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Chapter by Chapter: How to Structure a Dissertation Chapter

Writing a dissertation can be a daunting task, but breaking it down into manageable chapters can make the process much more approachable. Each chapter serves a specific purpose and contributes to the overall narrative of your research. Understanding the role of each chapter and how to structure it effectively is crucial for a successful dissertation.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the role of each dissertation chapter is essential for a cohesive and well-structured thesis.
• A compelling introduction sets the context, states the research problem, and outlines the structure of the dissertation.
• A thorough literature review identifies key sources, synthesizes existing research, and highlights research gaps.
• A robust methodology chapter details the chosen methods, ensures validity and reliability, and addresses ethical considerations.
• Presenting and analyzing results involves organizing data, interpreting findings, and using visual aids effectively.

Understanding the Role of Each Dissertation Chapter

There are many moving parts to a dissertation, and the best way to simplify them is by chapter . Each chapter follows certain rules and serves a specific purpose. The most efficient way to break down the work ahead of you into pieces is to understand the role each chapter plays in the dissertation.

Purpose and Importance

Each chapter in a dissertation has a unique role and contributes to the overall coherence of your research. The introduction sets the stage, the literature review contextualizes your study, the methodology explains your research design, the results present your findings, the discussion interprets these findings, and the conclusion wraps everything up. Understanding these roles is crucial for structuring your dissertation effectively.

Common Misconceptions

A common misconception is that the chapters can be written in isolation. In reality, each chapter should build upon the previous one, creating a logical flow. Another misconception is that the literature review is just a summary of existing research. Instead, it should critically analyze and synthesize the literature to highlight gaps your research aims to fill.

Examples from Various Disciplines

Different disciplines may have specific requirements for dissertation chapters. For instance, a dissertation in the humanities might focus more on theoretical frameworks, while a science dissertation might emphasize experimental methods. Regardless of the discipline, the fundamental structure remains the same, ensuring that your research is presented in a clear and organized manner.

Crafting a Compelling Introduction

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Conducting a Thorough Literature Review

A thorough literature review is a cornerstone of any dissertation, providing a comprehensive overview of existing research and setting the stage for your own study. This chapter is essential for demonstrating your understanding of the field and identifying where your research fits within the broader academic conversation.

Designing a Robust Methodology

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions: exactly how will you carry out your research, and why have you chosen to do things this way? Crafting an effective Ph.D. thesis proposal requires a well-thought-out methodology that aligns with your research objectives and questions. This chapter is crucial as it lays the foundation for your entire study, ensuring that your approach is both systematic and justified.

Presenting and Analyzing Results

In this chapter, you will present the raw results of your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Dissertation data analysis is the process by which researchers interpret findings to drive useful insights. Focus on presenting the data clearly and concisely, without delving into interpretations, which will be covered in the discussion chapter.

Discussing the Implications of Your Findings

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Concluding Your Dissertation Effectively

As the closing part, this section plays a big role in shaping readers’ opinion. There are many conclusion dissertation layout examples, so Google them to see what makes them important. Here, you repeat major points and make the final impact on your audience . Show some objectivity. Acknowledge that everything wasn’t flawless and topic still needs research. Offer solutions and underline your professionalism by providing recommendations for other experts who might feel interested in the same subject.

Concluding your dissertation effectively is crucial for leaving a lasting impression. If you're struggling with sleepless nights and anxiety, our step-by-step Thesis Action Plan is here to help. Designed by experts and validated by students worldwide, our guides will provide you with the clarity and confidence you need to finish strong. Don't let stress hold you back any longer. Visit our website to claim your special offer now and transform your thesis writing experience.

In conclusion, structuring a dissertation chapter by chapter is a meticulous yet rewarding process that demands careful planning and execution. Each chapter serves a distinct purpose and contributes to the overall coherence and rigor of the dissertation. By adhering to a structured approach, students can ensure that their research is presented logically and persuasively. This article has outlined the key components and considerations for each chapter, providing a comprehensive guide for students embarking on their dissertation journey. Ultimately, a well-structured dissertation not only reflects the depth and quality of the research but also enhances the readability and impact of the scholarly work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of the introduction chapter in a dissertation.

The introduction chapter sets the context for your research, states the research problem, and outlines the structure of the dissertation.

How do I choose the appropriate methodology for my dissertation?

Choosing the appropriate methodology involves selecting methods that are suitable for your research questions and ensuring they are valid and reliable.

What should be included in a literature review chapter?

A literature review should identify key sources, synthesize existing research, and highlight research gaps that your dissertation aims to address.

How can I effectively present and analyze my results?

Effectively presenting and analyzing results involves organizing data systematically, interpreting findings, and using visual aids such as charts and graphs to enhance clarity.

What are common misconceptions about dissertation chapters?

