Know your Thesis

Depending on the broad area of study (arts, humanities, social sciences, technology, etc), dissertations vary in their structure. They will normally be reporting on a research project of some kind and the structure nearly always reflects this by
a) introducing the research topic, with an explanation of why the subject was chosen for study
b) reviewing relevant literature and showing how this has informed the research issue
c) explaining how the research has been designed and why the research methods being used have been chosen
d) outlining the findings
e) analysing the findings and discussing them in the context of the literature review
f) concluding.
A typical chapter structure will thus be: Chapter 1, Introduction (about 5% of wordage); Chapter 2, Literature review (about 30% of wordage); Chapter 3, Design / methodology (about 15% of wordage); Chapter 4, Findings (about 15% of wordage); Chapter 5, Analysis / discussion (about 30% of wordage); Chapter 6, Conclusion (about 5% of wordage).[4] At the beginning there will be an abstract of 100-200 words that summarises the whole work. There will be a contents page following the summary. At the end there will be a references section that gives the full details of works referred to in the text of the dissertation. There may also be a glossary of technical terms, abbreviations and acronyms. There may in some circumstances be an appendix or appendices that provide the raw data (or examples of it) on which the analysis has been based.