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Title page – Title, your name, course name, date, name of supervisor
Abstract – One paragraph summarizing the whole dissertation
Acknowledgements – Thanks to those who have assisted you
Table of contents – Chapters and/or sections & sub-sections with page numbers
Introduction – A presentation of the field of study, the research question, the hypothesis (if any) or, more generally, the research question that is to be investigated. With a brief outline of the structure of your work, summarizing the contents and main arguments in the dissertation e.g. (dis)proving something, applying theory to a real situation, setting up a hypothesis.
Main body/discussion
- The facts, evidence, analysis, evaluation and discussion. All very well structured: arts/social sciences tending towards paragraphs; sciences/engineering towards sections; business a mixture of the two.
The Literature Review – this is a crucial part of the process of researching and writing the dissertation, because the purpose of it is to explore previous and current academic thinking surrounding your topic and see if it agrees or disagree with your findings. The literature must include previous work done on the field of study and anything that you consider to be relevant to the hypothesis or research question and to its investigation. It will include a large number of references to the literature in your chosen area. This may result in it being more than one chapter, so should be APPROXIMATELY 3,000 WORDS but should certainly be written in sections.
Methodology – This section should include an account of the research questions and/or hypotheses to be investigated, relevant methods of investigation and an argument for why you think these methods are the most appropriate ones for the question and for your circumstances. You should consider the benefits of your chosen method as well as identifying any disadvantages and how you overcame them. Ethical issues and the ways in which you dealt with them should be noted. This section should also discuss any variations from the original fieldwork plan, and should conclude with a reflection on the experience of doing fieldwork. The use of Econometrics is a MUST in this section.
Findings – This section should present the main findings of your research together with an account of the strengths and weaknesses of your data relative to your research question/hypothesis. You may also wish to include an evaluation of any difficulties you encountered in collecting and analyzing data, together with an assessment of how this affected your plan of research.
Evaluation – Here you can provide an assessment of whether and how well you were able to answer your research question and/or confirm/reject your hypotheses.
Discussion – This chapter must relate the findings to the theoretical/policy discussion in your literature review, so in other words include a very detailed literature review. You should NOT introduce any new literature at this stage.
Conclusions and recommendations – An overall assessment of what you found out, how successful you were and suggestions for future research.
Conclusion/findings – Where you bring it all together, stating very clearly your answer to your central question and if appropriate making recommendations, suggestions etc.
Bibliography – A complete list of your sources, using Harvard referencing style.
