you to include additional sections but the following covers all core elements you will need to work on when designing and developing your final assignment.

The table below illustrates a classic dissertation layout with approximate lengths for each section.

Hopkins, D. and Reid, T., 2018.  The Academic Skills Handbook: Your Guid e to Success in Writing, Thinking and Communicating at University . Sage.

Your title should be clear, succinct and tell the reader exactly what your dissertation is about. If it is too vague or confusing, then it is likely your dissertation will be too vague and confusing. It is important therefore to spend time on this to ensure you get it right, and be ready to adapt to fit any changes of direction in your research or focus.

In the following examples, across a variety of subjects, you can see how the students have clearly identified the focus of their dissertation, and in some cases target a problem that they will address:

An econometric analysis of the demand for road transport within the united Kingdom from  1965 to 2000

To what extent does payment card fraud affect UK bank profitability and bank stakeholders?  Does this justify fraud prevention?

A meta-analysis of implant materials for intervertebral disc replacement and regeneration.

The role of ethnic institutions in social development; the case of Mombasa, Kenya.

Why haven’t biomass crops been adopted more widely as a source of renewable energy in the United Kingdom?

Mapping the criminal mind: Profiling and its limitation.

The Relative Effectiveness of Interferon Therapy for Chronic Hepatitis C

Under what conditions did the European Union exhibit leadership in international climate change negotiations from 1992-1997, 1997-2005 and 2005-Copenhagen respectively?

The first thing your reader will read (after the title) is your abstract. However, you need to write this last. Your abstract is a summary of the whole project, and will include aims and objectives, methods, results and conclusions. You cannot write this until you have completed your write-up.

Introduction

Your introduction should include the same elements found in most academic essay or report assignments, with the possible inclusion of research questions. The aim of the introduction is to set the scene, contextualise your research, introduce your focus topic and research questions, and tell the reader what you will be covering.  It should move from the general  and work towards the specific. You should include the following:

• Attention-grabbing statement (a controversy, a topical issue, a contentious view, a recent problem etc)
• Background and context
• Introduce the topic, key theories, concepts, terms of reference, practices, (advocates and critic)
• Introduce the problem and focus of your research
• Set out your research question(s) (this could be set out in a separate section)
• Your approach to answering your research questions.

Literature review

Your literature review is the section of your report where you show what is already known about the area under investigation and demonstrate the need for your particular study. This is a significant section in your dissertation (30%) and you should allow plenty of time to carry out a thorough exploration of your focus topic and use it to help you identify a specific problem and formulate your research questions.

You should approach the literature review with the critical analysis dial turned up to full volume. This is not simply a description, list, or summary  of everything you have read. Instead, it is a synthesis of your reading, and should include analysis and evaluation of readings, evidence, studies and data, cases, real world applications and views/opinions expressed.  Your supervisor is looking for this detailed critical approach in your literature review, where you unpack sources, identify strengths and weaknesses and find gaps in the research.

In other words, your literature review is your opportunity to show the reader why your paper is important and your research is significant, as it addresses the gap or on-going issue you have uncovered.

You need to tell the reader what was done. This means describing the research methods and explaining your choice. This will include information on the following:

• Are your methods qualitative or quantitative... or both? And if so, why?
• Who (if any) are the participants?
• Are you analysing any documents, systems, organisations? If so what are they and why are you analysing them?
• What did you do first, second, etc?
• What ethical considerations are there?

It is a common style convention to write what was done rather than what you did, and write it so that someone else would be able to replicate your study.

Here you describe what you have found out. You need to identify the most significant patterns in your data, and use tables and figures to support your description. Your tables and figures are a visual representation of your findings, but remember to describe what they show in your writing. There should be no critical analysis in this part (unless you have combined results and discussion sections).

Here you show the significance of your results or findings. You critically analyse what they mean, and what the implications may be. Talk about any limitations to your study, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your own research, and make suggestions for further studies to build on your findings. In this section, your supervisor will expect you to dig deep into your findings and critically evaluate what they mean in relation to previous studies, theories, views and opinions.

This is a summary of your project, reminding the reader of the background to your study, your objectives, and showing how you met them. Do not include any new information that you have not discussed before.

This is the list of all the sources you have cited in your dissertation. Ensure you are consistent and follow the conventions for the particular referencing system you are using. (Note: you shouldn't include books you've read but do not appear in your dissertation).

Include any extra information that your reader may like to read. It should not be essential for your reader to read them in order to understand your dissertation. Your appendices should be labelled (e.g. Appendix A, Appendix B, etc). Examples of material for the appendices include detailed data tables (summarised in your results section), the complete version of a document you have used an extract from, etc.

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

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 ...

36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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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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Dissertation Writing: Home

Dissertation writing.

• Illustrations

What is a dissertation? An extended essay exploring a specified research question or area of practice in depth. Although the word count can vary it is usually longer than most essays, between 5000 - 10000 words.

Your dissertation should demonstrate your ability to:

• Study independently;
• Plan and undertake an in-depth piece of research;
• Select and evaluate information;
• Develop a reasoned argument based on examples and evidence;
• Communicate your ideas and findings effectively.

Dissertation Webinars For further help see -  Library & Learning Webinars and Events  (see Recorded Webinars tab and Dissertations).

Developing your research Consider your overarching hypothesis and the argument you are going to construct. Be aware that these may change as your research deepens. Use tutor and peer feedback to develop your research.

Begin writing before you have completed your research, because the process of writing will help you clarify your ideas and inform your research.

Research methods To some extent, the topic you choose to investigate will be shaped by existing studies on related topics, so it is important to explore existing literature.

Once you have some awareness of what has already been written about, you need to select the texts, ideas and methods that are most relevant to your particular enquiry.

You may want to research people’s responses to a recent phenomenon, and there may not be very much written about your specific topic: in which case look at the ways that other people have investigated public opinion, find out more about primary research methods (e.g. writing and delivering surveys, interviews, carrying out focus groups and observations etc.)

However, many art subjects are continuations or variations of existing practices and disciplines, and a lot of research is based on evaluating existing texts, which is known as secondary research (e.g. texts written by another researcher).

See also: Finding Resources

See 'The Introduction' under the 'Writing' tab at: Essay Writing .

For longer pieces of writing, chapters serve to break up sections that have different, but related topics. Traditionally, dissertations included a literature review as the first chapter (after the introduction), and a methodology, but check your course requirements.

Chapters can be arranged into key themes, case studies, or they can follow the development of something, chronologically. How you organise them will depend on your topic, and what you want to emphasize. It is helpful for your reader if you explain how you have arranged your chapters in the introduction, so that they know what to expect.

See: Literature Reviews

A methodology is a theoretically-informed approach to the production of knowledge. It usually refers to a chapter or section of a chapter that explains how you went about finding and verifying information, and why you used the methods and processes that you decided to use.

Since research is about finding out more about a subject, methodologies are designed to aid the process, so a good starting point is deciding what you want to find out.

• Your research question (aim)
• What smaller questions (objectives) you think you may need to explore in order to answer your main research question (aim)
• What practical experiments/primary research/secondary research activities you think you will need to undertake to answer these questions (objectives)

You might want to write a list of what you are going to do. However, a methodology is more than simply the methods you intend to use to collect data. You need to include a consideration of the concepts and theories which underlie your chosen methods, and to state how you have addressed the research questions and/or hypotheses.

Every stage should be explained and justified with clear reasons for the choice of your particular methods and materials. Ideally, the methods should be described in enough detail for the study to be replicated, or at least repeated in a similar way in another situation. If your research is mainly secondary, then much of this will be covered in the literature review and you may choose to combine the two (a critical review).

Methods vary both within and between disciplines: talk to your supervisors and evaluate methodologies written by other researchers in your field.

Research Methods Research methods are frequently divided into two categories: primary and secondary research.

• Primary research includes interviews, surveys, observations and questionnaires – research where the student gathers first hand evidence.
• Secondary research is found in sources such as academic books and journals and is the usual route for the contextual and theory-based dissertation. Secondary research should be done before primary research is carried out, as this will inform the research design.

However, when you Google or search online for a guide to writing a methodology, you are commonly given a scientific methodology structure which emphasises the experiment and results. In an arts and humanities based subject, a methodology is not a systematic description of how you arrived at your conclusion or result. Rather, it could take a critical approach that is grounded in theory (perhaps social theory such as Marxism, Feminism, or Post-humanism, for example), and the use of literature to support this which may be applied to case studies or examples.

The choice of research methods depends on what you want to find out: the data or findings you need to support your discussion of your chosen research subject.

Research Findings Research findings, that is the information related to the topic you are investigating, falls roughly into two categories - quantitative (numbers and statistics) and qualitative (words, images, objects and meanings).

• Quantitative methods might include experiments, observations recorded as numbers, and surveys with closed-ended or multiple-choice questions. The findings are usually presented in tables, charts or percentages.
• Qualitative methods might include interviews with open-ended questions, observations described in words, and literature reviews that explore concepts, narratives and theories and is open to interpretation.
• It is important not to consider them to be mutually exclusive: for example, the process of designing an effective survey or questionnaire to gather quantitative data will probably include some qualitative research into different approaches and formats of questionnaires, and this will need to be underpinned by your own evaluation of what would be most effective.

Structure Have a short introduction which tells your reader the overall aim of the research. what methods and procedures have been used, with a rationale to explain how the approach is appropriate to the research questions and aim.

Establish links between the question and the method, e.g. if the question revolves around a feminist debate on the representation of women in advertising, then a survey of people's opinions on this would not be as valuable as academic texts that engage with these current debates at a theoretical level.

Describe the specific methods of data collection.

Establish your analytic framework (theoretical perspective) and interpretation of your findings.

Your conclusion should bring together the main themes, findings and overall point of your essay. In order to do this, it is a good idea to refer to both the assignment question and your introduction, so that your conclusion is consistent with them. For example, if you have looked at an argument weighing up the pros and cons of something, you should summarise why you lean towards one opinion above others, or explain why a variety of approaches are valid for different reasons. It is not necessary to state a definitive answer to your question, but you should bring together the key elements that you have investigated, so as to justify your stance.

See also 'The Conclusion' under the 'Writing' tab at Essay Writing .

Academic style Being able to express your ideas in formal English is a requirement for many written course assignments: it is also a valuable transferrable skill in terms of employability. Academic writing demonstrates your ability to present your ideas convincingly, with clarity accuracy and authority. Some good examples of academic phrases are available on the Manchester Academic Phrasebank .

General guidelines for academic style include:

• Use signposting words to introduce and link your ideas, and help your reader follow your ideas. For example, rather than ‘Picasso experimented with cubism’ use ‘Picasso’s experiments with cubism were significant because…’
• Use objective language (the third person, rather than the first): e.g. rather than 'I believe that it is difficult to say how much an artwork is worth…’ use 'It is often difficult to estimate the value of an artwork, for example...’
• Use accurate language and subject-specific terminology, e.g. Rather than stating ‘Media stereotypes women' be specific: ‘The film Showgirls (1995) has been criticised for representing the female characters as stereotypical and highly sexualised.’ or ‘in the 1960s’ rather than ‘In the old days…’ (try to avoid assumptions and generalisations: e.g. everyone uses facebook, everybody knows…)
• Avoid contractions: e.g. use ‘do not’, rather than ‘don’t’, or ‘cannot’ rather than ‘can’t’ (this affects word count as well)

None of these guidelines are always applicable – there may be times when it is appropriate to use first person (I) to refer to personal experiences and opinions, and there may be times when you want to assert strong opinions. As with any piece of writing it will depend on what you want to communicate. However, essays are usually assessed on the knowledge demonstrated by the writer and using accurate terminology and statements rather than questions present a more convincing argument than phrases used in spoken English, such as ‘I feel…’ or ‘in my opinion…’.

Using evidence Providing evidence to demonstrate that you have researched your topic, and are aware of other studies and opinions about it, is a distinctive feature of academic writing. You should refer to the ideas and findings of others to support your argument, but the main voice should be your own.

Do not use a quotation unless you make it clear to your reader why you are using it and how it relates to the overall discussion. By interpreting other people's work you can indicate the significance of their ideas to your own argument. By commenting on or evaluating the work of others you demonstrate your own understanding of the topic you are investigating and indicate how you position yourself in relation to existing scholarship.

Evidence could be a direct or paraphrased citation from a variety of different sources to support your argument. Academic writing should contain citations, but they should not constitute more than 25% of your word count.

For information about how to evidence and refence your work correctly, see Harvard Referencing .

Citations are used in the body of your writing to indicate when you have referred to someone else’s writing, work or ideas. Your citations provide some basic information about the sources you used, and link to your bibliography, which provides more detailed information about your sources and how you accessed them.;

• the author's surname
• the year of publication
• the page number (where applicable)

So, a UCA Harvard citation from a book or journal article would be formatted like this:  (Butler, 2006:8)

Direct citations need to include speech marks , for example:

"whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally constructed" (Butler, 2006:8)

To integrate quotations within your paragraphs, you may want to introduce the author before quoting them, for example:

The architect Daniel Libeskind (1997:153) argues that “in representing the making of architecture as an autonomous activity (having more affinity to technique than science) this thinking intentionally narrows itself to a process of date collecting operations.

Indirect citations are paraphrased in your own words, and can be used to summarise and integrate others' ideas into your writing. Paraphrasing is more complex than changing the occasional word, you must convey the author’s original meaning.

For example, here is a direct quotation:  “Of course, if women could subvert so-called masculine traits by adapting and adopting masculine fashions, then it was also possible for men to procure feminine styles for themslves, and, as the century progressed, the cries of ‘gender confusion’ by media and academic commentators became increasingly loud” (Arnold, 2001:101)

This direct quotation could be paraphrased like this:  Increasing discourse surrounding gender emerged as the traditional distinctions between male and female fashion became blurred (Arnold, 2001:101).

Or, like this: Traditional notions of gender were challenged by women wearing fashions usually intended for men and men wearing fashions usually intended for women (Arnold, 2001:101).

Note: As shown in the examples above, Indirect citations do NOT need to include speech marks.

For more information of formatting citations, see Harvard Referencing .

Using illustrations Illustrations are another form of evidence, and should be used as support for:

• Comparison;
• Deconstruction;
• Interpretation;
• Extrapolation.

Each image should have its own figure number and the numbers are allocated by order of appearance. The first image in your written work will be Figure 1, the second will be Figure 2, followed by Figure 3, Figure 4 and so on. If the image you are using is a named work of art, you should include the name of the artist, the tile, the year of production (in round brackets), the medium [in square brackets] and its dimensions in the caption. For an example, see below.

If your image does not have a name, your caption should simply describe what the image is. The caption, like all titles in the Harvard refencing system, must be in italics.  The year of publication, medium [in square brackets] and year (in round brackets).

For more information on formatting images, captions and your list of illustrations in Word documents see Microsoft Help on Inserting Pictures and Harvard Referencing .

Formatting your work Check the criteria for layout and contents recommended by your course. This may be in the handbook or the dissertation briefing documents.

General presentation: Dissertations should be word-processed and their overall presentation and layout should be reader-friendly.

• Number your pages;
• Set it out on A4 paper;
• Use 1.5 or double-line spacing;
• Use a readable font (e.g. Times New Roman or Arial);
• Use at least a 12 point font.
• The front cover/title page;
• The full title;
• Your full name;
• The qualification/course you are studying;
• The name of the Institution (UCA);
• Year of submission;
• Name of your tutor/assessor;
• Word count.
• The introduction;
• Titles of chapters;
• The conclusion;
• List of illustrations;
• Bibliography;
• Appendices.