Common misconceptions include the belief that all dissertations follow the same structure and that the literature review is merely a summary of existing research.

How should I discuss the implications of my findings?

Discussing the implications involves connecting your findings to the existing literature, exploring practical applications, and acknowledging limitations and areas for future research.

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• Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Published on June 7, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical early steps in your writing process . It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding the specifics of your dissertation topic and showcasing its relevance to your field.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

In the final product, you can also provide a chapter outline for your readers. This is a short paragraph at the end of your introduction to inform readers about the organizational structure of your thesis or dissertation. This chapter outline is also known as a reading guide or summary outline.

Table of contents

How to outline your thesis or dissertation, dissertation and thesis outline templates, chapter outline example, sample sentences for your chapter outline, sample verbs for variation in your chapter outline, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis and dissertation outlines.

While there are some inter-institutional differences, many outlines proceed in a fairly similar fashion.

• Working Title
• “Elevator pitch” of your work (often written last).
• Introduce your area of study, sharing details about your research question, problem statement , and hypotheses . Situate your research within an existing paradigm or conceptual or theoretical framework .
• Subdivide as you see fit into main topics and sub-topics.
• Describe your research methods (e.g., your scope , population , and data collection ).
• Present your research findings and share about your data analysis methods.
• Answer the research question in a concise way.
• Interpret your findings, discuss potential limitations of your own research and speculate about future implications or related opportunities.

For a more detailed overview of chapters and other elements, be sure to check out our article on the structure of a dissertation or download our template .

To help you get started, we’ve created a full thesis or dissertation template in Word or Google Docs format. It’s easy adapt it to your own requirements.

 Download Word template    Download Google Docs template

It can be easy to fall into a pattern of overusing the same words or sentence constructions, which can make your work monotonous and repetitive for your readers. Consider utilizing some of the alternative constructions presented below.

Example 1: Passive construction

The passive voice is a common choice for outlines and overviews because the context makes it clear who is carrying out the action (e.g., you are conducting the research ). However, overuse of the passive voice can make your text vague and imprecise.

Example 2: IS-AV construction

You can also present your information using the “IS-AV” (inanimate subject with an active verb ) construction.

A chapter is an inanimate object, so it is not capable of taking an action itself (e.g., presenting or discussing). However, the meaning of the sentence is still easily understandable, so the IS-AV construction can be a good way to add variety to your text.

Example 3: The “I” construction

Another option is to use the “I” construction, which is often recommended by style manuals (e.g., APA Style and Chicago style ). However, depending on your field of study, this construction is not always considered professional or academic. Ask your supervisor if you’re not sure.

Example 4: Mix-and-match

To truly make the most of these options, consider mixing and matching the passive voice , IS-AV construction , and “I” construction .This can help the flow of your argument and improve the readability of your text.

As you draft the chapter outline, you may also find yourself frequently repeating the same words, such as “discuss,” “present,” “prove,” or “show.” Consider branching out to add richness and nuance to your writing. Here are some examples of synonyms you can use.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

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George, T. (2023, November 21). Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved June 19, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/dissertation-thesis-outline/

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Relation of concepts "related work"/"background"/"preliminaries"/"state of the art"?

I'm currently struggling to structure and organize my "related work" chapter of my PhD thesis.

I've stumbled across the terms "related work", "background", "preliminaries" and "state of the art". Mainly, I understand that some deal with established knowledge that is being taught in textbooks, and which is the technological base for my work (e.g., elliptic curve (EC) cryptography and digital signatures to protect communication among servers). The other deal with the most recent academic state of the art, e.g., novel communication protocols based on elliptic curves.

It's also clear to me, that I need to differentiate my work by having contributions which go beyond the state of the art, and which differ from related work.

Hoever, I struggle to realted this terms, and to make up a meaningful chapter outline.

I was thinking of:

Background and related work chapter

• Technology X
• Technology Y
• Technology Z
• Overall related work to the kind of system I build
• Overall related work to sub-aspect A
• Overall related work to sub-aspect B
• Overall related work to sub-aspect C
• Difference to related work and state of the art

Can anyone help me clarify the relation of these terms, or hint me to page clarifying them? Also suggestions regarding my outline would be welcome.

2 Answers 2

Every scientific work needs to establish its context. What exactly you name the sections and how you organize them in order to present this context is less important, so long as you give the reader a good roadmap to understanding how your work fits into the larger intellectual environment.

Personally, I find that references tend to cluster into a few distinct groups:

• Motivation of the work and the foundations that it builds upon
• Contrasting to the works of others that do not accomplish the same goals, showing that you are aware of them and that your work is novel.
• Justification of assertions
• Pointers to methods that have been used

The first two are what typically ends up in a related work / background / whatever section, while the other two more typically end up embedded in other prose where they end up being relevant.

