Anyone who finds they having to write a dissertation is at the end of a significant stage in their academic journey. The entire purpose of an essay is to showcase your understanding, skills, and ability to research within your chosen field of study. The dissertation usually pertains to an undergraduate program and should benefit the academic and scientific community.
Writing a dissertation proposal
Not all universities or educational institutions require plans. However, it’s a good thing to incorporate irrespectively. Usually, the proposal aspect of the dissertation is to inform committee members that you are going to be working on a specific ‘problem’ within your field of study. Obviously, this is a summarized version of your dissertation and will require that you have at least a clear indication of ‘where you want to go’ within your project.
When writing a proposal think of the following:
- What is the problem you’ll be solving?
- Why is it a problem within your chosen field of study?
- What is the importance/urgency of finding a viable solution?
- What are the means you’ll be implementing to find the answer to the question?
By covering these elements, you should have more than enough to write a dissertation proposal.
Research
Once you have written your dissertation proposal, it is essential to spend a significant time researching your premise. We recommend that you make a timeline with checkpoints to efficiently use your time. This way you’ll be able to prioritize the research as you don’t want to be wasting time on irrelevant information.
To conduct research efficiently:
- Research the issue in depth to understand the problem in all aspects.
- Identify the best resources to help you research (Internet, Experts, Books, etc.)
- Organize your supplies
You’ll want to keep everything in a cloud drive. The reason you want to do this is that you’ll always have access to the information and keep it organized.
Writing the Dissertation
Now that you have the proposal and the research, it’s time to start working on your dissertation. To do this, you’ll first want to outline.
Fortunately, your proposal should have most of this covered already. However, even though the project is a summarized outline, you’ll want to expand on the information and points in the actual dissertation.
What needs to include in your outline:
- Introduction – This is to state the problem and to set the objective of the dissertation.
- Literature Review – In this stage, you’ll go over the research process and provide acknowledgments where due.
- Methodology – You’ll expand on the methods you used, the way you used the research to achieve your results. You’ll be divulging methods, analysis processes, data collection, experience with participants and much more.
- Findings – In this section, you’ll be going over the data that you have accumulated throughout the research and put it into context. It is probably the most critical aspect of writing a dissertation. In this section, you answer the questions you posed in the introduction.
- Conclusion – Finally, you should tie it all together by restating the problem, bringing back significant data and whether or not you managed to solve the problem. If you did, what are the data that supports your premise and if you didn’t say what were the issues you faced?
- Bibliography – It’s important always to cite your work, the literature references your sources, provides the acknowledgement to those who helped.
Now that you have a dissertation structure then It’s time to write the first draft. In this phase, you’ll merely write without consequence to style, grammar or anything of the sorts. You’re just trying to get the first version of your ideas on paper.
Once you have completed the first draft, and then set it aside for two to three days. It will allow you to gain a fresh perspective on the work and you’ll lose a lot of your own bias in the process.
Editing
Now that you have sat on the work for a few days get it out again. It’s time to start editing.
You’re still not going to be ‘proofreading the work,’ but instead focus on the data, the information being presented and see whether there are anything you missed in the process. If an idea is too vague, expand on it more or if a problem is too complicated…simplify it or find another way of expressing it.
After all, the point of a dissertation is for others to not only read it but understand it as well.
Look for logical fallacies and other errors you may have inserted into the document. Once this does, then you can focus on proofing the text. In this instance, you’ll focus on spelling, grammar, and styling.
Now that you have the basics of writing a dissertation paper, it’s time to start working. For those who are finding it a tad bit challenging to do the research or even structure your paper…there is no shame in looking for professional help. There are plenty of online resources available to assist you with writing a dissertation on any topic and discipline.