LibrarySearch

• Last Updated: Aug 3, 2024 10:40 PM
• URL: https://mylibrary.uca.ac.uk/dissertationwriting

How to... Write a dissertation

Most undergraduate business courses and post-graduate MBAs require students to complete a dissertation. This is an extended piece – often structured like a report – which usually involves undertaking research or a project (this may be based your placement or previous work experience) as well as reflection on and discussion of that work.

The focus of this article will be on writing the dissertation – that is, producing the finished report.

The whole project and dissertation process can cause students a lot of grief. It differs from what most have previously produced in requiring more of most things – more research in greater depth, more reading, more time, more independence (students select their own topics and work on them in isolation), more planning, and above all, a more extended piece of writing.

As distinct from an essay, where you critically evaluate other people’s ideas, you will need to report on your own research or work and offer your own thoughts and interpretation. However, you will also need to include and critique the ideas of other writers in order to provide a theoretical framework for your own ideas.

On this page

Prelims & end matter, presentation, getting to the finishing line.

The first thing to say – and hopefully it is not too late for those of you reading this – is that you need to allow yourself sufficient time for the writing process. You may have done all the right reading, have a waterproof design and brilliant data, but if you don’t allow yourself sufficient time for the write-up you will let yourself down.

Writing a dissertation is a much more involved process than the average assignment; you might occasionally have been able to burn the midnight oil over an essay but you are unlikely to be able to be able to keep up that level of intense writing for a longer piece of work.

In fact, it’s best to start thinking about the writing from the start of the project. Probably the first thing to do is to get dissertation guidelines from your institution which should tell you the requirements on length, as well as what academic qualities you are expected to show.

Anglia Business School (Cambridge, UK) requires its students to produce a dissertation of maximum 8,000 words, which should demonstrate:

• Evidence of scholarly research, which can be empirical (i.e. consciously obtained through surveys etc.) or library-based
• Evidence of independent thought
• Interpretation of evidence – mere description is not sufficient
• An understanding of the topic’s conceptual and theoretical framework
• Clarity and lucidity of argument
• Ability to use appropriate referencing and bibliographic style.

Once you have determined the length of the dissertation, ensure that it does not remain an abstraction by calculating the number of pages involved – at 300 words per page double spaced, an 8,000 word dissertation would have around 26 pages, more with the addition of prelims and end matter, which do not come within the word count.

Dissertations vary enormously in length – in the UK, some professional bodies require a piece of work of around 5,000 words (17 pages) while a higher level dissertation could be as long as 40,000 words (140 pages) although the latter would be unusual at undergraduate level. Also, note requirements as to what should go into the main body of the text – some organisations require you to put your methodology in the appendix for example.

You should also have a plan for how you do the writing, taking account of:

• Your available time to write, noting the times you are likely to be relatively alert.
• What you have to write – do a plan of your chapters and their sections and what you aim to achieve in a given time.
• The stages of writing: the various drafts, time for your supervisor to comment, time for editing.
• The final stages – proof reading, and binding (check with your university repro department how long this is likely to take).

You should start to think fairly early on how you will organise your work. This will depend on the basis for the dissertation – research, project, work experience, whether you are exploring one issue, or several, or taking a critical overview – and we shall describe below different types of structures.

If you will be carrying out some kind of research or an organisation-based project, you should be able to do some of the writing – at least in draft form – before or while you are doing your field work. Except in some projects which use grounded theory – which involve going back into the field several times with a new perspective – you will establish your research or project design fairly early, and in quantitative research, you will do your literature review before your field work. These chapters can be written up front, which will have the double advantage of getting some of the writing out of the way and also helping you practice the type of writing you will need to master.

Various structures are possible for your report depending on the type of project and the audience. The main ones are outlined below: others are possible, and you should always discuss your proposed structure with your supervisor.

Generic structure

The following is possibly the most common and assumes an academic audience. The research is likely to be deductive and quantitative, with the literature review preceding data collection.

Structure for a multi-issue or qualitative dissertation

The above structure assumes a linear progression for the research, and may not be suitable for situations when:

• You are adopting a qualitative approach, where research and literature review are more interwoven.
• You are looking at several themes, and the dissertation will benefit from separating these out structurally.

In this case, you may wish to follow a more thematic structure:

Thematic structure

An alternative to the above would be to combine the literature review, but have separate chapters/sections for the data.

Structure for a report aimed at a business sponsor

If you have been sponsored by a specific organisation, or your college has arranged for a placement on which your dissertation will be based, they may want a different kind of report or presentation. The structure of the report will depend on the scope you have been given, in particular to recommend or implement changes.

If you are limited to analysing a situation and making a proposal for change, or you are reflecting on a project from the past, Maylor and Blackmon (2005, p. 407) recommend that you should concentrate on:

• analysis of the practical problem
• potential solutions
• recommendations and suggestions for implementation.

The academic parts such as the literature review and the research methodology should be either condensed or put in an appendix, although you should include (in the body of the report) enough to show the validity of your recommendations.

If you are tasked with solving a business problem and expected to lead (to some extent) the resulting change, you are into the realm of action research. This is different to applied research and the structure of your report may be able to reflect this – speak to your supervisor to confirm. If so, Dick (1993) recommends:

Dick (1993)

The inclusion of prelims and end matter is another way in which the dissertation differs from the more run of the mill piece of written work. The former require Roman as opposed to Arabic numerals for page numbers.

Here is a rough guideline as to what should be included:

Exactly what to include will depend on your audience and the length of the report: the contents page, list of figures and acknowledgements can be omitted for a short report, while a business-orientated report should have an executive summary rather than an abstract (you may find it useful to leave in the former in an academic report for the benefit of any sponsors).

Writing style, presentation and layout are all important in gaining you a good mark.

We have already talked about how the dissertation will be divided into chapters or sections: within those divisions, there will be others, marked by headings and subheadings. This is another difference from the essay, but one that will work in your favour as these headings can serve as ways of organising your thoughts as you plan.

Use a font that is easy to read (and one you like as you will get very used to seeing it on the screen!), and make sure you have wide margins.

Writing style

This should be formal, concise and academic. Here are a few guidelines:

• As you are writing in an academic style, you will be building an argument, which you should support with evidence. Back up assertions with sources, and make sure you give credit for the ideas of others.
• Avoid illogicalities and errors in reasoning. These include contradicting something you said in one paragraph in the next (or even the same paragraph), complete jumps of sense between or within paragraphs, so that one statement does not follow on from another, deducing incorrect conclusions from evidence.
• Make sure that everything is relevant to your case. Don’t go off at tangents, and don’t elaborate on points that are secondary.
• Don’t over justify – all research has constraints. Be honest about yours. Be critical about the limitations of your research, and look at other ways of doing things. The ability to see things from all sides is one of the features of academic writing.
• Don’t go overboard on political correctness but avoid terms that may be offensive, for example using ‘man’ to refer to either gender.
• Assume knowledge on the part of the reader – those examining your dissertation will only need definitions of terms that are peculiar to your subject.
• Provide the reader with signposts. For example, refer to relevant points dealt with in other sections, and provide summaries and rough précis of your intentions for the forthcoming section. Judicious use of headings (see layout, above) will also provide a roadmap through your report.
• Use tables and diagrams where these will illustrate your point, but use them wisely and not just because they will look decorative.

The stages of writing

It’s helpful to consider writing as a reverse pyramid, in which you start off working on the more conceptual aspects and finish off with the detail of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Here are some stages you might go through:

• Make a plan of your dissertation, with your main chapters, and within the chapters, the main sections.
• Get your main ideas for your core chapters down on paper, and try and get the argument right.
• Read through for logic and structure.
• Edit for clarity and readability, making sure that your style is approachable and concise.
• Look at grammar, punctuation and spelling, consulting a good dictionary or style guide if you know that you are weak in these areas.

Writing is also a process of pruning – of bits that are not essential to your main thesis, and above all of excess words so you can meet your word length (remember how you never thought you could write that many words?). You will probably find that you can get rid of ‘nice to have but not essential’ material at stage 3, and that at stage 4 you prune your style so that you get rid of unnecessary verbiage. Writing to word limit is very important and is considered a key management attribute.

Putting in references is something best not left to the end – if you have kept good notes on your sources you should be able to put these in as you go along. But you will obviously need to check that all your references are correct before finally submitting your report.

Writing as a group

Group projects can provide particular interpersonal challenges, as teams cope with difference of views, non-performing team members etc., and particular problems can arise at the writing stage. If you split up the chapters amongst different people, then you will get different writing styles and even ideas about what the report is about. Ways of ensuring consistency included swapping around writing and editing, so that the text gets seen by a different pair of eyes, or having an overall ‘master editor’.

We’ve already mentioned the importance of planning; we can’t over emphasise the importance of allowing yourself enough time at the end for printing and binding – remembering that everyone else will be mobbing the repro department and monopolising the printers. The other thing to avoid is endlessly tinkering with an otherwise complete report – if you have met your objectives, hand it in.v

• Dick, B. (1993), You want to do an action research thesis? Available online at:  http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/art/arthesis.html
• Maylor, H. and Blackmon, K. (2005),  Researching Business and Management , Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK

• FindAMasters
• Researching and Writing a Masters Dissertation

Written by Mark Bennett

All Masters programmes include some form of extended individual project. Research-focussed programmes, such as an MRes , may include multiple independent research components. Taught courses usually culminate with a substantial research task, referred to as the Masters dissertation or thesis.

This article talks about how long a Masters dissertation is and the structure it follows.Before you get started on your dissertation, you'll usually need to write a proposal. Read our full guide to Masters dissertation proposals for more information on what this should include!

On this page

What’s the difference between a masters dissertation and an undergraduate dissertation.

The Masters thesis is a bridge between undergraduate study and higher level postgraduate degrees such as the PhD .

A postgraduate dissertation may not look that different to its undergraduate equivalent. You’ll likely have to produce a longer piece of work but the foundations remain the same.

After all, one of the purposes of an undergraduate dissertation or final year project is to prepare you for more in-depth research work as a postgraduate. That said, there are some important differences between the two levels.

So, how long is a Masters dissertation? A Masters dissertation will be longer than the undergraduate equivalent – usually it’ll be somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 words, but this can vary widely between courses, institutions and countries.

To answer your overall research question comprehensively, you’ll be expected to identify and examine specific areas of your topic. This can be like producing a series of shorter pieces of work, similar to those required by individual modules. However, there’s the additional requirement that they collectively support a broader set of conclusions.

This more involved Masters dissertation structure will:

• Give you the scope to investigate your subject in greater detail than is possible at undergraduate level
• Challenge you to be effective at organising your work so that its individual components function as stages in a coherent and persuasive overall argument
• Allow you to develop and hone a suitable research methodology (for example, choosing between qualitative and quantitative methods)

If the individual topics within your overall project require you to access separate sources or datasets, this may also have an impact on your research process.

As a postgraduate, you’ll be expected to establish and assert your own critical voice as a member of the academic community associated with your field .

During your Masters thesis you’ll need to show that you are not just capable of analysing and critiquing original data or primary source material. You should also demonstrate awareness of the existing body of scholarship relating to your topic .

So, if you’ll excuse the pun, a ‘Masters’ degree really is about achieving ‘mastery’ of your particular specialism and the dissertation is where you’ll demonstrate this: showing off the scholarly expertise and research skills that you’ve developed across your programme.

What’s the difference between a dissertation and a thesis?

A dissertation is a long piece of (usually) written work on the same topic. A thesis is a little more specific: it usually means something that presents an original argument based on the interpretation of data, statistics or content.

So, a thesis is almost always presented as a dissertation, but not all dissertations present a thesis.

Masters dissertation structure

As you can probably imagine, no two dissertations follow the exact same structure, especially given the differences found between Masters programmes from university to university and country to country .

That said, there are several key components that make up the structure of a typical Masters dissertation

How long is a Masters dissertation?

Most dissertations will typically be between 15,000 and 20,000 words long, although this can vary significantly depending on the nature of the programme.

You should also check with your university exactly which sections of the dissertation count towards the final word count (the abstract, bibliography and appendices won’t usually be included in the total).

Usually around 300 words long, the abstract is meant to be a concise summary of your dissertation. It should briefly cover the question(s) you aim to answer, your primary argument and your conclusion.

Introduction

The purpose of the introduction is to provide context for the rest of the dissertation, setting out your aims and the scope of what you want to achieve with your research. The introduction should give a clear overview of the dissertation’s chapters and will usually be around 1,000 words long.

Literature review

This part of the dissertation should examine the scholarship that has already been published in your field, presenting various arguments and counter-arguments while situating your own research within this wider body of work.

You should analyse and evaluate other publications and explain how your dissertation will contribute to the existing literature in your subject area. The literature review sometimes forms part of the introduction or follows immediately on from it. Most literature reviews are up to 1,000 words long.

Research methodology

Not all dissertations will require a section covering research methodology (Arts and Humanities dissertations won’t normally undertake the kind of research that involves a set methodology). However, if you are using a particular method to collect information for your dissertation, you should make sure to explain the rationale behind your choice of methodology. The word count for this part of the dissertation is usually around the 1,500 mark.

Those in the Arts and Humanities will usually outline their theoretical perspectives and approaches as part of the introduction, rather than requiring a detailed explanation of the methodology for their data collection and analysis.

Results / findings

If your research involves some form of survey or experiment, this is where you’ll present the results of your work. Depending on the nature of the study, this might be in the form of graphs, tables or charts – or even just a written description of what the research entailed and what the findings were.

This section forms the bulk of your dissertation and should be carefully structured using a series of related chapters (and sub-chapters). There should be a logical progression from one chapter to the next, with each part building on the arguments of its predecessor.

It can be helpful to think of your Masters dissertation as a series of closely interlinked essays, rather than one overwhelming paper. The size of this section will depend on the overall word count for your dissertation. However, to give you a rough idea for a 15,000-word dissertation, the discussion part will generally be about 12,000 words long.

Here you should draw together the threads of the previous discussion chapters and make your final concluding statements, drawing on evidence and arguments that you’ve already explored over the course of the dissertation. Explain the significance of your findings and point towards directions that future research could follow. This section of the Masters thesis will be around 1,500 words long.

References / bibliography

While planning and writing your dissertation, you should keep an extensive, organised record of any papers, sources or books you’ve quoted (or referred to). This will be a lot easier than leaving all of it until the end and struggling to work out where a particular quotation is from!

Appendices won’t be necessary in many dissertations, but you may need to include supplementary material to support your argument. This could be interview transcripts or questionnaires. If including such content within the body of the dissertation won’t be feasible – i.e. there wouldn’t be enough space or it would break the flow of your writing – you should consult with your supervisor and consider attaching it in an appendix.

It’s worth bearing in mind that these sections won’t always be discretely labelled in every dissertation. For example, everything up to ‘discussion’ might be covered in introductory chapter (rather than as distinct sections). If you’re unsure about the structure of your Masters dissertation, your supervisor will be able to help you map it out.

How does supervision work for a Masters dissertation?

As a Masters student at the dissertation stage you’ll usually be matched with an academic within your institution who will be tasked with guiding your work. This might be someone who has already taught you, or it may be another scholar whose research interests and expertise align well with what you want to do. You may be able to request a particular supervisor, but taught postgraduates are more likely to be assigned them by their department.

Specific arrangements with your supervisor will vary depending on your institution and subject area. They will usually meet with you at the beginning of the dissertation period to discuss your project and agree a suitable schedule for its undertaking. This timetable will probably set dates for:

• Subsequent discussions and progress checks
• The submission of draft chapters or sections
• Feedback appointments

Though your supervisor is there to help and advise you, it is important to remember that your dissertation is a personal research project with associated expectations of you as an independent scholar.

As a rule of thumb, you can expect your supervisor to read each part of your dissertation once at the draft stage and to offer feedback. Most will not have time to look at lots of subsequent revisions, but may respond favourably to polite requests for exceptions (provided their own workload permits it).

