How to write a PhD thesis: a step-by-step guide
A draft isn’t a perfect, finished product; it is your opportunity to start getting words down on paper, writes Kelly Louise Preece
Kelly Louise Preece
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Congratulations; you’ve finished your research! Time to write your PhD thesis. This resource will take you through an eight-step plan for drafting your chapters and your thesis as a whole.
Organise your material
Before you start, it’s important to get organised. Take a step back and look at the data you have, then reorganise your research. Which parts of it are central to your thesis and which bits need putting to one side? Label and organise everything using logical folders – make it easy for yourself! Academic and blogger Pat Thomson calls this “Clean up to get clearer” . Thomson suggests these questions to ask yourself before you start writing:
- What data do you have? You might find it useful to write out a list of types of data (your supervisor will find this list useful too.) This list is also an audit document that can go in your thesis. Do you have any for the “cutting room floor”? Take a deep breath and put it in a separate non-thesis file. You can easily retrieve it if it turns out you need it.
- What do you have already written? What chunks of material have you written so far that could form the basis of pieces of the thesis text? They will most likely need to be revised but they are useful starting points. Do you have any holding text? That is material you already know has to be rewritten but contains information that will be the basis of a new piece of text.
- What have you read and what do you still need to read? Are there new texts that you need to consult now after your analysis? What readings can you now put to one side, knowing that they aren’t useful for this thesis – although they might be useful at another time?
- What goes with what? Can you create chunks or themes of materials that are going to form the basis of some chunks of your text, perhaps even chapters?
Once you have assessed and sorted what you have collected and generated you will be in much better shape to approach the big task of composing the dissertation.
Decide on a key message
A key message is a summary of new information communicated in your thesis. You should have started to map this out already in the section on argument and contribution – an overarching argument with building blocks that you will flesh out in individual chapters.
You have already mapped your argument visually, now you need to begin writing it in prose. Following another of Pat Thomson’s exercises, write a “tiny text” thesis abstract. This doesn’t have to be elegant, or indeed the finished product, but it will help you articulate the argument you want your thesis to make. You create a tiny text using a five-paragraph structure:
- The first sentence addresses the broad context. This locates the study in a policy, practice or research field.
- The second sentence establishes a problem related to the broad context you have set out. It often starts with “But”, “Yet” or “However”.
- The third sentence says what specific research has been done. This often starts with “This research” or “I report…”
- The fourth sentence reports the results. Don’t try to be too tricky here, just start with something like: “This study shows,” or “Analysis of the data suggests that…”
- The fifth and final sentence addresses the “So What?” question and makes clear the claim to contribution.
Here’s an example that Thomson provides:
Secondary school arts are in trouble, as the fall in enrolments in arts subjects dramatically attests. However, there is patchy evidence about the benefits of studying arts subjects at school and this makes it hard to argue why the drop in arts enrolments matters. This thesis reports on research which attempts to provide some answers to this problem – a longitudinal study which followed two groups of senior secondary students, one group enrolled in arts subjects and the other not, for three years. The results of the study demonstrate the benefits of young people’s engagement in arts activities, both in and out of school, as well as the connections between the two. The study not only adds to what is known about the benefits of both formal and informal arts education but also provides robust evidence for policymakers and practitioners arguing for the benefits of the arts. You can find out more about tiny texts and thesis abstracts on Thomson’s blog.
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Write a plan
You might not be a planner when it comes to writing. You might prefer to sit, type and think through ideas as you go. That’s OK. Everybody works differently. But one of the benefits of planning your writing is that your plan can help you when you get stuck. It can help with writer’s block (more on this shortly!) but also maintain clarity of intention and purpose in your writing.
You can do this by creating a thesis skeleton or storyboard , planning the order of your chapters, thinking of potential titles (which may change at a later stage), noting down what each chapter/section will cover and considering how many words you will dedicate to each chapter (make sure the total doesn’t exceed the maximum word limit allowed).
Use your plan to help prompt your writing when you get stuck and to develop clarity in your writing.
Some starting points include:
- This chapter will argue that…
- This section illustrates that…
- This paragraph provides evidence that…
Of course, we wish it werethat easy. But you need to approach your first draft as exactly that: a draft. It isn’t a perfect, finished product; it is your opportunity to start getting words down on paper. Start with whichever chapter you feel you want to write first; you don’t necessarily have to write the introduction first. Depending on your research, you may find it easier to begin with your empirical/data chapters.