Given this, your proposed structure seems basically sane, though of course the details can't be determined without knowing the details of your work. The most important thing, I would say, is that if you end up with a very large and complex chapter (as often happens in a thesis), to make sure that you give the reader a good map to help them navigate it.

I would recommend to split this in two chapters. Preliminaries and State of the Art .

Preliminaries contains the basics, standards, established research, things you learn from text books. What you call technological base .

State of the Art is more recent research, these are other approaches to which you compare your research. This helps the reader to know in which current area your research is situated.

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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Related work / literature review / research review, download pdf handout:   literature reviews, watch video:   literature reviews.

A  literature review, research review,  or  related work   section compares, contrasts, synthesizes, and provides introspection about the available knowledge for a given topic or field. The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably (as they are here), but while both can refer to a section of a longer work, “literature review” can also describe a stand-alone paper.

When you start writing a literature review, the most straightforward course may be to compile all relevant sources and compare them, perhaps evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. While this is a good place to start, your literature review is incomplete unless it creates something new through these comparisons. Luckily, our resources can help you do this!

With these resources, you’ll learn:

• How to write a literature review that  contributes  rather than  summarizes
• Common mistakes to avoid
• Useful phrases to show agreement and disagreement between sources

Need one-on-one help with your literature review or research article? Schedule an appointment with one of our consultants now!

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This page is about how to turn your research (once it's done) into a readable multi-chapter document. You need to figure out what to include, how to organize it, and how to present it.

Following this advice will make me happier about reading your submitted or draft dissertation. You may find it useful even if I'm not going to read your dissertation.

Many others have written usefully on this subject , including someone in the Annals of Improbable Research . There's also advice on writing a thesis proposal . However, this page focuses on what a finished dissertation should look like. You could also skim good dissertations on the web.

What Goes Into a Dissertation?

A typical thesis will motivate why a new idea is needed, present the cool new idea, convince the reader that it's cool and new and might apply to the reader's own problems, and evaluate how well it worked. Just like a paper!

The result must be a substantial, original contribution to scientific knowledge. It signals your official entrance into the community of scholars. Treat it as an chance to make a mark, not as a 900-page-tall memorial to your graduate student life.

Beyond stapling

The cynical view is that if you've written several related papers, you staple them together to get a dissertation. That's a good first-order approximation -- you should incorporate ideas and text from your papers. But what is it missing?

First, a thesis should cohere -- ideally, it should feel like one long paper. Second, it should provide added value: there should be people who would prefer reading it to simply reading your papers. Otherwise writing it would be a meaningless exercise.

Here's what to do after stapling:

Taking Responsibility

Don't expect your advisor to be your co-author. It's your Ph.D.: you are sole author this time and the responsibility is on your shoulders. If your prose is turgid or thoughtless, misspelled or ungrammatical, oblivious or rude to related research, you're the one who looks bad.

You can do it! Your advisor and committee are basically on your side -- they're probably willing to make suggestions about content and style -- but they are not obligated to fix problems for you. They may send your dissertation back and tell you to fix it.

In the following sections, I'll start with advice about the thesis as a whole, and work downward, eventually reaching small details such as typography and citations.

Know Your Audience

First, choose your target audience. That crucial early decision will tell you what to explain, what to emphasize, and how to phrase and organize it. Checking it with your advisor might be wise.

Pretty much everything in your thesis should be relevant to your chosen audience. Think about them as you write. Ask yourself:

What does your audience already know?

You can also safely assume that your readers have some prior familiarity with your research area. Just how much familiarity, and with which topics, is a judgment call -- again, you have to decide who your intended audience is.

In practice, your audience will be somewhat mixed. Up to a point, it is possible to please both beginners and experts -- by covering background material crisply and in the service of your own story . How does that work? As you lay out the motivation for your own work, and provide notation, you'll naturally have to discuss background concepts and related work. But don't give a generic review that someone else could have written! Discuss the background in a way that motivates and clarifies your ideas. Present your detailed perspective on the intellectual landscape and where your own work sits in it -- a fresh (even opinionated) take that keeps tying back to your main themes and will be useful for both experts and beginners.

In short, be as considerate as you can to beginners without interrupting the flow of your main argument to your established colleagues. A good rule of thumb is to write at the level of the most accessible papers in the journals or conference proceedings that you read.

What do you want your audience to learn from the thesis?

You should set clear goals here. Just like a paper or a talk, your dissertation needs a point: it should tell a story. Writing the abstract and chapter 1 at the start will help you work out what that story is.

You may find that you have to do further work to really support your chosen story: more experiments, more theorems, reading more literature, etc.

What does your audience hope to get out of the thesis?

Why does anyone crack open a dissertation, anyway? I sometimes do. Especially for areas that I know less well, a dissertation is often more accessible than shorter, denser papers. It takes a more leisurely pace, provides more explicit motivation and background, and answers more of the questions that I might have.