Inundating your supervisor with emails or multiple iterations of draft material is best avoided; they will have their own research to manage (as well as other supervision assignments) and will be able to offer better quality feedback if you stick to an agreed schedule.

How is a Masters dissertation assessed and examined?

On most courses your dissertation will be assessed by an external examiner (as well as additional members of faculty within your university who haven’t been responsible for supervising you), but these will read and critique the work you submit without personally questioning and testing you on it.

Though this examination process is not as challenging as the oral defence or ‘ viva voce ’ required for a PhD thesis, the grading of your Masters dissertation is still a fundamental component of your degree.

On some programmes the result awarded to a student’s dissertation may determine the upper grade-band that can be awarded to their degree.

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Library Guides

Dissertations 1: getting started: starting your dissertation.

• Starting Your Dissertation
• Choosing A Topic and Researching
• Devising An Approach/Method
• Thinking Of A Title
• Writing A Proposal

What is a Dissertation?

A dissertation is a research project completed as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree. Typically, a dissertation will enable you to present your findings in response to a question that you propose yourself. It is probably the longest piece of academic work you will produce. At undergraduate level, word count requirements can range anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 words while a Masters level dissertation can be 10,000 to 15,000 words long! 

Why are you required to write a dissertation? 

A dissertation is a core requirement of most university degrees. 

The dissertation will enhance your employability. For instance, you will develop transferable skills in inter-personal communication, data collection and analysis, report writing and effective time-management.  

While it is demanding, writing a dissertation is your chance to explore, in depth, a topic that interests you. Therefore, ensuring you choose a topic you are passionate about will make your experience more rewarding and even enjoyable! 

Supervision Advice

A supervisor will be assigned to you to assist with guidance on how to prepare, produce and improve your dissertation.  

The supervisor’s role is to: 

Assist in the organisation of the project in the early stages of preparation 

Advise you on the feasibility of what you plan to do 

Advise on methods and ethics of your research  

The supervisor is not expected to: 

Proofread your work 

Provide you with a topic or research question 

Direct the research  

Ensure that a dissertation is of sufficient quality to pass: this is your responsibility 

To get the best out of your time with your supervisor, you should: 

Check formal requirements early 

Check arrangements for supervisions and how your supervisor likes to work 

Organise regular supervision meetings and prepare work for each one 

Let your supervisor know how you work best 

Using Dissertation Marking Criteria

Your dissertation, like your previous assessments, will be marked against a set of assessment criteria which is published in your module or course handbook and posted on Blackboard.  

Assessment criteria are intended to: 

Ensure you meet the learning outcomes. 

Help you understand how your work is assessed. 

Allow tutors to focus their feedback. They will let you know what you are doing well and what needs improvement. 

Dissertation assessment criteria usually specifies what the tutor expects in terms of: 

Clarity: have you expressed your ideas clearly? 

Relevance: does your work fit into/fill a gap in existing research/literature on similar topics? 

Originality: does it offer a fresh perspective on a topic? 

Meeting course requirements: does it meet the word count / deadlines, for example? 

Before starting your dissertation, it is essential that you check what is expected of you and how your work will be graded. It is also useful to regularly check what you have written every few weeks and after you have finished to see if you are on track to meet the assessment criteria.  

First Steps

Ready to get started but uncertain how to begin? These are normally the first steps of dissertation writing:  

Choose a topic 

Conduct a literature search 

Devise research question(s) / hypotheses 

Devise your approach (e.g. if undertaking primary research, you will need to devise your methodology, methods, etc.) 

Think of a title 

Plan your time 

Write a proposal (if requested)

These steps are addressed in the tabs of this guide.

• Next: Choosing A Topic and Researching >>
• Last Updated: Aug 1, 2023 2:36 PM
• URL: https://libguides.westminster.ac.uk/starting-your-dissertation

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EPQs: writing up your dissertation

The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) is an opportunity for you to work independently on a topic that really interests you or that you think is important. It is equivalent to an A-level qualification. These articles are designed to help you if you are enrolled on an EPQ.

See previous article in series: Finding and using evidence

Writing up your dissertation.

Being able to communicate well is an essential skill for both university and working life. One of the aims of the EPQ is to help you develop your skills in using different communication tools, so you can communicate what you have found clearly and appropriately for different audiences.

Communication is also a vital part of the research cycle. The progress of research thrives on the exchange, review and discussion of ideas. Writing is one of the ways in which we communicate what we have found out and share it with others. 

Sharing the results of your research by writing well and effectively gives your readers the opportunity to learn from the work you have done.

This article offers suggestions and support for developing your skills in writing in the academic style that is needed for your EPQ dissertation.

Getting organised .

It’s worth considering a few practical points first. The start of writing is a good time to gather your material together and get yourself organised. 

• Don’t lose your work
• Timings & deadlines
• Organise your records
• Laying out the document
• Tables, graphs and charts

You don’t want to find yourself a few days – or hours – from the submission deadline when a computer breakdown or accident means you lose everything you’ve done.

It has happened before, and you don’t want it to happen to you!

Build a routine for backups into your work pattern. For example, when you sit down to write, save a copy (named, for example, Version 1, Version 2 ... Version 25 ...) of the existing document before you make any changes.

And back up your backup. Once a week, make a backup copy of your files (your dissertation, your notes and the resources you have collected) to an external hard drive, memory stick or cloud storage.

Work out how much time you have to write your dissertation, and how much time you want to allocate to each section. (There’ll be more on this shortly under ‘Structuring the dissertation – Start with the structure’.)

Make sure you know – and have written down! – the deadlines for submitting your dissertation, including deadlines for any draft versions your teacher might want to see. Use these to help plan your writing time.

There are many tools to choose from to keep yourself on track.  For example, you could create a table with a list of tasks.

Or you could make a simple Gantt chart, using a spreadsheet. If you use Microsoft Excel, it has some Gantt chart templates. The advantage of a Gantt chart is that it makes it easier to see how you can overlap some tasks, and you can mark important milestones such as submission deadlines .

As you have gone through the process of collecting and analysing the evidence you need to answer your research question, you will have gathered records of:

• what you looked for (the search terms you used in your searches)
• where you looked (search engines, websites, etc.)
• what you read / watched / listened to (academic papers, articles, videos, podcasts, etc.)
• the notes you made on your reading, listening and watching
• the data you have gathered.

All these sources contribute to the content of your written dissertation. Hopefully you have good records, but if you got a bit behind, now is the time to sort them out and remind yourself what you did and what you found out.

If you need a reminder of what information you need to keep, look back at  Article 2 – Finding and using evidence .

Organising your records and keeping a note of the sources you mention in the text as you write helps you build a comprehensive reference list.

There is more information on how to set out your reference list later in this article (see ‘Structuring the dissertation – Referencing styles’ ).

Laying out your document in a clear and neat style helps make your readers’ life easier.

For the  text , use a classic font such as Arial, Helvetica or Times New Roman. It’s best to avoid quirky fonts such as Comic Sans, or difficult to read fonts such as Lucida handwriting.

For easy reading, the  font  shouldn’t be too small. 11 or 12 point is a popular choice for the main (or body) text, which is usually black in colour. You can use larger fonts for headings and sub-headings, and perhaps make them bold or a different colour.

Generous margins also make the document easier to read. As a guide, around half the area of the page should be white space; on an A4 page, that means margins of about 2cm all round.

Use the paragraph styling tool . It’s well worth investing some time learning to use paragraph styling in  Microsoft Word  and  Mac Pages ; it can really speed up the creation of long documents and help you produce good-looking work.

This tool gives you control over the appearance of the text in your document. For example, you can use it to include automatic numbering for your headings ( Word  or  Pages ). This means you don’t have to manually change all the numbering if you insert a new heading or delete one that is no longer useful. You can also use automatic numbering for figure and table captions. Or, if you decide you don’t like the font you have used, you can change it in the paragraph style and it will be changed throughout the document.

Some kinds of evidence – such as numeric data – work well when displayed as graphs, charts and tables.

Readers should be able to make sense of the graph, chart or table without explanation.

Look at Table 2. Is it clear what information the creator wanted to share?

A better example can be seen below in Table 3:

Graphs and charts need titles too. They should also have axis titles (naming what is plotted on each axis, with the relevant units) and axis labels (the values plotted).

When it comes to plotting graphs, using different shapes or line styles can help readers distinguish different data points or collections of data on a single graph. You can use contrasting colours, but keep in mind that too many colours can be distracting for the reader. And some readers – for example, people who are colour-blind or have vision problems – might not be able to distinguish between certain colours, so choose carefully.

Look at Figure 3. Does it have all the elements of a good graph? Could anything be improved?

This has many of the requirements of a good graph. The title explains what the graph is about, the axes are labelled and the four search terms are each given their own colour, with a key to show which is which.

It could be made better by:

• making the graph larger, so that the four lines are more separate
• choosing different colours – the orange for ‘Perseverance’ and the yellow for ‘astrobiology’ are difficult to distinguish from each other.

Evidently, something interesting must have happened in mid-February to cause this spike in searches – you might remember that on 18 February 2021, the NASA Mars Perseverance Rover mission landed on Mars!

Structuring the dissertation .

Facing a blank page and the prospect of writing 5000 or so words can feel daunting. But you can structure the way you write to help make the task easier.

• Start with the structure
• Facing the blank page
• The narrative arc
• Finishing things off
• Referencing styles

Starting with the structure will help you consider how you want the dissertation to flow, and how to allocate your time and effort.

This example, taken from the Edexcel documentation, gives a suggested word count for the different sections of a ‘research review’ dissertation. All the exam boards publish their requirements, so you should  check the requirements for your board and the type of EPQ you are doing .

A ‘research review’ dissertation would probably follow something like the structure above. For other kinds of project, check with your teacher or look at the exam board’s requirements.  Knowing what structure the exam board is expecting helps you to know where to focus your effort.

In Table 4, you can see that the biggest section of the dissertation is the discussion/development/analysis of the argument, so it would make sense to spend the largest part of your writing time on this section. Look back at the Gantt chart under ‘Getting organised – Tables, graphs and charts’ for an example of time allocated in this way.

You’ve opened a new document.  You know the sections you need to include.

How do you get started on the sentences that will fill the gaps in between?  Two researchers offered suggestions from their experience.

Robert, a space scientist, says he usually works out the first paragraph in his head before sitting down to write.

• Ann’s summary

This is how Charlotte described her approach. First step, open a Word document!

Second step, write titles and sub-headings on the page. These can be working titles that you can come back to and polish once you have developed the document. But getting that structure down on the page is a key step for Charlotte in building the document and working out how the manuscript is going to flow. Once she’s broken the document up into sections, it feels much less daunting for her. Instead of starting at word one of six thousand, she’s working on smaller, more manageable chunks – word one of a hundred, or two hundred.

Step three is to write down the aims, objectives and scope of the document. And then she goes on to write the conclusions. And she says yes, that’s not a typo – if you’ve done a good job of researching the topic, developing the aims and objectives and making your notes, then writing the conclusion first should be relatively easy. The benefit of writing the end of your manuscript before the beginning is that you’re less likely to go off on tangents when you’re writing the rest of the manuscript, because you know where you’re heading.

If you feel you’ve thoroughly researched your topic and you’re still finding it hard to work out what your conclusions are, then it may be a good idea to turn your research notes into a presentation, during which you can ask yourself ‘what key message do I want the audience to walk away with?’, and that will be your conclusion.

Step five: write the remaining sections of the dissertation, justifying and building your arguments for each conclusion.

Charlotte’s main points

Charlotte’s steps are:

• Open a Word document!
• Write titles and sub-headings on the page.
• Write down the aims, objectives and scope of the document.
• Write the conclusion – ask yourself ‘what key message do I want the audience to walk away with?’
• Write the remaining sections, justifying and building your arguments for each conclusion.

Headings and sub-headings

Charlotte described how she likes to set up the headings and sub-headings that structure her writing, even though she knows they might change as the document develops.

Using descriptive headings, such as ‘The history of ...’ tells the reader what to expect in that section or chapter. This is sometimes called ‘signposting’, because the headings and sub-headings guide the reader around your work. 

As well as descriptive headings, you can number your headings and sub-headings: 

• Section 1: An introduction to… 
• Section 1.1 : The history of ... 

This means you can refer the reader back and forth (e.g. ‘see Section 1.2’), which cuts down repetition and wasted words.

Both approaches have the merit of getting something on to the blank page, which makes it look much less scary.

Whether you start with an opening paragraph, a set of headings, or another method that works for you, getting those first few words on the page is one of the biggest hurdles to clear.

Narrative – the story thread that runs through any piece of work we create – is important in any piece of writing.  Stories keep people’s attention, as storytellers have known for hundreds of years. Writers, broadcasters and podcasters continue to make use of this fact today.

One way to think about how you shape your story is to consider its narrative arc. Yes, even the most ‘science-y’ of dissertations has a story.

Click on the crosses on Figure 6 to find out more about the components of the narrative arc.

Figure 6   The narrative arc

Points on the narrative arc

Description : A parabolic curve representing the narrative arc of a story. The first half of the curve rises to a peak, showing the points that   build interest  in the story. The second half falls back to the baseline, showing how we  reflect   on the details of the story and bring it to a close.

– In the Introduction , attract the reader’s attention at the start, perhaps by telling them what got you interested in the question; a personal interest, an ambition or a desire to know more about a topic.

– In the Introduction , describe the journey to your research question. Make sure you do actually tell your reader what your question is (you’d be surprised how often people forget that!)

Information

– In the Research Review section, you show the reader how you found your evidence; tell them about the keywords you used, the mindmaps, flowcharts, tables you made; what information was important and what was not; what stayed in and what didn’t.

– This is your analysis of the material you found, showing how you pulled together the information you uncovered in your review and what it meant for your question. However, this isn’t an absolute rule; where you put the analysis depends on the kind of dissertation you are writing.

– Tell the reader what you found out and how it relates to what is already known.

– Use the Conclusion to round off your story. What’s the answer to your research question? What did you discover? What’s still not known?

There are a couple of sections of the dissertation that are best dealt with towards the end of the writing process: abstract and bibliography.

The abstract

At the beginning of the dissertation, you should provide a short summary or abstract.

An abstract is like a trailer for a film or television programme. It gives the reader a sense of what’s in the dissertation. However, unlike a trailer, it’s OK to give away the ending! Someone who only reads the abstract, and never looks at the dissertation, should still understand the scope of your work.

For this reason, it’s easier to write the abstract towards the end of your writing time, when you have a complete picture of your work in your mind.

The abstract is usually quite short (perhaps only 200 words) and is written in one paragraph. That’s not much space, so what should you include?

A typical abstract would tell the reader:

• why  you did this research –  the question you set out to answer
• how  you did the research –  the methods you used to collect the data and where you looked for it
• what  you found out –  a summary of your main findings
• the  key message  –  the answer to your question; if your readers could remember just one thing from your dissertation, this would be it.

One way to approach writing the abstract is to read through your dissertation section by section. For each section, write one or two sentences that summarise the main point. Click on ‘example’ to see what we mean.

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is growing rapidly among young people, but the usefulness and safety of some therapies is controversial. Therefore, I investigated the question: what are the best places to reach young people with information about CAM?

Using Google Scholar, I searched for articles using different combinations of these search terms: ‘alternative medicine’, ‘complementary medicine’, understanding, knowledge, motivation, CAM. I filtered the results to keep only articles that related to the use of CAM by young people. I defined ‘young’ as people under the age of 25. I downloaded twenty complete papers, articles and other resources from open access sources and the Open University research repository.

