Writing a dissertation has always been challenging for most students’. One needs to be creative and thoughtful to write an impressive paper. Writing a dissertation aims to reveal your capability and skills to undertake a study in your field of study and display the findings in an original piece of content that will generate value to the academic and scientific society. Below are some of the tips that can help when writing a dissertation.
Contents
Step 1: Know yourself
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Are you good at doing academic work in the morning or evening? Would you prefer to read the research and still write on the same day? Once you determine the hours that are most suitable for you, try them out. If you find them workable, then make a schedule plan for your dissertation work.
Step 2: Write a winning dissertation proposal
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This is a more precise paper than the final dissertation. According to statisticsguruonline.com, it is an integral part since it is at this point when you will choose your dissertation title and define the key concept. You will also think of crucial questions, find answers to the problems, debate the cases of your thesis, and set up a strategy for gathering details and writing your paper. It is crucial to make your proposal convincing. Therefore, you have to ensure that the format is flawless and easy to follow. Some of the crucial tips you should consider when writing a proposal are as follows:
- Choose an appropriate dissertation title, theme and questions – choose a title that will let the reader know what your paper entails. The title should have few words that make it sound unique, reasonable and valuable. Choose questions that are not very complex. Those that can easily lead you to a testable hypothesis that you can produce strong arguments on. Moreover, highlight the research aim, which mainly reflects the context, outcomes, and significant elements of the research methodology chosen.
- Objectives-have a target of about at least 5 objectives. Avoid being broad at this point since it might make your plan seem like it has no focus.
- Literature – list a few specific references in this section. You can also name your areas of study, school of thought, and alternative sources of information you will use during your research.
- This is a significant section of your paper. In this section, you need to expound on your research questions and make sure you have clearly outlined your area of research.
- Methodology- Explain the technique you will use to collect your data. The method you choose depends on whether your dissertation is empirical (information gathered through questionnaires or other techniques) or non-empirical (information from projects that have already been published).
- Potential results-describe what your expectations are upon completing your research and doing the analysis.
- Time schedule – prepare a time plan that shows how you intend to spend time on every section of your dissertation so that you can complete it on time.
Step 3: Conduct effective research
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This stage is susceptible; hence, you need to be keen. It is at this point that you determine the ultimate development of your project. Try and be effective and methodical to avoid wasting time reading and analyzing resources that will not add value to your paper. The following are the tips that will assist you to progress swiftly at this stage.
- Set a deadline for the research stage
Set a timeline and stick to it. You need to find and read adequate resources so that you can fully understand your research topic. However, keep in mind that you will have to end your research and reading start writing your paper at one point.
It is important to note that you don’t need to read everything that has been written there before regarding your dissertation problem but ensure you have understood the limitations of your research question. Your research and analysis extent depends on the amount of time you have allocated in each section.
- Choose appropriate sources of information.
The internet plays a significant role as a source of information. However, you need to be keen since not everything that is on the internet is right. Make sure to confirm that the resources you use are reliable. For example, information from Wikipedia is not a recommendable source. Instead, you can use google scholar to find reliable academic sources. More also, you can make use of librarians to provide you with some relevant publications.
- Organize your resources
Taking notes is important when searching for your resources. They help you to locate specific relevant arguments that you plan to use. Therefore, you can use online tools such as Penzu, Zotero or Evernote to organize your references. This organization also helps to minimize time wastage.
Step 4: Start writing your dissertation
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Prepare a basic outline to make it easy for you to start writing. After you are done writing your outline. Keep off any distractions, observe your timeline and start writing your dissertation following the outline
Outline your paper as follows:
- Introduction
To better understand how you will write your paper, you should include the background of the problem and a statement of the issue at this point. Moreover, clarify the aim of the research and its questions. Also, define terms to be used in the paper and reveal your assumptions and anticipations of the ultimate results.
However, it is much easier to write the main body first and then go back to write the introduction. This is highly recommendable since most people spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to include in this part. Once you are done writing your main body, you will have many ideas on framing your introduction part.
- Literature Review
Review your research process and note down what you have concluded.
- Methodology
This section of the paper shows how you searched for your resources and the techniques you will use to implement your outcomes. If your research is qualitative, you will need to reveal the research questions, participants, data gathering method and data analysis process. If your research is quantitative, emphasize on the research questions, hypotheses, details concerning the sample and the population, instrumentation, data collection and analysis
- Results
In the entire dissertation, this section is the most important since it reveals your intellectual capability. You need to restate your research questions, explain your findings and the directions they led you.
- Conclusions
This is the last chapter of your dissertation. Summarize your research and report your findings precisely. Expound how your results make an impactful difference on what you were researching on and how they can be applied in practice. Include a recommendation for further research and give reasons for your suggestions and the form it should take.
- Writing Style and referencing.
How you organize, your dissertation is critical. Every word needs to make sense, such that readers can quickly grasp the significance of your study by just skimming the paper. When writing, keep the following tips in mind:
- Be concise; avoid putting in fillers and irrelevant information.
- Every paragraph needs to be complete and summarized in a single sentence.
- A topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.
- Use clear and appropriate heading and subheadings. They will play a significant role to you during the writing period and will guide readers.
- Use the recommended writing and citation style. Include all the sources you used in your research paper.
Step 5: editing and proofreading
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After you have completed writing, take a few days of break and come back to edit your paper. Focus on the logical link between every argument. Identify if there are any gaps in the content. If any, fill them with relevant information that you gathered during the research stage. If there are areas you have overemphasized, reduce their volumes. Always keep in mind that its all about quality and clarity.
After editing, read word after word, sentence by sentence to remove any grammar and spelling errors.