There are other reasons I might look at your dissertation:

For students, reading high-quality dissertations is a good way to learn an area and to see what a comprehensive treatment of a problem looks like. Noah A. Smith once ran a graduate CS seminar in which the students read 8 dissertations together. Each student was also required to select and summarize yet another dissertation and write a novel research proposal based on it.

Readers with different motivations may read your thesis in different ways. The strong convention is that it's a single document that must read well from start to finish -- your committee will read it that way. But it's worth keeping other readers in mind, too. Some will skim from start to finish. Some will read only the introductory and concluding chapters (so make sure those give a strong impression of what you've done and why it's important). Some will read a single chapter in the middle, going back for definitions as needed. Some will scan or search for what they need: a definition, example, table of results, or literature review. Some will flip through to get a general sense of your work or of how you think, reading whatever catches their eye.

High-Level Organization

Once you've chosen your target audience, you should outline the structure of the thesis. Again, the convention is that the document must read well from start to finish.

The "canonical organization" is sketched by Douglas Comer near the end of his advice . Read that: you'll probably want something like it. A few further tips:

Keep your focus

Keep your focus. Length is not a virtue unless the content is actually interesting. You do have as much space as you need, but the reader doesn't have unlimited time and neither do you.

Get to the good stuff

A newspaper, like a dissertation, is a hefty chunk of reading. So it puts the most important news on page one, and leads each article with the most important part. You should try to do the same when reasonable.

Get to the interesting ideas as soon as possible. A good strategy is to make Chapter 1 an overview of your main arguments and findings. Tell your story there in a compelling way, including a taste of your results. Refer the reader to specific sections in later chapters for the pesky details. Chapter 1 should be especially accessible (use examples): make it the one chapter that everyone should read.

Include a road map

Chapter 1 traditionally ends with a "road map" to the rest of the thesis, which rapidly summarizes what the remaining chapters or sections will contain. That's useful guidance for readers who are looking for something specific and also for those who will read the whole thesis. It also exhibits in one place what an awful lot of work you've done. Here's a detailed example .

Where to put the literature review

I recommend against writing "Chapter 2: Literature Review." Such chapters are usually boring: they're plonked down like the author's obligatory list of what he or she was "supposed" to cite. They block the reader from getting to the new ideas, and can't even be contrasted with the new ideas because those haven't been presented yet.

A better plan is to discuss related literature in conjunction with your own ideas. As you motivate and present your ideas, you'll want to refer to some related work anyway.

Each chapter might have its own related work section or sections, covering work that connects to yours in different ways.

Where to define terminology and notation

Basic terminology, concepts, and notation have to be defined somewhere. But where? You can mix the following strategies:

Retail. You can define some terms or notation individually, when the reader first needs them. Then they will be well-motivated and fresh in the reader's mind. If you use them again later, you can refer back to the section where you first defined them.

Wholesale. On the other hand, there are advantages to aggregating some of your fundamental definitions into a "Definitions" section near the start of the chapter, or a chapter near the start of the dissertation:

The downside is that such sections or chapters can seem boring and full of not-yet-motivated concepts. Unless your definitions are novel and interesting in themselves, they block the reader from getting to the new and interesting ideas. So if you write something like "Chapter 2: Preliminaries," keep it relatively concise -- the point is to get the reader oriented.

Thrift shop. Use well-known notation and terminology whenever you can, either with or without a formal definition in your thesis. The point of your thesis is not to re-invent notation or to re-present well-known material, although sometimes you may find it helpful to do so.

Make Things Easy on Your Poor Readers

Now we get down to the actual writing. A dissertation is a lot to write. But it's also an awful lot to read and digest at once! You can keep us readers turning pages and following your argument. But it's a bigger and more complicated argument than usual, so you have to be more disciplined than usual.

Break it down

Long swaths of text are like quicksand for readers (and writers!). To keep us moving without sinking, use all the devices at your disposal to break the text down into short chunks. Ironically, short chunks are more helpful in a longer document. They keep your argument tightly organized and keep the reader focused and oriented.

If a section or subsection is longer than 1 double-spaced page , consider whether you could break it down further. I'm not joking! This 1-page threshold may seem surprisingly short, but it really makes writing and reading easier. Some devices you can use:

subsectioning Split your section into subsections (or subsubsections) with meaningful titles that keep the reader oriented.

lists If you're writing a paragraph and feel like you're listing anything (e.g., advantages or disadvantages of some approach), then use an explicit bulleted list. Sometimes this might yield a list with only 2 or 3 rather long bullet points, but that's fine -- it breaks things down. ( Note: To replace the bullets with short labels, roughly as in the list you're now reading, LaTeX's itemize environment lets you write \item[my label] .)

labeled paragraphs Label a series of paragraphs within the section, as a kind of lightweight subsectioning. Your experimental design section might look like this (using the LaTeX \paragraph command):