Use of CAM by young people has increased since 2000. Young women use CAM more than young men. The most common sources for getting information about CAM are friends and family and social media.

Key message

The best way to provide information for young people about CAM is through social media.

Take away the headings and polish the sentences and you have an abstract:

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is growing rapidly among young people, but the usefulness and safety of some therapies is controversial. Therefore, I investigated the question: what are the best places to reach young people with information about CAM? Using Google Scholar, I searched for articles using different combinations of these search terms: ‘alternative medicine’, ‘complementary medicine’, understanding, knowledge, motivation, CAM. I filtered the results to keep only articles that related to the use of CAM by young people. I defined ‘young’ as people under the age of 25. My search found twenty relevant papers, articles and other resources, which I downloaded from open access sources and the Open University research repository. My results show that young people’s most common sources for information about CAM are friends and family and social media. Therefore, I believe that using social media is the best way to provide information about CAM for young people.

The bibliography or reference list

The last thing to include in your dissertation is the bibliography or reference list * .

Your reference list shows the people who read (and mark!) your dissertation how well you have researched your subject and how your arguments are supported by evidence from other people’s research. 

It is also evidence of how you have been open and honest in your work. Readers can use it to find the sources that you used and check that you have read and used them correctly. 

Using your reference list, a reader should be able to find that source for themselves if they want to follow up an idea or check something you have written. Including a reference list helps you avoid plagiarism (passing off someone else’s work as your own), because readers can check the original source if they have any doubts.

If you need a reminder of what information you should keep, look back at  ‘Finding and using evidence – Keeping track’ .

* A reference list is a list of all references to other people’s work that you have mentioned in your dissertation. A bibliography is a list of references, plus the background readings or other material that you have read but not actually mentioned.

The Open University Library Services’  Referencing and plagiarism   page has lots of help and pointers to further information about references and referencing styles.

If you go on to study at university, and have to write essays, assignments and reports, you will be asked to set out – or ‘style’ – reference lists in a specific way. There are many different referencing styles; which one you are asked to use will depend on the subject you are studying and the university’s requirements.

For the EPQ, check the requirements of your exam board or ask your teacher what these are.

Even if you aren’t asked to use a specific style, you should aim to include as much information about the sources as possible. The minimum information would be:

• the authors’ (or creators’) names
• the year the source was published
• the title of the article or book chapter, or the name of the artwork, film or video
• the title of the journal or the book in which the article/chapter appeared
• for books – the name of the publisher
• for online sources – the name of the website and the page on which the article appeared, the URL of the website, and the date on which you read the article*.

*The date you found the article is important for online sources, as websites sometimes disappear or are changed. If the reader can’t find the same article but knows when you found it, that suggests they can trust the source.

These examples are laid out in the Harvard referencing style, which is a style used in many university subjects.

Books and ebooks

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) Title . Edition if later than first. Place of publication: publisher. Series and volume number if relevant.

Mukherjee, S. (2011)  The Emperor of all Maladies .  London: Fourth Estate.

Article from an academic journal

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) ‘Title of article’, Title of Journal , volume number (issue number), page reference. Doi: doi number if available OR Available at: URL (Accessed date)

Ungar, S. (2008) ‘Global bird flu communication: hot crisis and media reassurance’,  Science Communication ,  29(4), 472-497. DOI: 10.1177/1075547008316219

Article from a newspaper or magazine

Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) ‘Title of article’, Title of Newspaper , Day and month, Page reference if available. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Rice-Oxley, M. (2021) ‘Do good things come to those who wait?’,  The Guardian ,  26 February. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/26/do-good-things-come-to-those-who-wait (Accessed 26 February 2021).

Organisation (Year that the page was last updated) Title of web page . Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

BBC Online (2020) How New Zealand relied on science and empathy . Available at: bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52344299 (Accessed 17 September 2020).

Writing clearly .

Good writing takes time, effort and energy. Being able to produce clear, readable, logical and well-argued pieces of writing is important in both university and in your working life.

• Precise & concise
• Keep it simple
• A word about style
• Quoting others

Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth-century mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher and writer.  He once wrote:

‘ Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte ’ .

–Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters, Letter XVI, December 1656.

Translation:  ‘I wrote this very long [letter] because I didn’t have the time to make it shorter’.

What do you think Pascal meant by this?

Claire, whose research looks for evidence of how we might ‘ sniff’ for life , produced a mind map of what she thinks Pascal meant (Figure 9). The audio below describes her process.

Claire’s mind map takes us on quite a journey. Starting from Pascal’s premise that it’s better to write short than long, slower than quicker, makes her think about the need for concision, to look for concise words, words that are specific and measured, not being confusing, the need to choose the right word. Not always easy in English, where one word can have a variety of meanings. 

She suggest perhaps using a thesaurus, but that could lead down the pathway of having too many words to choose from and not being able to decide which one to pick. Thinking about the dissertation, she introduces a word we all dread – waffling! No one wants to be a waffler, and giving too much information might make your readers’ heads explode. 

And yet we must explain our concepts, because we want our writing to be understood by everyone but that means a balance with explaining too much. We need to give enough detail to make our point understood, and scientific, if it’s that kind of research question, without being too complicated. All in all, it comes down to the need to simplify.

More tips from Ann

As Pascal – and Claire – suggest, taking out what isn’t needed is as important as putting in what is.

Writing clearly and to the point takes time, effort and energy. Allow yourself plenty of time to draft, review, get feedback, edit ... draft again, review again, get more feedback, edit again … … check, proof-read, finish.

As we established earlier, your dissertation will have a word allowance. EdExcel, for example, suggests a research review dissertation should be around 6000 words. That sounds like a lot, but then, you’ve done a lot of work that needs to be included.

The exact figure will depend on the exam board’s requirements and the kind of EPQ you have carried out, so check before you start writing, or ask your teacher.

The best writers keep things as simple as possible. It’s a way of being kind to your readers and making the task of reading easier.

However, keeping things simple isn’t simple. As Steve Jobs, the designer and co-founder of Apple said: ‘Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple’. The same applies to writing.

When you’ve done a complex piece of work, it’s tempting to think you can only describe it in complex language. But you should try to avoid the pitfall of using over-complicated language. You don’t want to run the risk of sounding pompous or making your text too difficult to understand.

You’ve almost certainly come across simple questions with unnecessarily complicated answers before. Here’s an example. Which is the best answer to this question?

The Up Goer Five challenge

To practise writing in simple language, you can take the Up Goer Five challenge. This is a project by the artist Randall Monroe, creator of  XKCD . 

The challenge is to explain a  hard idea using only the ‘ten hundred’ most common words  in the English language.  As an example, how might we explain ‘astrobiology’?:

We think about where we might find living things. We take stuff from places – dry places, cold places, hot places – and we put it in stuff that we think has what living things need to grow. We wait, then we use a seeing-small-things tool to look for the living things. At the moment, we look at stuff from here but one day, we want to look at stuff from other stars.

Have a go at using the  Up Goer Five text editor  (which has a  link to the ten hundred most common words ) to explain an idea related to your research topic. If you find it tricky to think of an idea, here are a few to get you started:

• global warming and its consequences
• what causes earthquakes
• the problems caused by the misuse of antibiotics.

You wouldn’t write your dissertation in this style, but experimenting with writing like this helps develop skills in keeping things simple, avoiding jargon and complicated language and writing in short sentences and paragraphs.

We all write in different ways every day, depending on who we’re writing for. The style of a textbook is different from the style of a WhatsApp message; we write an email to a family member in a different style from the way we would write a personal statement for a university application.

When we write anything, we start by thinking about our readers and the kind of writing they are expecting to see.

For the EPQ dissertation, start by checking the requirements of the exam board you are studying with. It is very likely that the exam board will want the dissertation to be written in a formal style; the kind of style you will have seen in the academic articles and books you drew on in your research.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as your own. It is, essentially, theft of someone else’s work. 

Learning alongside a friend, discussing ideas or sharing your thoughts can be helpful and valuable. We have also encouraged you to take notes on everything that you find. So, it is likely that you have ideas you want to present in your report that are not entirely your own.

Plagiarism can occur in a variety of ways. It can mean copying someone else’s text and passing it off as your own, or copying and pasting text/images from a web page and pretending they are your own work. It can also overlap with what is called ‘collusion’, which means collaborating with someone to share work on a task that you are expected to complete by yourself.

Try this interactive resource from OpenLearn to understand some of the challenges and ways to avoid plagiarism. This is aimed at university students, but it will be relevant for the EPQ.

All my own work

Plagiarism comes in all shapes and forms. Step into the shoes of a university student to learn the challenges and temptations facing her during her assignment, and help make it all her own work.

Level: 1 Introductory

There will be points in your dissertation when you want to present ideas that have come from someone else’s work. How can you do this while avoiding plagiarism?

Identify your sources

If you have used an image, graph or chart created by someone else, identify where the image has come from and who made it.

You might remember this image from  Article 1 , in the section on dealing with feedback.

This image comes from an online picture library, creazilla.com. They have placed it in the ‘public domain’, which means it can be re-used freely. Show this information in the image caption within your work.

If you create a graph, chart or table yourself, identify the source of the data, as you saw earlier in ‘ Getting organised – Tables, graphs and charts ’.

If you find a phrase or a sentence in a source that helpfully illustrates a point you are trying to make, you can quote that in your work. You must quote it exactly as the authors wrote it. After the quote, you give the name of the author, the date of publication and the page where the quote is from. Then give the full reference in your reference list (see ‘ Structuring the dissertation – Referencing styles ’). For example:

This shows that the format of an infographic can influence people’s responses to the evidence. For example, ‘ graphs commonly used to show descriptive statistics, such as line or area graphs, may also appear “scientific” and create a pseudo sense of trustworthiness ’ (Li et al., 2018, p. 4).

The quote marks (‘…’) show which words are the quote.  

We use the Latin phrase ‘et al.’ (meaning ‘and others’) when an article has more than three authors, so that the reader doesn’t have to read through a long list of names. In the reference list, you would see the full list of authors along with the other source details:

Li, N., Brossard, D., Scheufele, D., Wilson, P. and Rose, K. (2018) ‘Communicating data: interactive infographics, scientific data and credibility’,  Journal of Science Communication, 17(2), A06. DOI: 10.22323/2.17020206

When you paraphrase, you express an idea that has come from someone else in your own words. You might do this to re-state the idea in simpler language, or to bring together the ideas of several writers on the same topic. Paraphrasing can also help you show that any new ideas you’ve put together from your research are supported by earlier research.

You should show where the ideas you have paraphrased came from, but because you are not directly quoting, you need only give the authors’ names and the date of publication. For example:

My survey of fifty young people aged 16 to 18 showed that their social media posts were most often connected with current events. This is supported by earlier research, which shows that the most common topics for young people’s posts are current events, health and fitness, and celebrity and entertainment news, closely followed by science and technology (Hargittai, Füchslin & Schäfer, 2018) .

In the reference list, you would see:

Hargittai, E., Füchslin, T. and Schäfer, M. (2018) ‘How do young adults engage with science and research on social media?’,  Social Media + Society, July-September 2018, 1-10, DOI: 10.1177/205630511879772

Although your dissertation must be all your own work, you can ask for help to review what you have written.

How do you ask for help, then, while keeping the dissertation all your own work and avoiding plagiarism?

Reviews – who and when?

Before you ask someone to review your work, you can check some things for yourself. 

Check the  spelling  and  grammar . Microsoft Word has built-in tools, or you can use online ones such as  Grammarly . The more technically correct your writing is, the more your reviewers will be able to focus their energy on the content.

Then  read it all through yourself . Some people like to read through silently, line by line, others prefer to read the text out loud. You can record yourself and listen back later, or use the Read Aloud function in Word, if you’re using that software. This has the advantage of using a different part of your brain – when you listen, you hear mistakes that you just don’t see in writing.

After you have reviewed it yourself, ask others to do the same. Getting someone else’s feedback on your work is immensely valuable. This is where you can collaborate with friends or classmates – if you ask them to review your work, you can offer to review theirs. And families can help too; even if they don’t know anything about your topic, the questions they ask will help you review your work.

• Michael asks for help
• Who could you ask for help?

Listen to the audio in the next tab about how Michael, who is a microbiologist, asks for help. When does he do this, and who does he ask?

Michael turns to his colleagues, his family and his senior colleagues at work. He asks for help at different stages: perhaps when he’s struggling a little, when he’s written the first draft and later on at the final stages, when he’s finished editing.

For Michael, feedback is incredibly important, not only for the actual content of the work, but for assessing how easy it is to understand. And he felt it’s always important to consider reviews of our writing from the viewpoint that the reviewer wants to help us improve our work, not criticise it. In terms of who he asks, first he calls on his peers; when he was at school, friends in his class and year, and now his colleagues, who can comment on the content of the work and how easy it is for them to follow. When he was at school, he also turned to his parents. During high school, his parents helped with input on grammar, spelling and how easy it was to understand. Now, his wife performs that role. As he says, by having someone from outside the field review your work, you can gain valuable insights. He also thinks about his seniors – in his current job, his senior colleagues will read multiple drafts of a manuscript before it’s complete. This is always an advantage – it allows him to get input from someone more experienced and means the work is improved.

In terms of when, he asks for help when he’s struggling, perhaps to find the right direction for a piece of work. Discussing the work with a friend or a teacher can start him developing insights on where it should start. Certainly after completing and spell-checking a first draft, he’ll ask for help.

And of course it’s always important to go back and review after editing, because when you change a piece of work, it’s easy to introduce errors, as well as fix them.

Conclusion.

Other articles in this series...

EPQs: designing your research question

You’ve already decided to do an EPQ, so it might seem a little odd to start this resource by asking you to consider why you want to do a research project. People do an EPQ for all sorts of reasons. Why do you want to do an EPQ?

EPQs: finding and using evidence

Finding the evidence that will help you understand a topic or answer a question is an important stage in the research process. And once you have found it, you will need to examine it closely and carefully, to judge how reliable it is and whether it is useful to help you answer your question.

EPQs: why give a presentation?

What are the guidelines for the presentation?

Become an OU student

Ratings & comments, share this free course, copyright information, publication details.

• Originally published: Friday, 3 March 2023
• Body text - Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 : The Open University
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• Image 'Sketch of Blaise Pascal' - Copyright: Wikimedia Commons
• Image 'Photo of Claire' - Copyright: Claire Batty
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• Image 'Screenshot from the UpGoer project' - Copyright: XKCD
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The Ultimate Guide to Write a 5000 Word Dissertation Structure [2025]

Aug 17, 2024 | 0 comments

Aug 17, 2024 | Blog | 0 comments

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Dissertation Structure: Provided a clear breakdown of the key components of a 5000-word dissertation, including Title Page, Abstract, Table of Contents, Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References, and Appendices.
• Word Count Allocation: Suggested a general word count allocation for each section of the dissertation, e.g., Title Page (1%), Abstract (5%), Table of Contents (1%), Introduction (10%), Literature Review (20%), Methodology (15%), Results (15%), Discussion (20%), Conclusion (10%), References and Appendices (3%).
• Writing Tips: Offered practical writing tips for each section, such as crafting a compelling title page, summarizing research in the abstract, guiding readers with a table of contents, and effectively structuring the introduction and literature review.
• Presentation of Research: Explained how to present research methodology, results, and discussion, including details on research design, sampling techniques, data collection, analysis, and ethical considerations to ensure replicability and academic integrity.
• Editing and Refinement: Emphasized the importance of proofreading and refining the dissertation, including taking breaks before editing, reading the dissertation out loud, using proofreading tools, and seeking feedback to ensure clarity and coherence.

Crafting a 5000-word dissertation can be an intricate endeavor, requiring a clear understanding of its structure to ensure accuracy and precision in presenting your research. This academic paper serves not only as a demonstration of your knowledge but also as an exploration of your beliefs and attitudes, particularly in fields such as psychology. 