Vitae advocates for the “three draft approach” to help with this and to stop you from focusing on finding exactly the right word or transition as part of your first draft.
This resource originally appeared on Researcher Development .
Kelly Louse Preece is head of educator development at the University of Exeter.
If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter .
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Writing Your Doctoral Thesis with Style
- First Online: 29 November 2022
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All the raw material for your thesis is ready—at least it should be if you’ve successfully worked your way through the countdown plan described in Chap. 19.
If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants. — Isaac Newton
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Gosling, P., Noordam, B. (2022). Writing Your Doctoral Thesis with Style. In: Mastering Your PhD. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11417-5_20
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WRITING A GOOD Ph.D RESEARCH SYNOPSIS
Synopsis is a short summary of your Ph.D thesis work. This paper suggests some ideas to motivate the young researchers for effectively writing the Ph.D synopsis with essential tips and tricks.This can act as a reference and help young researcher to going to write Ph.D synopsis.
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Thesis writing is a skill that every PhD candidate must acquire to convey his or her research findings clearly. The main objective of this paper is to facili- tate the thesis writing process so that PhD candidates understand what a PhD thesis is and can write their thesis correctly and scientifically. The methodol- ogy used in this research was descriptive as it discusses and describes the var- ious parts of thesis writing process and explains how to do it in a very simple and understanding language. As thus, this article outlines the various steps of thesis writing to guide the PhD candidate so that the task of PhD thesis writ- ing becomes manageable and less daunting. This research is a useful roadmap especially for students of the social sciences studies. Further, in this paper, research procedure and thesis writing strategies are explained in a simple manner. This paper adopts a how-to approach when discussing a variety of relevant topics, such as thesis introduction, types of introductions, introduc- tion statements, problem statement, research questions, hypothesis and con- tributions of the study. This paper has 5 parts: Introduction, Literature Re- view, Methodology, Results and Conclusion. The introduction chapter is dis- cussed in this paper. I will discuss the rest as a series in the future.
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This book aims to guide researchers, academicians and PhD candidates especially Social Science Researchers on how todo research systematically. Research is a premeditated investigation using scientific methodology (quantitative, qualitative,) to solve a serious problem (not ordinary problem), thus creating additional (new) knowledge. Research is also regarded as an inquiry of reality about something by testing a hypothesis, answering questions, generating new queries, finding solutions, and creating new knowledge. This book guides you how to effectively structure your research from the proposal till VIVA presentation. Although research designs may differ from one discipline to another, a general road map should include the following: Ø Topic of research Ø Research problem, questions and hypotheses Ø Review of current literature Ø Theoretical framework or methodology experimental, observation and so Ø Data collection and testing if any Ø Data analysis Ø Results Ø Discussions and Applications Ø Conclusion Ø References
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
1) To help PhD candidates in writing scientifically correct PhD thesis. 2) To describe PhD thesis writing process. 3) To assist PhD candidates to understand what PhD means. 4. Methodology The methodology applied in this research was descriptive as it discusses and de-scribes the various parts of PhD thesis and explains the how to do of them in a
However, both dissertations and theses are expected to meet the same standard of originality, approaching a new area of study and contributing significantly to the universal body of knowledge (Athanasou et al., 2012). Originality is a key issue in both dissertation and thesis development and writing (Bailey, 2014; Ferguson, 2009). The ideas, the
Most dissertations are 100 to 300 pages in length. All dissertations should be divided into appropriate sections, and long dissertations may need chapters, main divisions, and even subdivisions. Students should keep in mind that GSAS and many departments deplore overlong and wordy dissertations.
minimum of ten days for all members of the thesis committee to review the thesis. Step 1: Prepare the content of your presentation. The content of your presentation is the mirror of your thesis ...
• Alternative approaches to thesis development. • Characteristics of an empirically-based thesis - o Scholarly sources. o Data based o Sources cited • Your goals • Defending a thesis means that your evidence - • your data will speak for you. • What a thesis is not. • What a thesis is.