Participants. The participants were 32 undergraduates enrolled in ... Apparatus. Each participant wore a Star Trek suit equipped with a Hasbro-brand Galactic Translator, belt model 3A ... Procedure. The subjects were seated in pairs throughout the laboratory and subjected to Vogon poetry broadcast at 3-minute intervals ... Dataset. The Vogon poetry corpus (available on request) was obtained by passing the later works of T. S. Eliot through the Systran translation system ...

footnotes Move inessential points to footnotes. If they're too long for that, you could move them into appendices or chapters near the end of the thesis. (Here's my take on footnotes .)

captions Move some discussion of figures and tables into their captions. Figures and tables should be clearly structured in the first place: e.g., graphs should have labeled axes with units. But a helpful caption provides guidance on how to interpret the figure or table and what interesting conclusions to draw from it. The figure or table should itself include helpful labels (axis

(In LaTeX, you can write \caption[short version]{long version} . The optional short version argument will be used for the "List of Tables" or "List of Figures" at the start of the thesis.)

theorems Even simple formal results can be stated as a theorem or lemma. The theorem (and proof, if included) form a nice little chunk, using the LaTeX theorem enviroment.

Breaking down equations

Long blocks of equations are even more intimidating than long swaths of text. You can break those apart, too:

Intersperse short bits of text for guidance (perhaps using LaTeX \intertext ). You might introduce line 3 of your formula with

A change of variable from x to log x now allows us to integrate by parts:

Distinguish conceptually important steps from finicky steps that just push symbols around. You can even move finicky steps to a footnote, like this:

Some algebraic manipulation 5 allows us to simplify to the following:

Use visual devices like color, boldface, underlining, boxes, or \underbrace to call attention to significant parts of a formula:

Simplify the formulas in the first place by defining intermediate quantities or adopting notational conventions (e.g., "the t subscript will be dropped when it is clear from context").

Now tie it back together

Now that you've chopped your prose into bite-sized chunks, what binds it together?

Coherent and explicit structure

Your paragraphs and chunks have to tie together into a coherent argument. Do everything you can to highlight the structure of this argument. The structure should jump out at the reader, making it possible to read straight through your text, or skim it. Else the reader will get stuck puzzling out what you meant and lose momentum.

Make sure your readers are never perplexed about the point of the paragraph they're reading. Make them want to keep turning the page because you've set up questions to which they want to know the answers. Don't make them rub their eyes in frustration or boredom and wander off to the fridge or the web browser.

So how exactly do you "highlight the structure" and "set up questions"?

Ask questions explicitly and then answer them, as I just did. This is a great device for breaking up boring prose, communicating your rhetorical goals, and making the reader think.

Explicitly refer back to previous text, as when I wrote, "So how exactly do you 'highlight the structure' and 'set up questions'?"

Use lots of transitional phrases (discourse connectives). Note that it's fine to use these across chunk boundaries; that is, feel free to start a new subsection with "For this reason, ...", picking up where the previous subsection left off.

As you come to the end of a section, remind the reader what the point was. If possible, this should lead naturally into the next section.

If a section is skippable, or chapters can be read out of order, do say so. (But don't use this as an excuse for poor organization or long distractions. Some readers tend to read straight through, and in particular, your advisor or committee may feel that they must do this.)

Lots of internal cross-references

A thesis deals with a lot of ideas at once. Readers can easily lose track. Help them out:

Each figure or table should be mentioned in the main text, so that the reader knows to go look at it. Conversely, the figure's caption may point the reader back to details in the main text (stating the section number). A caption may also refer to other figures or tables that the reader should be sure to compare.

Boldface terms that you are defining, as a textbook would. This makes the definitions easy to spot when needed. You may also want to generate an index of boldfaced terms.

Be very consistent in your terminology. Never use two terms for the same idea; never reuse one term or variable for two ideas.

Be cautious about using pronouns like "it," or other anaphors such as "this" or "this technique." With all the ideas flying around, it won't always be obvious to everyone what you're referring to. Use longer, unambiguous phrases instead, when appropriate.

Try saying "the time t " instead of just " t " or just "the time." Similarly, "the image transformation T ," "the training example x i ," etc. This style reminds the reader of which variables are connected to which concepts. You can further do this for expressions: "the total probability Σ i p i " instead of just "the total probability" or "the sum."

Feel free to lavish space where it confers extra understanding. Don't hesitate to give an example or a caveat, or repeat an earlier equation, or crisply summarize earlier work that the reader needs to understand.

Be concrete

As I read a thesis, or a long argument or construction within a thesis, I often start worrying whether I am keeping the pieces together correctly in my head. Something that has become deeply familiar and natural to you (the world expert) may be rougher going for me. If I can see some concrete demonstration of how your idea works, it helps me check and deepen my understanding.