A well-structured dissertation is the foundation of a successful academic journey. When I first started my dissertation, I felt overwhelmed by its sheer complexity. However, I quickly learned that breaking it down into manageable sections made the whole process much more approachable.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key components of a 5000 word dissertation structure and offer insights on how to craft each section effectively. Remember, your dissertation is more than just a long essay—it’s a showcase of your research skills, critical thinking, and academic prowess.

The Crucial Components of a 5000 Word Dissertation

Every dissertation, regardless of length, requires specific elements to meet academic standards. Let’s break down these components and see how we can distribute our word count across them:

• Title Page: 1% (50 words)
• Abstract: 5% (250 words)
• Table of Contents : 1% (50 words)
• Introduction: 10% (500 words)
• Literature Review : 20% (1000 words)
• Methodology: 15% (750 words)
• Results: 15% (750 words)
• Discussion: 20% (1000 words)
• Conclusion: 10% (500 words)
• References and Appendices: 3% (150 words)

This breakdown is a general guide, and you may need to adjust it based on your specific research and university requirements. Always check with your supervisor or committee for any specific guidelines.

Read Also: 6000 Word Dissertation Structure – A Detailed Guide

Title Page: Making a Strong First Impression

Your title page is the first thing your readers will see, so it’s essential to make the writing process start with a bang. Here’s how to create an impactful title page:

• Title: Your title should be concise yet descriptive. Aim for 10-15 words that accurately explain the topic of your research. Avoid jargon and unnecessary words.
• Your Name: Include your full name as it appears in official university records.
• Institution Name: Write the full name of your uni or college.
• Department: Specify the department under which you’re submitting your dissertation.
• Degree: State the degree you’re pursuing (e.g., Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science).
• Submission Date: Include the month and year of submission.
• Supervisor’s Name: Include your supervisor’s name and title.

Remember, the page layout should be clean and professional. Use a standard font like Times New Roman or Arial, and ensure all text is centered on the page. This structured approach will help you make the writing process more manageable from the start.

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Abstract: Summarizing Your Research in 250 Words

The abstract is a crucial component of your dissertation, as it provides a concise summary of your entire research. Here’s how to craft an effective abstract:

• Purpose: Begin by stating the main objective of your research. What question were you trying to answer?
• Methodology: Briefly describe the methods you used to conduct your research. Did you use surveys, interviews, or focus groups?
• Results: Summarize your key findings. What data has been collected and analyzed?
• Conclusions: State the main conclusions drawn from your research. How do your findings contribute to the field?
• Implications: If applicable, mention any practical implications or recommendations based on your research.

Remember, your abstract should be no more than 250 words. It’s often helpful to write this section after you’ve completed the rest of your dissertation. This ensures that you can accurately summarise your work.

The abstract is crucial for readability and can determine whether someone decides to read your entire dissertation. It’s also often used in database searches, so including relevant keywords can help others find your work.

Table of Contents: Guiding Readers Through Your Work

A well-structured table of contents provides a roadmap for your readers, helping them navigate your dissertation easily. Here’s how to create an effective table of contents:

• Hierarchical Structure: Use a clear hierarchy with main sections, subsections, and (if necessary) sub-subsections. This hierarchy should reflect the structure of your dissertation.
• Numbering System: To show the relationship between sections, use a consistent numbering system (e.g., 1, 1.1, 1.1.1).
• Page Numbers: Include accurate page numbers for each section and subsection.
• Formatting: Use consistent formatting throughout. For example, main sections should be in bold, and subsections should be in regular text.
• Alignment: Ensure all entries are properly aligned for easy reading.
• Automated Tools: To ensure accuracy and ease of updating, consider using your word processor’s automated table of contents feature.

Your table of contents should include all major sections of your dissertation, including:

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methodology

Remember, a well-structured table of contents can significantly enhance the readability of your dissertation. It allows readers to quickly locate specific sections they’re interested in, which is particularly useful for examiners or other researchers who may be able to use your work as a reference.

Read Also: How To Structure A Dissertation Proposal- Step By Step Guide

Introduction Chapter: Setting the Stage

The introduction chapter is your opportunity to hook your readers and provide a roadmap for your entire thesis. Here’s how to craft an effective introduction:

• Opening paragraph: Start with a broad statement about your research area, then narrow it down to your specific topic. This helps contextualize your work for your target audience. For example, if you’re researching climate change effects on coral reefs, you might begin with a statement about global environmental challenges before focusing on marine ecosystems.
• Background information: Provide enough context for readers to understand the significance of your research. This might include key concepts, historical background, or current debates in the field. Use secondary sources judiciously to support your points.
• Research problem and justification: Clearly state the problem your research addresses. Explain why this problem is important and worthy of study. This is where you can discuss any gaps in existing research or conflicting theories that your work aims to address.
• Research question or thesis statement: Articulate your main research question or hypothesis. This should be clear, concise, and specific. It’s the core of your dissertation that guides your entire writing process.
• Research objectives : Outline your specific research objectives. These are the steps you’ll take to answer your research question. For instance:
• To analyze the rate of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef over the past decade
• To identify the primary factors contributing to this bleaching
• To assess the effectiveness of current conservation strategies
• Methodology overview: Briefly describe your research approach. Are you conducting a survey, conducting field research, or analyzing existing data? This will give readers a preview of your methods chapter.
• Theoretical framework: If applicable, introduce the theoretical framework guiding your research. This could be an established theory in your field or a grounded theory approach you’re developing.
• Significance of the study: Explain the potential impact of your research. How might it contribute to your field? Could it inform policy or practice?
• Scope and limitations: Define the boundaries of your study. What aspects are you focusing on, and what’s beyond the scope of your research? Acknowledging limitations demonstrates critical thinking and research integrity.
• Structure of the dissertation: Provide a brief outline of your dissertation’s structure, giving readers a roadmap of what to expect in each chapter.
• Key terms: Define any specialized terms or concepts that are central to your research. This ensures clarity for readers who might not be experts in your specific area.

Throughout this chapter, maintain a logical flow of ideas. Each paragraph should connect smoothly to the next, building your argument step by step. Use transitional phrases to guide your readers through your thought process.

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Literature Review: Contextualizing Your Research

The literature review is a crucial component of your 5000 word dissertation structure. It’s not just a summary of various sources but a critical analysis that sets the stage for your research.

Purpose and Significance: Your literature review serves multiple purposes. It demonstrates your understanding of the field, identifies gaps in current knowledge, justifies your research question or research hypothesis, and provides context for your study. Think of it as the foundation upon which you’ll build your research.

Organization and Approach: Before diving into writing, take time to organize your sources. You might find it helpful to use a collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams to share and discuss sources with your advisor or peers. Consider organizing your review chronologically, thematically, or methodologically, depending on what best suits your topic.

The Review Process: Start with a broad search of your topic, then narrow down to more specific areas related to your research question. As you read, take careful notes and begin to identify key themes, debates, and gaps in the literature. This process helps you better understand the current state of knowledge in your field.

Critical Analysis and Synthesis: Don’t just describe what others have done. Critically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of previous research. Consider methodological approaches, theoretical frameworks, findings, conclusions, and limitations. Look for patterns, contradictions, and relationships between different pieces of research. This synthesis is what transforms a simple summary into a valuable literature review.

Structure and Content: Your literature review should have a clear structure with headings and subheadings to guide the reader. Typically, you’ll include an introduction outlining the scope of the review, a body organized by themes or approaches, and a conclusion summarizing key findings and identifying gaps.

Length and Style: In a 5000-word dissertation, your literature review might be around 1000-1500 words, but always check with your university for specific requirements. Aim for an argumentative and analytical tone rather than merely descriptive. Your writing should be easy to read while still demonstrating academic rigor.

Key Considerations:

• Ensure proper citations for all sources.
• Focus on relevance – every source should connect to your research question.
• Include both classic studies and current research.
• Identify areas where further research is needed.
• Explain and justify your theoretical framework, if applicable.
• Don’t forget to review literature related to your research methodology.

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Research Methodology: Explaining Your Approach

In this crucial section of your dissertation writing, you’ll provide a detailed description of how you conducted your research. This should be thorough enough that another researcher could replicate your study.

• Research Design: Clearly state whether your approach is quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Explain why this design is appropriate for your research questions.
• Sampling Techniques: Describe how you selected your participants or data sources. Justify your sampling strategy, whether it’s random, purposive, or convenience sampling.
• Data Collection Methods : Detail your methods, such as surveys, interviews, experiments, or archival research. If you used specific instruments or protocols, describe them here.
• Data Analysis Techniques: Explain how you analyzed your data. For quantitative research, specify the statistical tests used. For qualitative research , describe your coding process or analytical framework.
• Ethical Considerations: Discuss how you addressed ethical issues, including informed consent, confidentiality, and data storage.
• Limitations: Acknowledge any limitations in your methodology and explain how you mitigated their impact.

This section typically comprises about 15-20% of your total word count or roughly 750-1000 words in a 5000-word dissertation.

Results: Presenting Your Findings

In this section, objectively present what your data collection has yielded without interpretation.

• Organize your results logically, perhaps in order of your research questions or hypotheses.
• Use tables, graphs, or charts to present numerical data clearly. Ensure each figure is properly labeled and referenced in the text.
• For qualitative data, you might present key themes that emerged, supported by relevant quotes from participants.
• Report statistical findings accurately, including p-values, effect sizes, and confidence intervals where appropriate.
• If you have a large amount of raw data, consider placing it in an appendix and summarizing the key findings here.

This section often takes up about 15-20% of your dissertation, or approximately 750-1000 words.

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Discussion: Analyzing and Interpreting Your Results

This is typically the most substantial section of your dissertation, often comprising 30-40% of your total word count (1500-2000 words in a 5000-word dissertation).

• Begin by briefly restating your main findings.
• Interpret your results in light of your research questions and existing literature. How do your findings support, contradict, or extend previous research?
• Discuss any unexpected results and consider alternative explanations.
• Analyze the implications of your findings for theory and practice in your field.
• Address the limitations of your study honestly. How might these affect the interpretation of your results?
• Suggest directions for future research based on your findings and limitations.
• Use deductive reasoning to draw broader conclusions from your specific results.

Conclusion: Wrapping Up Your Research Journey

Your dissertation conclusion should provide a clear and concise summary of your study. This section typically comprises about 10% of your total word count (around 500 words).

• Briefly restate your research questions and main findings.
• Synthesize the key points from your discussion section.
• Highlight the unique contributions your study makes to the field.
• Reflect on the broader implications of your work for theory, practice, or policy.
• Suggest specific directions for future research.
• End with a strong closing statement that encapsulates the significance of your research.

References: Documenting Your Sources

This section is crucial for academic integrity and typically doesn’t count towards your word limit.

• List all sources cited in your dissertation, following the citation style required by your university (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
• Ensure every in-text citation has a corresponding entry in your reference list and vice versa.
• Organize your references alphabetically by author’s last name.
• Double-check for accuracy in author names, publication dates, and other details.
• Consider using reference management software to help organize your sources and ensure consistency.

Appendices: Supplementary Material

Appendices contain supporting information that’s too detailed for the main text. They don’t count towards your word limit.

• Include raw data, detailed statistical analyses, interview transcripts, or survey instruments.
• Label each appendix with a letter (Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.) and give it a descriptive title.
• Refer to each appendix at least once in the main body of your dissertation.
• If you have multiple appendices, include a list of figures or tables at the beginning of this section.

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Tips for Staying Within the 5000 Word Limit

Writing concisely while maintaining depth can be challenging, but there are strategies to help you succeed. Here are a few tips I found helpful:

• Focus on your main arguments and key points
• Use clear, concise language
• Avoid unnecessary repetition
• Use active voice where possible
• Be selective with quotes – paraphrase where you can

Proofreading and Polishing Your 5000 Word Masterpiece

The final step in creating a stellar dissertation is thorough editing and refinement. I can’t stress enough how important this stage is. Here’s my process:

• Take a break before editing – it helps you look at your work with fresh eyes
• Read your dissertation out loud – it helps catch awkward phrasing
• Use proofreading tools like Grammarly, but don’t rely on them entirely
• Ask a classmate or friend to read it – a fresh perspective can be invaluable
• Check your formatting, citations, and references carefully

Final Thoughts on 5000 word dissertation structure

As we wrap up this guide, I want to remind you that writing a dissertation is a journey. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times – we all do! But remember, you’re developing valuable skills in research, critical thinking, and academic writing that will serve you well beyond your university years.

Your dissertation is a chance to contribute to your field of study and to add your voice to the academic conversation. Embrace the challenge, stay organized, and don’t hesitate to seek help when you need it, whether from your supervisor, peers, or university resources.

Remember, every great journey begins with a single step. So, take a deep breath, open that blank document, and start writing. You’ve got this! And who knows? Your 5000-word dissertation might just be the starting point for future research or even a book. The possibilities are endless when you approach your work with curiosity, dedication, and a well-structured plan.

With a deep understanding of the student experience, I craft blog content that resonates with young learners. My articles offer practical advice and actionable strategies to help students achieve a healthy and successful academic life.

People Also Read

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• How To Structure A Dissertation Proposal- Step By Step Guide (2024)

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Dissertation examples

Listed below are some of the best examples of research projects and dissertations from undergraduate and taught postgraduate students at the University of Leeds We have not been able to gather examples from all schools. The module requirements for research projects may have changed since these examples were written. Refer to your module guidelines to make sure that you address all of the current assessment criteria. Some of the examples below are only available to access on campus.

• Undergraduate examples
• Taught Masters examples

• How to Write an Abstract for a Dissertation or Thesis
• Doing a PhD

What is a Thesis or Dissertation Abstract?

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines an abstract in academic writing as being “ a few sentences that give the main ideas in an article or a scientific paper ” and the Collins English Dictionary says “ an abstract of an article, document, or speech is a short piece of writing that gives the main points of it ”.

Whether you’re writing up your Master’s dissertation or PhD thesis, the abstract will be a key element of this document that you’ll want to make sure you give proper attention to.

What is the Purpose of an Abstract?

The aim of a thesis abstract is to give the reader a broad overview of what your research project was about and what you found that was novel, before he or she decides to read the entire thesis. The reality here though is that very few people will read the entire thesis, and not because they’re necessarily disinterested but because practically it’s too large a document for most people to have the time to read. The exception to this is your PhD examiner, however know that even they may not read the entire length of the document.

Some people may still skip to and read specific sections throughout your thesis such as the methodology, but the fact is that the abstract will be all that most read and will therefore be the section they base their opinions about your research on. In short, make sure you write a good, well-structured abstract.

How Long Should an Abstract Be?

If you’re a PhD student, having written your 100,000-word thesis, the abstract will be the 300 word summary included at the start of the thesis that succinctly explains the motivation for your study (i.e. why this research was needed), the main work you did (i.e. the focus of each chapter), what you found (the results) and concluding with how your research study contributed to new knowledge within your field.

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States of America, once famously said:

The point here is that it’s easier to talk open-endedly about a subject that you know a lot about than it is to condense the key points into a 10-minute speech; the same applies for an abstract. Three hundred words is not a lot of words which makes it even more difficult to condense three (or more) years of research into a coherent, interesting story.

What Makes a Good PhD Thesis Abstract?

Whilst the abstract is one of the first sections in your PhD thesis, practically it’s probably the last aspect that you’ll ending up writing before sending the document to print. The reason being that you can’t write a summary about what you did, what you found and what it means until you’ve done the work.