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2.5.2 PhD thesis layout 8 3 Preparing to Write 9 3.1 Before you begin 9 3.2 Obtain copies of successful theses in your area of research 9 3.3 Pre-writing activities 9 3.4 Making time to write 10 3.5 Personal deadlines 10 3.6 Writing, not revising 10 4 Start Well 11 4.1 Write from the start of your graduate studies 11 4.2 Write regularly 11
However, a typical and general literature review tem-plate is as follows: 1) Introduction: Define your topic and the scope of your search. Make a gen-eral statement about your research topic before focusing on specific aspects of your research problem. Lastly, determine the scope of your investigation.
Download book PDF. Authoring a PhD Download book PDF. Overview Authors: Patrick Dunleavy 0 ... with practical guidance on writing and submitting journal papers and reshaping a thesis into a monograph; ... and in teaching a large inter-disciplinary course on 'Drafting and Writing a PhD' at the LSE over twelve years. In the field of study skills ...
A Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis. A PhD thesis is a work of original research all students are requiured to submit in order to succesfully complete their PhD. The thesis details the research that you carried out during the course of your doctoral degree and highlights the outcomes and conclusions reached. The PhD thesis is the most important ...
into a PhD thesis | that is another story. It is all about writing a successful thesis and enjoying the viva. Let's get started! 2 Writing a thesis At the point of writing up, PhD students are unlikely to have written many theses: typically one to document an undergraduate nal year project and possibly another one at Master level.
You create a tiny text using a five-paragraph structure: The first sentence addresses the broad context. This locates the study in a policy, practice or research field. The second sentence establishes a problem related to the broad context you have set out. It often starts with "But", "Yet" or "However".
This presentation is a practical guide on how to write a PhD thesis based on personal experiences and existing literature . It is aimed at all PhD students. A thesis writing may be falling into ...
Conclusion. This article has outlined some of the steps that a PhD student should consider in order to produce a high- quality thesis and ensure a successful viva. We have considered how it is important that decision- making. Table 2. Characteristics of a poor and excellent thesis6. Poor thesis. Lack of coherence.
Download book PDF. Download book EPUB ... A PhD thesis is similar to writing a book. While you can take your published papers and turn them into the core of your thesis, the thesis as a whole should be able to stand alone and is coherent in presentation and scope. Written in solitude. It is important to have other people involved in the thesis ...
1) Illusion Introduction: Start your introduction with an illusion style state-. ment so that your read er cannot resist re ading on. 2) Analogue Introduction: Start your introduction with a ...
dissertation. Reason The introduction sets the stage for the study and directs readers to the purpose and context of the dissertation. Quality Markers A quality introduction situates the context and scope of the study and informs the reader, providing a clear and valid representation of what will be found in the remainder of the dissertation.
In writing this course I have used extracts from a number of qualitative studies, mainly PhD theses written by my ex-students and (former) colleagues at the Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh: Dr Lesley Gourlay, Dr Heather Hewitt, Dr Ko Chao-Jung, Dr Paul Mennim, Dr Joy Northcott and Dr Melada Sudajit-apa.
to say that you can't produce a writing sample on the same topic as your thesis. But if you do, you really need to think about this writing sample as its own paper in the same area, with a more tightly focused thesis, etc. 5 Finding The Right-Size Topic Perhaps the writing sample is the first longer paper you have to write. So how do you go ...
thesis has primarily been undertaken whilst the student has been registered for his or her PhD programme. Advantages of writing a thesis as a collection of papers This format offers a number of advantages for students: • The research is written up as the PhD proceeds, reducing the need for a long period of writing up at the end of the programme.
Theses of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award winners and honorable mentions over the last 2-3 years Your advisor's thesis ^Helps you to understand how much "work" your advisor will expect ^Ask your advisor what he/she is proudest of and what he/she would do differently, if given a chance to re-write the dissertation
provides a step by step direction in creating a. comprehensive dissertation or thesis. The follow ing are. the some of the topics included in the book. - Chapter One which provides the background ...
Thesis writing is a skill that every PhD candidate must acquire to convey his or her research findings clearly. The main objective of this paper is to facili- tate the thesis writing process so that PhD candidates understand what a PhD thesis is and can write their thesis correctly and scientifically. The methodol- ogy used in this research was ...