How To Write A Dissertation For Success

A dissertation shows a student’s skills and ability to research a subject or discipline and representant information through an original piece that aims to add value to the academic and scientific community.

But writing a dissertation is no easy task. It takes time, energy, and willpower to reach the finish line. Then again, dissertation writing doesn’t have to be a painful process.

And if you fully understand the big picture, then researching will be much smoother.

In today’s post, we’ll share a definitive guide to writing a quality dissertation without losing your mind along the way!

1. Write A Winning Research Proposal
2. Carry Out Your Research
3. Design your research strategy
4. Execute research
5. Present Your Findings
6. Edit and Proofread

Write A Winning Research Proposal

A research proposal should persuade the panel that you’re about to present valuable, compelling, and complex questions.

This is shorter than the actual dissertation but is just as important because this is where you need to develop a significant research question and set up a plan to present your findings.

Consider the following when writing a research proposal:

Theme, title, and question:

• What problem is your dissertation going to tackle?
• How are you going to find solutions to this problem? How does this problem affect the academic and scientific community you belong to?
• What is the importance of finding a solution to this problem?
• answer

Structure:

Dissertation title

• No more than three objectives. Anything more may be too extensive and should be narrowed down.
• List down some references or mention the schools of thought, areas of study, and other relevant sources of information you will use during research.
• The main section is where you’ll highlight the ideas of your research question.
• This may be empirical (if data are gathered through questionnaires or similar methods) or non-empirical (if resources are from previously published works).
• Potential Outcomes. Explain what all your research and analysis will come down to.
• Time Frame. Come up with a schedule explaining how you will tackle all stages of writing your dissertation within a specific time frame.

If you’re in a slump and don’t know how to start this part of the writing process, don’t worry!

Dissertation writing requires a great deal of knowledge and expertise, and you can look up dissertation writing companies’ reviews to find much-needed helping hands to get you on the right track.

Carry Out Your Research

Now, it’s time to carry out your research so you can find answers to your question. There are two steps in this process, which are as follows:

Design your research strategy

Here, you need to create a methodology chapter where you explain the hows of your research. This is the part where you’ll need to make sound decisions about your research design, including:

• Research philosophy (i.e., positivism, realism, pragmatism)
• Overall methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed)
• Data collection strategy (i.e., surveys, questionnaires, targeted groups, interviews)
• Data analysis strategy (i.e., narrative, content, discourse)

Execute research

Here, put your plan into action and start collecting data.

Data collection can be time-consuming (especially if you host interviews or conduct surveys) depending on your method, so allow enough time into your research for this.

Once you’ve collected data, you’ll need to prepare them before you dip your toes into data analysis. For instance, if you carried out one-on-one interviews, you may need to transcribe audio to text first.

Once you’ve finished preparing all the data, it’s time to analyze them using the techniques laid out in your methodology. Remember, the data analysis you’ll use largely depends on your research question and the nature of the research itself.

Present Your Findings

Now, it’s time to write the actual dissertation — the final product of all your efforts!

Your research proposal serves as the preliminary outline for the actual dissertation. This time, you need to come up with a more detailed design. Ideally, your dissertation should be structured in parts:

• Introduction. You’ll have to clarify the research question and the purpose of the study. This includes a background of the problem you’re tackling and a statement of the issue. This is also where you’ll provide clear definitions of project-related terms and current assumptions and expectations of the final results.
• Literature Review. Showcase and review the research process, including essential acknowledgments.
• Methodology. This chapter focuses on how you found your resource materials and the methods used to implement the results.
• Findings. The most important part of the entire process. Here, you will showcase your intellectual capacity by restating the research questions, discussing the results of your research, and the direction they led you. In short, this is where you’ll provide answers to those questions.
• Conclusion. The final chapter of your dissertation. Here, you will summarize everything about your study and briefly report the results. It’s essential to explain how your research process and the findings can impact the academic and scientific community and how they can be carried into practice.
• Bibliography. Use the recommended citation style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.), depending on your field of study.

Don’t forget to cite all resources used during your research and writing; it is part of the research structure. Citing sources accurately and consistently helps you avoid plagiarism, a severe academic offense in many institutions.

Edit and Proofread

One of the secrets to a well-written dissertation is to ensure all the sections in your paper are in the right place. So, you need to spare ample time to edit and proofread your work.

Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sloppy formatting errors can drag down the overall quality of your research proposal and dissertation.

Set aside time to write drafts of your dissertation and revise them before focusing on language mistakes, typographical errors, and other inconsistencies.

Writing a dissertation may seem like a challenge that’s difficult to overcome.

Still, once you understand the steps and work through them carefully, you can move through the process relatively smoothly. The road to completion may be long, but it doesn’t have to be bumpy. You got this!