Examples keep the reader, and you, from getting lost in a morass of abstractions. Example cases figured in your thinking; they can help the reader, too. Invented examples are okay, but using "real" examples will also show off what your methods should or can do.

Running examples greet the reader like old friends. The reader will grasp a point more quickly and completely, and remember it better, when it is applied to a familiar example rather than a new one. So if possible, devise one or two especially nice examples that you can keep revisiting to make a series of points.

Pictures serve much the same role as examples: they're concrete and they share how the ideas really look inside your head. A picture is worth at least a thousand words (= 2.5 double-spaced thesis pages).

Pseudocode is a concrete way to convey an algorithm. It is often more concise, precise, and direct than a prose description, and may be closer to your own thinking. It will also make other people much more likely to understand and adopt your methods.

Theorems , too, are concise and precise. They are also self-contained chunks, because they formally state all their assumptions. A reader sloshing through a long, complicated, contextual argument can always grab onto a theorem as an island of certainty.

Experimental results are also concrete. You don't have to wait for the experimental section: it is okay to foreshadow your experiments before you present them in full. When you are developing the theory, you can say "Indeed, we will find experimentally in section 5.6 that ..." You can even showcase an example from your experiments or give some summary statistics; these might not even show up later in the experimental section.

Commitments keep the reader anchored. As noted earlier, your dissertation should discuss alternative solutions that you rejected or are leaving to future work. That's scholarship. But make it clear from the start what you actually did and didn't do. Don't have section 2.3 chatter on about everything one could do -- that reads like a proposal, not a thesis! -- while waiting till section 4.5 or even 2.5 to reveal what you actually did.

Placing these concrete elements early is best, other things equal. Either embed them early in the section or just tell the reader early on to go look at Figure X. (If you continue the section by discussing Figure X, the reader is more likely to actually go look. Figure X or its caption can refer back to the text in turn.)

For example, consider pseudocode. Some readers prefer code to prose, and it's concise. So you may want to give pseudocode early in the section, before you ramble on about why it works. An alternative is to intersperse fragments of pseudocode with your prose explanation, as in literate programming . Of course, the pseudocode itself should also include some brief comments; where necessary these can just point to the text, as in "implements equation (5)" or "see section 3.2."

Sentences. The previous section dealt with sections and paragraphs, but how about sentences? Yours should read well. The best advice in The Elements of Style : "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise." To learn how to improve your sentences, read Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace , by Joseph M. Williams, and do the exercises. Another classic is On Writing Well , by William Zinsser.

Computers are getting exponentially faster (Moore, 1965). However, Biddle (1971) showed ...

Bandura's (1977) theory ... ... (e.g., Butcher, 1954; Baker, 1955; Candlestick-Maker, 1957, and others). The work of Minor (2001, pp. 50-75; but see also Adams, 1999; Storandt, 1997) ... According to Manning and Schütze, 1999 (henceforth M&S), ...

(Another option is the apacite package, which precisely follows the style manual of the American Psychological Association. It is nearly as flexible in its citation format, but APA style has some oddities, including lowercasing the titles of proceedings volumes. One nice thing about APA style is that if you have multiple Smiths in your bibliography, it will distinguish them where necessary, using first and middle initials. Another nice thing is the use of "&" rather than "and" in author lists; however, you can easily hack plainnat.bst to mimic this behavior.)

\usepackage[colorlinks]{ hyperref } \usepackage{ url }

\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table]{xcolor} \usepackage{soul} \newcommand{\todo}[1]{\hl{[TODO: #1]}} \todo{Either prove this or back away from the claim. I think Fermat's Last Theorem might be the key ...}

\newcommand{\todo}[1]{}

... only 58 words in the dictionary have this property. % to get that count: % perl -ne 'print if blah blah' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l

Version control. It's probably wise to use git (or CVS or RCS or Subversion or mercurial or darcs) to keep the revision history of your dissertation files. This lets you roll back to an earlier version in case of disaster. Furthermore, if you host the repository on your cs.jhu.edu account, it will be backed up by the department.

Sharing your thesis. When you're willing to open up for comments from fellow students, your advisor, or your committee, give them a secret URL from which they can always download the latest, up-to-date release of your thesis, as well as earlier versions. (This is probably friendlier than just pointing them to your git repository.)

Keep this URL up to date with your changes. Each distinct version should bear a visible date or version number, to avoid confusion. For each new version (or on request), you should probably also supply a PDF that marks up the differences from an appropriate earlier version, using the wonderful latexdiff program (available here or as an Linux package; plays nicely with git via latexdiff-git or other scripts ) or a similar technique . (Note: If you use a makefile to build your document by running latex, gnuplot, etc., then you can also make it run latexdiff and update the URL for you.)