A good abstract is one that can clearly explain to the reader in 300 words:

• What your research field actually is,
• What the gap in knowledge was in your field,
• The overarching aim and objectives of your PhD in response to these gaps,
• What methods you employed to achieve these,
• You key results and findings,
• How your work has added to further knowledge in your field of study.

Another way to think of this structure is:

• Introduction,
• Aims and objectives,
• Discussion,
• Conclusion.

Following this ‘formulaic’ approach to writing the abstract should hopefully make it a little easier to write but you can already see here that there’s a lot of information to convey in a very limited number of words.

How Do You Write a Good PhD Thesis Abstract?

The biggest challenge you’ll have is getting all the 6 points mentioned above across in your abstract within the limit of 300 words . Your particular university may give some leeway in going a few words over this but it’s good practice to keep within this; the art of succinctly getting your information across is an important skill for a researcher to have and one that you’ll be called on to use regularly as you write papers for peer review.

Keep It Concise

Every word in the abstract is important so make sure you focus on only the key elements of your research and the main outcomes and significance of your project that you want the reader to know about. You may have come across incidental findings during your research which could be interesting to discuss but this should not happen in the abstract as you simply don’t have enough words. Furthermore, make sure everything you talk about in your thesis is actually described in the main thesis.

Make a Unique Point Each Sentence

Keep the sentences short and to the point. Each sentence should give the reader new, useful information about your research so there’s no need to write out your project title again. Give yourself one or two sentences to introduce your subject area and set the context for your project. Then another sentence or two to explain the gap in the knowledge; there’s no need or expectation for you to include references in the abstract.

Explain Your Research

Some people prefer to write their overarching aim whilst others set out their research questions as they correspond to the structure of their thesis chapters; the approach you use is up to you, as long as the reader can understand what your dissertation or thesis had set out to achieve. Knowing this will help the reader better understand if your results help to answer the research questions or if further work is needed.

Keep It Factual

Keep the content of the abstract factual; that is to say that you should avoid bringing too much or any opinion into it, which inevitably can make the writing seem vague in the points you’re trying to get across and even lacking in structure.

Write, Edit and Then Rewrite

Spend suitable time editing your text, and if necessary, completely re-writing it. Show the abstract to others and ask them to explain what they understand about your research – are they able to explain back to you each of the 6 structure points, including why your project was needed, the research questions and results, and the impact it had on your research field? It’s important that you’re able to convey what new knowledge you contributed to your field but be mindful when writing your abstract that you don’t inadvertently overstate the conclusions, impact and significance of your work.

Thesis and Dissertation Abstract Examples

Perhaps the best way to understand how to write a thesis abstract is to look at examples of what makes a good and bad abstract.

Example of A Bad Abstract

Let’s start with an example of a bad thesis abstract:

In this project on “The Analysis of the Structural Integrity of 3D Printed Polymers for use in Aircraft”, my research looked at how 3D printing of materials can help the aviation industry in the manufacture of planes. Plane parts can be made at a lower cost using 3D printing and made lighter than traditional components. This project investigated the structural integrity of EBM manufactured components, which could revolutionise the aviation industry.

What Makes This a Bad Abstract

Hopefully you’ll have spotted some of the reasons this would be considered a poor abstract, not least because the author used up valuable words by repeating the lengthy title of the project in the abstract.

Working through our checklist of the 6 key points you want to convey to the reader:

• There has been an attempt to introduce the research area , albeit half-way through the abstract but it’s not clear if this is a materials science project about 3D printing or is it about aircraft design.
• There’s no explanation about where the gap in the knowledge is that this project attempted to address.
• We can see that this project was focussed on the topic of structural integrity of materials in aircraft but the actual research aims or objectives haven’t been defined.
• There’s no mention at all of what the author actually did to investigate structural integrity. For example was this an experimental study involving real aircraft, or something in the lab, computer simulations etc.
• The author also doesn’t tell us a single result of his research, let alone the key findings !
• There’s a bold claim in the last sentence of the abstract that this project could revolutionise the aviation industry, and this may well be the case, but based on the abstract alone there is no evidence to support this as it’s not even clear what the author did .

This is an extreme example but is a good way to illustrate just how unhelpful a poorly written abstract can be. At only 71 words long, it definitely hasn’t maximised the amount of information that could be presented and the what they have presented has lacked clarity and structure.

A final point to note is the use of the EBM acronym, which stands for Electron Beam Melting in the context of 3D printing; this is a niche acronym for the author to assume that the reader would know the meaning of. It’s best to avoid acronyms in your abstract all together even if it’s something that you might expect most people to know about, unless you specifically define the meaning first.

Example of A Good Abstract

Having seen an example of a bad thesis abstract, now lets look at an example of a good PhD thesis abstract written about the same (fictional) project:

Additive manufacturing (AM) of titanium alloys has the potential to enable cheaper and lighter components to be produced with customised designs for use in aircraft engines. Whilst the proof-of-concept of these have been promising, the structural integrity of AM engine parts in response to full thrust and temperature variations is not clear.

The primary aim of this project was to determine the fracture modes and mechanisms of AM components designed for use in Boeing 747 engines. To achieve this an explicit finite element (FE) model was developed to simulate the environment and parameters that the engine is exposed to during flight. The FE model was validated using experimental data replicating the environmental parameters in a laboratory setting using ten AM engine components provided by the industry sponsor. The validated FE model was then used to investigate the extent of crack initiation and propagation as the environment parameters were adjusted.

This project was the first to investigate fracture patterns in AM titanium components used in aircraft engines; the key finding was that the presence of cavities within the structures due to errors in the printing process, significantly increased the risk of fracture. Secondly, the simulations showed that cracks formed within AM parts were more likely to worsen and lead to component failure at subzero temperatures when compared to conventionally manufactured parts. This has demonstrated an important safety concern which needs to be addressed before AM parts can be used in commercial aircraft.

What Makes This a Good Abstract

Having read this ‘good abstract’ you should have a much better understand about what the subject area is about, where the gap in the knowledge was, the aim of the project, the methods that were used, key results and finally the significance of these results. To break these points down further, from this good abstract we now know that:

• The research area is around additive manufacturing (i.e. 3D printing) of materials for use in aircraft.
• The gap in knowledge was how these materials will behave structural when used in aircraft engines.
• The aim was specifically to investigate how the components can fracture.
• The methods used to investigate this were a combination of computational and lab based experimental modelling.
• The key findings were the increased risk of fracture of these components due to the way they are manufactured.
• The significance of these findings were that it showed a potential risk of component failure that could comprise the safety of passengers and crew on the aircraft.

The abstract text has a much clearer flow through these different points in how it’s written and has made much better use of the available word count. Acronyms have even been used twice in this good abstract but they were clearly defined the first time they were introduced in the text so that there was no confusion about their meaning.

The abstract you write for your dissertation or thesis should succinctly explain to the reader why the work of your research was needed, what you did, what you found and what it means. Most people that come across your thesis, including any future employers, are likely to read only your abstract. Even just for this reason alone, it’s so important that you write the best abstract you can; this will not only convey your research effectively but also put you in the best light possible as a researcher.

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• How to Write an EPQ Essay

Writing an EPQ essay can seem like a daunting task, which is why we’ve written this nine-step guide to help make the whole process easier.

In addition to the A-Levels you’re already doing, you can choose to take an EPQ (Extended Project Qualification). An EPQ is an independent research project, and it’s extremely beneficial as it counts towards UCAS tariff points.

Consisting of around 5,000 words, an EPQ essay is an in-depth assignment which takes about 120 hours to complete.

That may seem like a lot of extra work to take on alongside your existing studies, however it can be hugely beneficial when applying to get into university.

Choosing to undertake independent research and reading can prove to future educators that you’re willing to take on extra work to really show what you can do academically, as well as demonstrating that you have interests that go beyond the curriculum. An EPQ sits nicely with a summer school course such as a law summer school , business summer school , engineering summer school and medicine summer school . During your course you have the chance to explore and understand your subject further, demonstrating your commitment to your studies, and develop ideas for your EPQ.

How do you write an EPQ essay?

To write an EPQ essay, you need to: come up with a compelling idea that you’re interested in, write down everything you know about the subject to generate further ideas, find the best essay question to use, reference your sources properly, write a sharp introduction and conclusion, get feedback on your essay, and make sure you double-check your work before submitting it.

The key to writing any extended document is planning, which is why we’ve written this nine-step guide to help you write the best EPQ essay.

Read on for our top tips on how to write an extended project essay.

9 steps to write your EPQ essay

1. come up with an idea.

One of the main reasons students fail their EPQ is because they’ve chosen the wrong subject matter. It’s vital that you choose a topic you’re genuinely interested in, otherwise you won’t have any motivation to work on it. Because of the extra workload, many students choose to start their EPQ over the summer holidays, and with all the distractions that summer brings (trips to the beach, sunbathing in the garden or hanging out with friends in the park) there’s even more reason to pick a subject you don’t find boring, or you’ll just look for any excuse to avoid doing it. Before finalising your topic, you might want to discuss your ideas with your supervisor so they can check you’re on the right track.

2. Write down everything you know about the subject.   

Before doing any extra reading, it’s really helpful to write down everything you already know about your chosen subject. This can help to get your thoughts and ideas – which are often jumbled up – out of your head and down onto a piece of paper or computer screen so that you can begin to organise and make sense of them. This is also useful for identifying any gaps in your knowledge. However, if the gaps in your knowledge are vast and your chosen topic isn’t giving you enough inspiration, don’t be afraid to abandon your original idea entirely and come up with something new. It’s better to start again from scratch at this stage, rather than 2,000 words in.

3. Think of a question

Whatever your chosen topic, you’ll need to think of a question to answer. This is an extremely important part of your EPQ and will form the basis of your essay, so it really is worth thinking long and hard about. The way in which you phrase your question or hypothesis will affect the structure and flow of the whole essay. For example, some typical essay question formats include ‘Compare and contrast’, ‘Critically evaluate’ and ‘Analyse and conclude’. The type of question you want to answer will affect whether you need to highlight and critique a number of theories or evaluate how useful a particular concept is. And remember that your extended project essay needs to be approximately 5,000 words long, so you should choose a question that allows for extended research and arguments. It’s also worth bearing in mind that questions without definitive answers are better as there will generally be much more to write about.

4. Research the topic

Next, you should start thinking about the main body of the essay and how you’re going to go about fleshing out your ideas. Ideally, this step should take up half the amount of total time you spend working on your EPQ essay. You should spend a good deal of time reading books, papers and online journals that have been written about your chosen subject. The Internet is an excellent source of information, but anyone can write anything and publish it online, so make sure your sources are credible and recognised by the examining body. Wikipedia, for example, should be avoided as a reliable source of information as anyone can edit the text that’s been written there. While doing your research, you’re going to come across many different opinions and arguments and it’s all going to come from a variety of sources. So now is also a good time to think about how you’re going to organise it all.

5. Remember to reference your sources

As with any piece of academic work, referencing your sources is vital so the examiners can check you’re not plagiarising. It’s also good to demonstrate that your information has come from a range of places so the person marking your essay can see that you’ve researched your topic widely and have considered several different viewpoints. You’ll need to provide a bibliography at the end of your EPQ essay and if you can’t say where your information has come from, you’ll be unable to use it, so it’s a good idea to get into the habit of doing this as you go along. Whether you choose to create a spreadsheet on your computer or annotate photocopies and clippings with a pen, it doesn’t matter how you go about doing this as long as you remember to do it. It’ll make your life so much easier in the long-run!

6. Create subsections

Splitting your essay up into sections can help to make sure you’re writing enough and exploring the topic in as much depth as possible. Keep your word count in mind when dividing up your essay and try to split each section equally. But while mini topics are good for breaking the 5,000 words down into more manageable chunks, you have to make sure each one relates back to your original question, otherwise you could risk wasting some of those words on irrelevant information. Don’t sacrifice the important stuff by shoehorning facts and figures into your chosen subsections. It’s worth thinking about the order of these sections too. It’s usually best to write in a ‘news story’ format, with the most important subtitles at the top and the less relevant stuff filtering down to the bottom, however you could consider working chronologically if that works better for your chosen topic.

7. Write an introduction and a conclusion

As strange as it sounds, it can be helpful to write your introduction and conclusion paragraphs once you’ve completed the main body of the essay. This is because your thoughts on the subject matter are more likely to be more organised, therefore it will be easier to summarise the main points clearly and concisely. Your first paragraph should introduce the subject matter, briefly expanding upon your question and how you’re going to go about answering it, while your conclusion should refer back to the title and answer the question you asked at the beginning of your essay. Ensure that both paragraphs are as direct and succinct as possible, in order to show that you have a clear understanding of your topic.

8. Ask for feedback

Whether it’s a friend, a relative or – even better – your course tutor, it’s a good idea to have your work checked over by someone else. Because you’ve spent hour upon hour absorbed in your subject matter, you can lose sight of certain things, so it makes sense to have your EPQ essay looked at from a different viewpoint. A second opinion can ensure that everything you’ve written is concise and accurate and the person checking your work can give you advice on what to leave out or add in; especially if they already have some knowledge on the subject matter.

9. Double-check everything before submitting your work

It’s a good idea to leave it a day or so before coming back to your essay to proofread it so that you’re viewing it with a fresh pair of eyes. We recommend going over it a couple of times – once to check that you’ve covered everything in terms of the subject matter and another for housekeeping. You want to ensure that you don’t lose any marks for basic things like spelling, punctuation and grammar. You should also take this time to make sure footnotes are accurate, as well as checking over any graphs, charts, diagrams and images.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this step-by-step guide and we’re confident that you now have everything you need to go on to successfully write an EPQ essay. Good luck!

• December 2022
• February 2022
• October 2021
• September 2021
• Dissertation

5000 Word Dissertation – A Complete Guide on Word Count Breakdown, Structure And Format

• Posted On: March 26, 2023
• Posted By: admin
• Comments: 0

Dissertation writing is not an easy task. You will face several complexities during the research and dissertation writing process. You must have complete knowledge and a good grip on how to write a 5000 word dissertation before starting the writing process. If you learn and understand the complete process of dissertation writing and comprehend the structure and requirement of the word count, it will become easier for you. We will discuss the main points you must consider while writing a 5000 words dissertation.

How To Structure A 5000 word Dissertation?

Understanding a dissertation structure can solve several problems you might face otherwise. Once you comprehend every dissertation requirement, the dissertation writing process will become incredibly easier. Each dissertation component is particularly targeted for a specific research objective. While you are working on organising your dissertation structure, make sure that:

• You focus on the individual requirements of each dissertation chapter
• You know about the components to be included in each section of the dissertation
• You write the dissertation chapters in a way which makes the entire work achieve its objectives and goals

You will need to know the total number of chapters in the dissertation you will write. All of these chapters have further relevant components that are mandatory for completing the requirements of a dissertation. Let us discuss the format of a 5000 words dissertation now.

How Long Does It Take To Write A 5000 Word Dissertation?

It’s not difficult to complete a dissertation of 5000 words in one week. The time to finish a 5000 words dissertation depends on several parameters. Some of those parameters include the following:

• The complexity of the dissertation topic
• The mental state of the writer
• The experience of the writer
• Availability of relevant sources
• Access to necessary academic materials etc.

Normally, a comparatively inexperienced person will take 3-5 days to write a 5000 word dissertation. An experienced writer can easily write it in 1-3 days. The bottom line is that you can write a 5000 word dissertation in a week if you keep working on it consistently.

Can a Dissertation be 5000 Words?

Yes, a dissertation can be 5000 words. Generally, you must submit a dissertation or research project at the end of your final year of post-graduate degrees. Such a piece of work has major significance in deciding your academic grades and typically ranges between 5000-12,000 words per project.