If you use Overleaf , just give your committee a view URL for your project. They will be able to see the PDF, visit different versions, and leave comments in the source file.

Planning Your Dissertation

Every dissertation is a little different. Talk to your advisor to draft a specific, written plan for what the thesis will contain, how it will be organized, and whom it will address. Discuss the plan with each of your committee members, who may suggest changes. They might disagree with advice on this page; find out.

As the dissertation takes shape, your plan may need some revision. Your advisor and committee may be willing to provide early feedback. But no one will want to slog through more than a version or two in detail. So ask them each how many drafts of each chapter they're willing to read, and in what state and on what schedule. Some of them nmay prefer to influence your writeup while it's still in an early, outline form. Others may prefer to wait until your prose is fairly polished and easy to read.

In addition to your advisor's goals and your committee's goals, you may have some goals of your own, e.g.,

GOOD LUCK!!! Now, download that LaTeX template , and take the first step toward filling it in today ...

Time Management

A Small Guide to Writing Your Thesis

Kevin Elphinstone

This is not intended to be a definitive guide to scientific authorship. There are many other guides available that are more comprehensive, both on the internet and in print. I suggest you refer to one or more of them before beginning to author a thesis.

This guide was motivated by reading many draft theses and the observation that most first-time thesis writers make very similar mistakes.  One  goal of this guide is mostly self-serving, it 's to avoid me spending my entire life repeating the same advice to every student whose draft thesis I receive. However, following this guide has advantages for both me and the thesis writer. It will allow me to spend my time concentrating on providing clear technical feedback, and not sounding like a tedious tape recording that is played independently of the submitted document. Heeding the advice contained herein is likely to produce a better thesis than simply taking a hit and miss approach. 

Prerequisites

Before submitting a draft to me, I expect the following work to be done.

• The thesis has a title and an author. You have seen my office,  your thesis will be placed in it at some point. You increase the odds dramatically of your thesis being found again if it is not an anonymous, untitled, pile of paper amongst all the other paper.
• The thesis has page numbers. Have you ever tried to piece together a 50+ page document without page numbers? I don't plan to!
• There are section headings and a table of contents. Like a long journey, a large document needs navigation aids to help steer the intrepid reader along the way. Don't risk me getting lost trying to find something.
• There is a bibliography with citations that are correct where cited . Have you ever tried checking the reference [?] ?

And most importantly

• The thesis has been spell checked, and proofread for clarity and grammatical correctness.

If you are too lazy to go to the trouble to provide me with a coherent document mostly free of inconsequential distractions (simple typos, etc.), then I will not read it.

The Thesis Itself

Simplistically, a thesis is a proposition advanced or position taken, that is then substantiated by argument or experiment.  A dissertation, the document that embodies the proposed thesis and substantiation, is also termed thesis. However,  thesis is not a fancy name for a report, or pile of paper. A thesis is expected to contain exactly that described above, a proposed position or solution, and a methodical substantiation. Avoid the common mistake of writing a chronological report of all the work you did. This is a good way to waste my time, and miss your chance to get feedback on the real thesis.

You should also note that a thesis is not a collection of ideas. A thesis has a single theme that is obvious from the start to the end of the document . If there is no obvious theme, you should seriously ask yourself why? Potential answers include a simple lack of coherent structure (the thesis is in there, but your hiding it), attempting more than one thesis (avoid tackling too many problems in too little detail), and having no clear thesis at all. Avoid the "build and experiment without clear reason" approach to research, you should identify the thesis prior to starting, not after supposedly finishing.

Contents    

Theses usually have an expected format. You should not stick rigidly to a standard format (show initiative and creativity), however you also should not deviate significantly from it. The more you deviate, the more you will have to lead the reader through your thesis. Don't risk losing the reader by trying to be "clever".

The standard thesis looks something like

Introduction

• Background & Related Work

Proposed Solution

Experimental results.

Now looking at each section in detail

A reader of the introduction should be able to answer the following questions, although not in any depth.

• What is the thesis about?
• Why is it relevant or important?
• What are the issues or problems?
• What is the proposed solution or approach?
• What can one expect in the rest of the thesis?

State what the thesis is about early. Don't keep the reader guessing until the end of the introduction, or worse, the end of the thesis (don't laugh, I have read draft theses that left me wondering after reading the entire document). You should provide a brief and gentle overview of the thesis topic (or problem) to give the reader enough context  to understand the rest of the introduction. Don't overwhelm the reader with detail at the start. You will provide the details later elsewhere in the thesis. Target the level of writing at one of your peers, but not necessarily somebody working in the same area.

State why the topic is important. Address the "so what?" criteria. Why are you working on the topic? Why should somebody else be interested? Your motivation should be obvious after the introduction, but not necessarily provably so at this point.

State what the major issues are in solving your problem. Coherently overview the issues in enough detail to be able to understand they exist, but don't go into details yet or attempt to prove they exist. The overview should be in just enough depth to understand why you might propose the your particular solution or approach you are taking.

Describe your proposed solution or position your taking. Again, you should not go into minute details, nor should you attempt to prove your solution at this point; the remainder of the thesis will describe and substantiate your solution in detail, that what a thesis is :-)

At this point the reader will know what your working on, why, what are the major issues, and what your proposed solution is, but usually only if he takes your word for it. You should outline what the reader should expect in the rest of the thesis. This is not just the table of contents in sentence form, it is an overview of the remainder of the thesis so the reader knows what to expect.

Related Work and Background

The related work section (sometimes called literature review ) is just that, a review of work related to the problem you are attempting to solve. It should identify and evaluate past approaches to the problem. It should also identify similar solutions to yours that have been applied to other problems not necessarily directly related to the one your solving. Reviewing the successes or limitations of your proposed solution in other contexts provides important understanding that should result in avoiding past mistakes, taking advantage of previous successes, and most importantly, potentially improving your solution or the technique in general when applied in your context and others.  In addition to the obvious purpose indicated, the related work section also can serve to:

• justify that the problem exists by example and argument,
• motivate interest in your work by demonstrating relevance and importance,
• identify the important issues,
• and provide background to your solution.

Any remaining doubts over the existence, justification, motivation, or relevance of your thesis topic or problem at the end of the introduction should be gone by the end of related work section.

Note that a literature review is just that, a review. It is not a list of papers and a description of their contents! A literature review should critique, categorize, evaluate, and summarize work related to your thesis. Related work is also not a brain dump of everything you know in the field. You are not writing a textbook; only include information directly related to your topic, problem, or solution.

At this point the reader will have enough background (from the related work and introduction) to begin a detailed problem analysis and solution proposal. You should clearly identify in detail what the problem is, what you believe are the important issues, describe your proposed solution to the problem, and demonstrate why you believe your particular proposal is worth exploring. Note you might have one or more variants that are worth exploring. This is okay assuming you have time to explore them as they can be compared experimentally if you cannot clearly justify the preference for a particular varient.

You must also clearly identify what the outstanding issues are with your solution. These are the issues that must be resolved by experiment. If you don't need to experiment, you must have proved your solution correct. This situation occurs in mathematics, but it is rare in operating systems. 

The reader now knows your proposed solution(s), understands the problem in detail, and knows what are the outstanding issues. You can now introduce the experiments you used to resolve the outstanding issues in your solution. You must describe how these experiments resolve the outstanding issues. Experiments without clear motivation why they were conducted are a waste of paper, give me an interesting novel to read if you really feel compelled to give me dead trees.

Describe the experimental set up in such a way that somebody could reproduce your results. This should be aimed at the level of somebody externally tackling the same problem, using your solution, and wanting to verify your results. This should not be targeted at the level of somebody within the local group, using your code, on our machines. Details such as  "do blah on machine X to get machine Y to perform monitor" should not be in a thesis. Such information is useful, but make it available outside your thesis.

Present the results in a comprehendible manner. Describe them in words. Don't simply include ten pages of tables and graphs. Again, buy me a book instead. Make sure that the tables and graphs have clear labels, scales, keys, and captions.   

This section takes the outstanding issues you previously identified, the experimental results, and analyzes them. Did the experimental results substantiate your solution, and how do they substantiate your solution. Where the results what you expected? Did the experiments create new issues? If so, identify them.

By the end of this section the reader should know how your proposed solution worked out. The reader should know what issues were resolve, what the resolution was, and what issues remain. 

Recap on your thesis. It has been a long journey if the reader has made it this far. Remind the reader what the big picture was. Briefly outline your thesis, motivation, problem, and proposed solution.

Now the most important part, draw conclusions based on your analysis. Did your proposed solution work? What are the strong points? What are the limitations?

Significant issues identified in the thesis, or still outstanding after the thesis, should be describe as future work.

After Completing the Draft

It is normal for most thesis authors to get lost in the details while writing such a large and detailed work. I highly recommend forgetting your thesis for at least a day or so (a week is recommended). Take a break, play sport, learn to parachute, read a book, just do something that distracts you completely from the job at hand. After taking a break, read the thesis from front to back in one attempt. Use a pen and critically review your own work, but don't distract yourself from reading by immediately fixing the thesis when you find problems. Ask yourself does the thesis convey the big picture, are the details comprehensible, are there holes in your arguments, is there irrelevant stuff in there, is there relevant stuff missing? You will be surprised what you find the first time you read from front to back after taking a break from the thesis.

At this point you should have a coherent document that you can be proud of, and I am now quite happy to proofread your thesis :-)

Second Opinions

I recommend getting a second opinion when dealing with any doctors :-)

Here are some links you may find useful in no particular order.