Dissertation Breakdown, Simple And Easy To Understand

The format of a 5000 word dissertation is simple and easy to follow compared to the dissertations with greater word counts . Here is a simple breakdown of such a dissertation:

• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methodology
• Data Collection + Analysis
• Conclusions and Recommendations

Each dissertation, no matter the word count, has a proposed structure which must be followed to ensure the objectivity of the research work or the dissertation. Each chapter of your work has significant and different weightage in your dissertation; you will need to stay careful with each section and chapter.

How to Write a Dissertation Introduction? Find Out Here:

The best introduction of a dissertation is the key to capturing the attention of your targeted readers and keeping them hooked till the end. That is why it is necessary to craft an impressive introduction to engage your reader till the end.

The perfect introduction section of a dissertation includes the following parts:

• A definition of your argument
• The background of research
• The scope of the work you perform
• Research aim and objectives
• Research questions
• Assumptions about the possible results

Be careful not to include lengthy details of the next dissertation chapters in the introduction section. It ruins the impression of an otherwise good introduction section.

What should be the Dissertation Introduction Word Count to Capture the Reader’s Attention?

As a general rule, 1/10 th of the word count of the complete dissertation will be enough for the introduction chapter of your dissertation. For a dissertation with 5000 words, it will be best to write an introduction section with no more than 500 words. These 500 words will be your only way to capture your reader’s attention and make them read your entire dissertation. To effectively engage your reader, it is necessary:

• To know what to add
• and how much to include

in the introduction section of your dissertation.

How Many Words Is A Dissertation Literature Review Considered Ideal?

The literature review chapter of your dissertation will include a critical and concise summary of all the existing literature you have consulted and used in your research work and dissertation. It can be rightly called the heart of your dissertation. The main objective of the literature review section is to provide the reader with complete details on the selected topic so that he can understand your claims and arguments through the writing.

As a general rule, 1/3 rd of the complete word count of the dissertation should constitute the literature review section. For a 5000 word dissertation, it will be enough to dedicate 1600 words to the literature review chapter of your dissertation. You must ensure the balance; otherwise, the reader may get bored while reading and move to the next chapters. It will have a negative impact on your grades.

What Is The Ideal Length Of the Methodology Chapter?

In the methodology chapter of your dissertation, you will have to mention the details of methods employed for research and writing the dissertation. It is necessary to save readers from getting distracted and confused while reading your dissertation. Writing this section might be difficult as most students struggle to implement the research methodologies. A possible solution to this issue is getting professional help from academic specialist writers online.

Generally, the ideal length of a methodology chapter of 5000 word dissertation is 750-800 words. It would be best to encapsulate the entire methodology section in these dedicated words. If you do so, your structuring will be perfectly balanced. Try managing this section in approx. 800 words, and rest assured your professor will be pleased with the impeccable structure of your dissertation.

How To Perfectly Balance The Data Collection + Analysis

In this dissertation chapter, you must state the data you collected after the research and detailed and extensive analysis.

In a dissertation having a word count of 5000 words, this chapter should ideally take up to 1000 words. It must provide the reader with a detailed analysis of your findings. It should also show their relevance to the scope of your research. It would help if you learned to make it precise as your reader might lose interest while reading the complicated ways of data collection and analysis techniques. Remember that the key to writing a balanced dissertation is maintaining a perfect balance in individual chapters.

How Long Should A Dissertation Conclusion Be? Let’s Find Out!

It will be the final chapter of your dissertation and the most important one too. It describes the outcome and final result of your research work. Always ensure that you provide the mandatory details and the findings in this section of your dissertation.

Talking about how long a 5000 word dissertation conclusion should be, we believe the ideal length of the conclusion and recommendation chapter will be 1000 words. In these 1000 words, you will have to thoroughly explain the outcomes of your research work. In this chapter, you must also add your opinions and recommendations for further research.

Can You Write a 5000 Word Dissertation In A Week?

Now that we are clear on how to write a 5000 word dissertation let us discuss the time it would take to write a dissertation of such length. If you are a student who starts working only when the deadline approaches near, it can be challenging to finish all the research and writing processes in a week. However, if you have already performed some preliminary processes, finishing the dissertation in a week will not be difficult. For an experienced writer, it will generally take 1-3 days to finish a 5000 words dissertation.

How Many Sources for a 5000 Word Dissertation?

Generally, there should be around 8-10 references for every 1000 words for a 5000 words dissertation. The longer the dissertation, the greater number of references will be required. It also depends on the type of dissertation you are writing.

• In the literature review section of a dissertation, you will need to cite the most references along with the subsequent extensions or contradictions and conflicts with the existing theories.
• You may also follow the advised number of sources specified by your institute or advisor. If any such number is specified, strictly following such instructions will be best.

If the nature of the dissertation requires you to add multiple numbers of sources consulted and references included, then you should meet the requirements of your dissertation.

Conclusion:

The key to writing a flawless 5000 words dissertation with a definite structure lies in maintaining the balance among all sections. Once you master maintaining this balance, you will not need to worry about anything other than missing your deadline. The general rule to finish a dissertation of 5000 words in 3 days is to start early and write consistently. The word count breakdown we have provided in this article will help you structure and organise your dissertation in the best manner. If you are in trouble, you can ask for online assistance from dissertation writing services in the UK .

How Long Does It Take To Write A 5000 Word Literature Review?

Writing a 5000 words literature review can take anywhere between 24 to 48 hours. It depends on the complexity of the literature review section of your dissertation. Following the instructions specified in our article, you can easily organise and finish your literature review in a day.

How Long To Write a 5000 Word Dissertation?

You can easily write a 5000 word dissertation in a week, provided you have already completed some basic research work earlier. Finishing a 5000 dissertation in a single day can be challenging, but it is not impossible either. You will have to spend hours intensively writing to finish such a dissertation in 24 hours. An easy way to tackle this problem is to hire a dissertation writing service online to craft an impeccable dissertation in a day. You will save yourself from severe academic stress this way.

How to Write a 5000 Word Dissertation In One Night?

Writing such an dissertation in a few hours may be tough but not impossible. To write a 5000 word dissertation in one night, you will need to follow the following points:

• Make all the accessories available and prepare yourself for a night of intensive writing
• Make an outline and a dissertation plan
• Decide what to write and how much to write in your dissertation
• Stock up on snacks for studying all night
• Keep taking short breaks during the writing process
• Keep yourself hydrated. Caffeinated drinks can help too
• Ensure that you do not get distracted while working on your dissertation

These tips will help you finish your 5000 word dissertation in one night.

What Is The Best Dissertation Writing Service In The UK To Write A 5000 Words Dissertation?

The top three academic writing agencies which can write the best 5000 word dissertation in one day are the following:

• The Academic Papers UK
• Affordable Dissertation UK
• Dissertation Writers UK

You can contact these service providers at any time of the day or night. Once the order gets confirmed, rest assured that you will receive your finished papers 24 hours before the deadline.

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5000 word dissertation structure

Table of Contents

In academic writing, the term “5000 word dissertation structure” is used for describing a kind of structure that is used. The structure has been created in order to allow students to finish their academic papers. The way it works is quite simple actually. For every 5000 words you write, you must first write 5000 words about the topic of your study. By writing the bulk of your paper this way, you will save time. This article will show you how to make this process easier.

A 5000 words dissertation structure

Defining main topic.

First, begin by defining your main topic. It can be a matter of world history, social science, technology, or religion. You will need to determine what aspects interest you most. After you have decided on the main topic, look at all the literature you have on that topic.

Research Essay

The next step involves writing a research essay. In this essay, you will write about what you have learned so far and what you hope to learn in the future. The main topic should not appear in the Essay Introduction; however, you should mention it towards the end of the essay. Do not waste time here by merely describing your main topic. Instead, spend one paragraph stating why you believe this is your main topic and why you have written this essay.

Next, write your body with the facts gathered from your research papers. These include quotes, diagrams, charts, and pictures. You should also include some additional research on your main topic if you can locate it. Do not plagiarize anything when writing this part of the dissertation because you may find yourself with a paperweight. Save all quotes, charts, and pictures in MS Word.

Thesis Statement

In the middle of your writing, you should construct the rest of the thesis statement . The thesis statement is simply the main point of your paper and the entire point of your paper. In fact, the thesis statement can be the longest part of your writing. However, it should be organized in the correct way to ensure that everything makes sense. Do not start writing the thesis statement until you have read and understood your entire document.

Organize Notes

Once the writing has been completed, you will need to organize your notes. Your notes should include your main topic, any additional research that you did, and any additional supporting evidence that you are able to find. The idea behind the arrangement of your writing is that you are presenting your ideas in an orderly fashion to support your main topic. You should start with the most important information first so that your reader does not have to search through numerous documents for the data that they are interested in.

After the thesis statement has been completed, you should close your introduction. This will give a clear summary of what your paper is about as well as the reasoning behind your argument. It will also summarize any appendices that you included in your writing. Any appendices should be included with the conclusion so that the reader can understand them and see how they fit into your arguments. The final step in writing your essay is the conclusion.

The conclusion will summarize everything that you wrote in the previous sections of the paper. Writing a good conclusion is necessary because it gives a good reason as to why your main topic is important and the rest of the research can be linked back to the main topic. The introduction and the thesis statements are what make up the bulk of your writing. As you go through the writing process, you will learn about how and when to use each section and what should go where.

Follow the above guideline for making 5000 word dissertation structure to save your time and deliver your 5000 word dissertation on time.

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6000 Words Dissertation Structure - A Detailed Guide for Students

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After knowing the meaning of the dissertation and choosing the best topic for your dissertation, you will have to start the actual writing process. While crafting the winning dissertation , you should understand the structure of your dissertation. When you start understanding the structure of your dissertation, you should start with the bigger picture. After understanding the bigger picture, you should briefly describe the core contents of all the dissertation chapters. First, you will have to write the preliminary pages of the dissertation. The words of these preliminary pages are not included in the actual words of the dissertation. Here, experts of The Academic Papers UK will discuss the structure of the 6000 words dissertation.

6000 Words Dissertation Structure

Introduction:.

After writing the preliminary pages of your dissertation, the next step is to write the main body. In the main body of the dissertation, you will first have to create the introductory chapter. It would be best if you tried to provide a strong beginning to the readers with the help of the introductory chapter of the dissertation. The introductory section allows the writers to set a stage with clear focus, purpose and direction for the rest of the dissertation.

In the 6000 words dissertation, the introductory section should consist of 600 words. These 600 words make up 10% of the 6000 words dissertation. The students should commence the 600 words introductory section by introducing the topic.

They should also provide the necessary background information to the readers. After that, they can define the scope of the research. While writing the dissertation, you should also read the existing content relevant to the content of your topic. After reading the existing content, you should also explain how your dissertation is relevant to this existing content. You should also write the research questions and objectives in the introductory section of the dissertation. These questions and objectives set the expectations for the rest of the dissertation. At last, the students can also provide the readers with an overview of the overall structure of the dissertation.

Literature Review:

In the literature review chapter of your dissertation, you will have to provide an overview of the existing knowledge relevant to your dissertation topic. While writing the literature review chapter of the dissertation, the writers find an opportunity to identify the existing research. When you write the literature review chapter of your dissertation, you should find the relevant publications. After finding these publications, you should analyze and explain these publications. Some students think the literature review is the name of the summarization of the resources. They should know that it is the name of these resources' analysis, evaluation and synthesis.

In the 6000 words dissertation, you must create 1800 words for the literature review. These 1800 words make up 30% of the 6000 words dissertation.

While writing the literature review section, you should use well-structured paragraphs.

Research Methodology:

While writing a dissertation, you will have to discuss the methods you used to gather the data for your dissertation. By reading the research methodology section of a dissertation, the readers can get an idea about the validity and reliability of the research.

In the 6000 words dissertation, the research methodology section should consist of 900 words. These 900 words make up 15% of the 6000 words dissertation.

While writing the research methodology section, you should explain the type of research that you have done to gather the data for your research paper. You should also explain your data-gathering techniques. The students should also explain the data analysis process. They should also provide complete information about the tools they used to gather their dissertation's data. At last, you should also explain your rationale behind choosing these research methods.

Findings or Results:

In this section, you will have to report the findings or results of your research. You can start the writing process of this section just by finishing the data collection and analysis process. After preparing a list of all the results or findings of your research, you should try to write these results and findings in a logical order. If you want to illustrate specific findings or results of your research, you can also use tables or graphs. There is no need to provide a subjective interpretation of these findings or results in this section. The reason is that you should save these evaluations for the discussion chapter of your dissertation.

In the 6000 words dissertation, you should include only 300 words in this chapter. These 300 words make up 5% of the 6000 words dissertation.

Discussion:

The discussion section is the best place to interpret the results' relevance, meaning and importance. It would be best if you commenced this section with the evaluation of your findings. After that, you should show the relevancy of these findings with the literature review. At last, you can also make some arguments supporting these findings. The writers use various methods while writing the discussion chapter of a dissertation. You can also use one of these methods. You should stick to four essential elements while writing the discussion chapter. These four essential elements of the discussion chapter are interpretation, implication, limitation and recommendation.

In 6000 words dissertation, it should consist of 1800 words. These 1800 words make up 30% of the dissertation.

Conclusion:

The dissertation conclusion is the last section of the main body of the dissertation. It provides the last chance for the writers to last their influence on the readers' minds. That's why you should be very careful while creating this section of the dissertation. While writing the concluding section of the dissertation, you should clearly state the answers to the research questions. It is also the best place to make recommendations for future research. You can also show your contributions to the existing content. While explaining these things in the conclusion section, you should make its content concise and engaging.

In 6000 words dissertation, the conclusion should consist of 600 words. These 600 words make up 10% of the 6000 words dissertation.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this guide by The Academic Papers UK experts helped you decide on the structure and word count breakdown of your 6000-word dissertation.

For customized dissertation help, consider contacting a professional writer from our team to work with you on your 6000-word dissertation for sure success in academia.

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How to Write 7000 Words Dissertation Structure Effortlessly

Student year is pretty exciting and fascinating. You get to interact with lots of people around your age, share ideas, get engage in healthy activities and learn new things. Before the University year ends, you get multiple course work to complete new assignments are ready to welcome you and then there comes a lengthy piece of writing called dissertation, sometimes with the limit of 7000 word dissertation too. Once you are done with the detailed writing assignment your Masters, PhD or undergraduate degree is completed.

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Our top dissertation writing experts are waiting 24/7 to assist you with your university project, from critical literature reviews to a complete masters dissertation.

But how to write a 7000 words of dissertation? Will I be able to completed this lengthy assignment within the deadline? These are the desperate words said by beginners when starting their journey of dissertation writing .

How Long Does It Take To Write A 7000-Word Dissertation

I still remember, during my last years of University I met lot of students who were stressed, worried and wandering here and there for help, to guide them with 7000 word dissertation structure.

Little did they know, no one will come to rescue their dissertation and easily explain 7000 word dissertation structure. Moreover, won’t even give any tips on how to complete this lengthy writing assignment. Dissertation isn’t something that could be written overnight, you need to work on it, generate ideas and calculate the structure etc. then you would get a final writing piece. How long should a dissertation literature review be depend entirely on the paper’s scope and purpose, as well as how much research has been done by you.

So, next time you won’t have to ask yourself how long does it take to write a 7000-word dissertation?

Because it is up to you to decide 6000 word dissertation structure or how you will manage to cope with heavy writing assignment within the deadline expected.

How To Structure A Dissertation?

You understand writing a 7000 words of dissertation will approximately take almost 2 months or more probably a bit longer according to what you choose as a title. The next step is how to structure a dissertation. The structure of the dissertation is not as complicated as it looks like. It is more like a systematic and organized academic book, a dissertation is an original research done by students for the requirement of a degree program. Every dissertation structure varies by discipline and levels, so the basic structure and more functional chapters are as follows

How to write a dissertation introduction? Or to be more precise, how long does it take to write a 7000 word dissertation if we are just focusing on introduction.

Before writing your introduction you need to have a powerful topic that could help you throughout the final dissertation journey. Therefore, it should match your interest and your supervisor’s approval as you should know how to write 7000 in words and do not want to get rejected at the earlier stage. Let’s get to the point, the introduction should be clean, engaging and relevant to the research you will conduct. You need to answer all the what, why, how will the research be conducted. The introduction should look like this.

• Once you select your research topic, give important background knowledge to conceptualize the work.
• Define the scope of the study.
• Clearly define your research question and objective.
• State your research gap and identify problem between the current and desired state of your research.

When searching for how to write a dissertation introduction, no one will explain you how much words to put in each section easily or how long to write 7000 words. Well, by calculating the weightage of the introduction chapter it is around 10% which means your words should be almost 700 to 1000 words. Sigh!

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How To Write A Dissertation Literature Review?

The dissertation literature review helps  readers gain a thorough understanding of the research work that already exist on your topic. When you search for how to write a dissertation literature review, the internet is full of definitions and explanation on how long does it take to write a 6000 word dissertation specifying LR only. The literature review is also called theoretical framework, that defines and analyze the theories, concepts and models that build your research. Some students believe that, literature is just to summarize the existing research, but this isn’t true. It develops a logical structure and argues to find a clear basis or justification for your own research.

How To Write A Dissertation Methodology?

Now that you have all the information, you need to gather a bulk amount of data. For gathering this much data, you need two basic research methodology. Qualitative and quantitative research methodology.

For simplicity, the qualitative research is the collecting and analyzing of data through words. Means the qualitative research provide insight to a problem or helps to develop hypothesis or ideas. On the other hand, quantitative research is the collecting and analyzing of data through numbers or figures. It helps to conduct in-depth research on the topic that have a research gap.

How To Write A Dissertation Finding/Results?

The main focus of this section is to gain some results or findings relevant to your topic idea. After you finished collecting and analyzing the data, you start with your results and findings.

When writing your results and findings it is necessary to write it in a past tense. When you understand how to write a dissertation finding /results you will then calculate how much length is required to cover the collections of data and analysis. The word count under 7000 words is approximately 500.

How To Write A Dissertation Discussion?

Once your results and findings are defined in the 4 the previous chapter in form of dissertation words, the discussion section explores the meaning and implication of the research. The charts, graphs and findings that has been defined the next is to interpret all of them to help understand the readers. The interpretation will give insight with whether the results marks your expectations or not. The other heading that goes in the discussion section is limitations of the study. You need to discuss all the limitations that happened during your research analysis, and do mention the citations while discussing the results even on 5000 word dissertation.

How To Write A Dissertation Conclusion?

The dissertation conclusion should be defined in a concise and simplistic manner. The wrapping up of your overall research chapters with a final reflection on what you did and how you did it. You need to answer your research question fits to your findings and methodology and how your overall hard work help in the field of research. Just remember do not add any unnecessary information or any point that is not mentioned in the chapters. If you have missed anything related to the study you can add it in the appendix section.

How Long Should A Dissertation Conclusion Be?

Well, how long write a 6000 word dissertation depends on the appropriate length of the conclusion should be almost 500 words or less. How long should a dissertation conclusion be, it varies with the length of the overall research paper.

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Wrapping It Up:

The students can now easily write a dissertation without any hurdles and thoughts of ‘how long does it take to write 7000 words’, with the help of our blogs you can estimate how much each heading would cover.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. Hello, my name is Dr Derek Watson from the University of Sunderland and I've come along here today to talk to you about dissertations or how to successfully complete a dissertation for your undergraduate or postgraduate degree. So what I'm going to be doing is, I'm going to be sharing with you some techniques on how to successfully complete your thesis. First of all, we'll start off with the title. The title of a thesis or your research area is instrumental in two ways. One, you've got to pass your degree, a postgraduate degree and secondly, you've got to create a gateway to employability. So what I'm about to say today is possibly going to shock you or surprise you. Most students will pick a topic of interest to themselves and they pass. But then when they start applying for a career, a credible career, they find that they struggle in the interview. So what I'm suggesting is, pick a topic that will appeal to organisations, almost any type of organisation. So a key area that you might want to think about is potentially quality. It affects all organisations. Or how do we motivate staff without paying them extra? How do you motivate staff through non-monetary mechanisms? But try to pick a topic whereby once you've completed your qualification, you can actually use it. And what I mean by using it is taking your thesis along to an interview and presenting that to the panel so they can see your theme, your topic, your contribution and also the professional structure of what you're capable of doing. So bear that in mind. So after the title, abstract. Abstracts, I would suggest that you leave it till the end. It's the last section that you feed in. Although it's at the beginning of the structure. And it's a bit like going to the movies. You will see clips of future movies to whet your appetite to come along to watch them at a later date. Your abstract has to be concise. It's got to summarise your research contribution. But it's got to be motivating. It's got to inspire the reader, particularly your first marker, your second marker and also your external examiner. And it should be a paragraph, approximately 150 words, rather like the abstracts for journal papers. Next section. Introduction. Introduction has to be very concise. Why are you writing the thesis? What is the purpose of your research? And more importantly, what is the aim and your objectives for researching that particular area? And bear in mind, a future employer may want to read your thesis. Hence the importance of your title. After your introduction, what you have is your literature. Your literature review. Now once again, from experience, and I've read many theses, many dissertations, students tend to, because they've got such easy access to the internet and electronic journals and also through university internal intranets, there's potentially too much information out there. So what I see in many submissions that I haven't supervised is whereby students simply shotgun the information into the literature review. And the literature review has to be concise. You have to justify what are the key things in the literature. So what I recommend students do is create diagrams throughout your thesis. And once again, this will help signpost your assessors and the external examiner on what your thought process is. So the literature review, you'll create a diagram. You will have your question in the middle. And this will be figure one. And what you will do is, from reading the journal papers, your first journal paper, what you'll do, you'll add key themes on that. Then when you come to read your second journal paper, use a different pen. And then, if you come across additional subject areas, you can add to them. However, hopefully, you will be duplicating current themes. And as you build up this diagram, make sure you put your reference, your reference source, so the reader, the examiners, can identify, this is your diagram, this is your question, these are the key themes relevant. And you've duplicated it because you've been reading various journals. And you've identified that these are the key themes. And they're referenced. So what you will then do in your literature review, you will talk about these themes and how they are connected. They're not in isolation. How they are connected in a logical structure within that. Next section is your methodology. Your methodology. And if you can imagine your methodology, which sometimes students struggle with, many students submit theses or dissertations with a weak methodology section and lose marks. So it's critical that your methodology justifies the tools in which you're using. So think about a plumber. A plumber receives a call to go around to a property to fix a leaky pipe or a leaky radiator. The plumber will attend with a box of tools. They are your research tools. The plumber then looks at the problem and decides which tools they are going to use. And it's very similar to your research methodology. You will have to justify your approach. You will have to justify why you are selecting specific tools to answer your research question. In addition to your methodology, you need to think about how we're going to test. This is what we've read about in the literature. This is what the literature says. But what does the commercial environment say? So what we need is gateways to try and collect data. So, for example, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups. And this is one technique that you need to adopt, which will enhance your overall grade. Having looked at your literature review, which have identified key themes, you will then develop a set of questions. And this is what students don't do. Most students don't do. And they're missing out on marks. What they need to do, they need to develop a table. And on the left-hand side, you will write your questions. Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, up to 15, 20 questions. Now, these can be open-ended or closed questions. However, these questions have to be linked to your literature review. And many students simply pluck questions out of the air, construct a questionnaire, ship it off to an organisation. But when they come to submit the paper, the thesis, comments come back. Lack of linkage to the literature review. How have you justified these questions? So what I'm proposing is, you list the questions on the left-hand column. On the right-hand column, you justify why you've selected that question. But you also reference it to a reference source which is identifiable in your literature review. There you have the linkage. That's what many students don't do. So let me just repeat that. You justify the tools that you're going to use. You then, having reflected on your literature review, you extract questions. Those questions go into a table. On the right-hand side, you justify a sentence or two sentences. Why have you selected those questions? And you make a reference that you've specifically referenced from your literature review. You have the linkage. Next section. Findings. Or data analysis. Or discussion. Or a combination of all three. But your title is relevant to employability. You've got your introduction, concise, which has identified your introduction, your aims, your objectives. Your literature review has been justified as in figure one. You've got the structure. And you know you're talking about the key areas because you've superimposed different journal papers. And you've identified the relevant areas. From that, you develop questions, which has been identified in your methodology, via the table. Now your findings section. Your findings section is very important. Because it will identify themes. And what many students do is they distribute a questionnaire. They get the responses back from the organisation. And then their findings section is nothing better than a regurgitation of that data. For example, question one responses were, and students do a nice pie chart. 70% of the responses said this. 30% of the responses said X, or the opposite. And they systematically go through each question. A cure for insomnia. And also a mechanism not to demonstrate your analysis. So this is what I suggest. You look at the feedback from the question. And what you've got is you've got various responses. What I suggest that you do. You identify themes. So, for example, theme one could consist of answers one, three, five and six. Theme two, you've clustered the responses into two, four, eleven and fifteen and so on. And what this shows the assessors is that you have the ability to look at raw data and cluster it into key themes. So what you'll do is you'll create a diagram. Or better still, you'll have a diagram where you've got your table. You've got the raw responses. And then you have clustered them into key themes. And when you come to write it up, you've got specific sections or specific paragraphs. Addressing each of these themes going through your finding section. However, what students also fail to do. They will talk about the findings, but they will not link it to the literature review. So what you've got to do as you're working through each of these sections systematically through your finding section. You need to make reference to your literature review. You're not repeating your literature review. But what you're doing is, for example, theme one. The data supports the commentary of. And you link it back to a researcher which you've referenced in your literature review. Theme two, maybe. The data is very interesting. This further supports or casts doubt or raises a question mark about what's being said in the literature. You are demonstrating that you have the ability of analysis and application within that. The next section. Your conclusion section. A bit like a court case where the judge summarises. What are the general findings of the research? What did you find? And what are those implications for an organisation or particular market or service sector? A key area which is also neglected is the recommendation section. Quite often, I will look at theses as an external and I will say, at best, a paragraph. Now, really, to a certain extent, as academics, we know the literature. We know the different types of methodology. We don't know how you can structure the theming. So if you can do that, you're going to get extra marks. Yes, you can demonstrate your ability to summarise in a conclusion, which should be approximately half a page. But then comes the recommendations. And this is the key part of your contribution. It's your thumbprint. It's what you can contribute to the bedrock of knowledge or your community of practice within that. So, recommendations. Recommendations. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a technique to make sure you can't just submit a paragraph. So going back to the diagram of themes. So this could be, if we've got figure one there, this would be figure two. What you would create in here, in your recommendations, is a diagram. And what you would do, you would have theme one, two, three, theme four. They're your issues that you've identified in your findings that are linked to your recommendations. Your recommendations are, well, so what? You've identified the problems. What are you going to recommend? What are your commercial, viable recommendations that you can present to the organisation or to the market sector? So this is what I suggest students do. You create another diagram. You've got your themes there. You create an organisational structure. With STO. S stands for Strategic. T stands for Tactical. O stands for Operational. So what I'm doing is I'm creating a diagram where you've identified the themes. We've got the organisational structure. Strategic, Senior Management. Tactical, Middle Management. Operational, Frontline Staff. On the front line of the organisation. So what we have to do. Theme one. What are our recommendations? What are we going to recommend at a strategic level to resolve this problem? What are we going to resolve or recommend at a tactical and at an operational? Now the reason I'm structuring it like that is any recommendation has to be brought in by the organisation. You've got to get the support from senior management, strategic. You've got to get support from middle management, the tactical. And you've got to get support from the frontline troops interacting on the frontline. What are you going to recommend there? Theme two. What are you going to recommend at a strategic, tactical, operational? Theme three. What are you going to recommend at a strategic, tactical, operational? And last theme. Strategic, tactical, operational. Now your recommendations need to start off by stating. You will be structuring your recommendations under three distinct headings. Strategic, tactical, operational. And justify why you're doing that. You need to do that to get the full commitment of the organisation to buy into your solutions. If you just go for senior management. What about middle management? And the operatives, frontline staff. Everyone needs to be on the same page with the solutions. So what you'll then do is, systematically, you'll have a paragraph or two paragraphs on strategic challenges. Recommendations. Tactical recommendations. And operational recommendations within that. Now, what I do recommend that you do is, in addition, which isn't always asked for, is what we call an action sheet. Meaning, you've done your literature review. You've justified your methodology with your questions linked to your literature review. You've gone through your findings section. You've clustered the key themes together. You've summarised it. You've come up with commercially viable, saleable recommendations. And this is what a future employee will look at. This is what they'll home in on. Has this student or potential candidates got the ability, not just to identify problems, but to structure solutions? But you're going to go the extra nine yards. What you're going to do is, you're going to produce an action sheet. One page, electronic. And what it has is, it's got the issue. And these are the issues that need to be addressed. You've also got person responsible. You've got to give someone the responsibility. You've got the resources required. You've got the cost. And you've also got the time frame. So many theses, dissertations, include recommendations. Although I've said very short recommendations. This avoids it. You've got three distinct sections within your recommendations. So your recommendations should be running approximately two, possibly three pages in length. And then, what you will do, you will have your themes. One, two, three, four. There might be more than four themes. There might be five, six. I wouldn't go above more than six because it would be too bulky. Person responsible. So who do we choose? You're not going to lose marks by identifying somebody in the organisation. Whereby, the ultimate organisation might say, well, that's not specifically for that person. What the examiners and the assessors want to know is, have you identified, say, someone in the, for example, the HR manager? And with regards to, if we run and keep the theme on the HR manager, the resource might be training. One of your recommendations must probably be training or repeat training. It will be, well, if everyone needs to be trained, what, how much is that going to cost? Once again, you're not going to lose marks if you don't get the exact cost right. What the examiners want to see is, have you thought about the cost? So, for example, a member of staff might work out £100 to be trained if you've got a cohort of 15. So what you would do is, you would guesstimate the likely cost. This section here, timeframe, would be short-term, medium-term, long-term. And what I mean by long-term, 12 months. This action sheet involves a 12-month scenario. So short-term could be 1 to 3 months. Medium-term could be 3 to 6 months. Long-term could be 6 months to 12 months. But make sure that you include that. And when that's completed, you can go back and say, right, that's my action sheet, that's the sheet of paper, I could go in on Monday morning and give the organisation. Those themes are linked to these recommendations, which are linked to these themes, which were extracted or clustered in your filing section from your methodology, which you have justified in the table. Your literature review is being justified because it's systematic and you've duplicated, you know these are the common themes from the journal papers which you've read and you've documented. There you can put in your abstract now. You can summarise what was your area of research, what was important about it, what did you contribute within that, in your abstract. So don't forget, your literature review links to your methodology. Your findings section links back to your literature review. Because when you're talking about the themes, you're making reference, you're not rewriting your literature review, you're making reference to your literature review there, just in reference only. Your conclusion links to your findings. Your recommendations link to your findings. And your recommendations are developed into an action sheet within that. And there you have a structured dissertation that links, that demonstrates your analysis, your synthesis, your application of viable commercial recommendations, and the extra bit is your action sheet. One page, 12 months advice, what you would recommend to the organisation to help eradicate these problems. And if you do that, you should pass your dissertation and it should give you a good crack at getting your first job interview. Thank you very much.

Can I write a 5000 word dissertation in 2 days?

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