Basic Tips For Beginners: What Is A Dissertation?

Sometimes, a dissertation is also called a final year project that you have to complete in order to receive your degree. This form of academic assessment allows students to take responsibility for their own learning. You should come up with an interesting topic, create a literature review, compose a strong thesis statement, select research methods, describe your findings, and formulate a conclusion. In other words, you need to organize and conduct an independent research under the supervision of your professor.

Why Do Degree Programs Include a Dissertation?

There are several main reasons why dissertations became an important part of degree programs in both social and natural sciences in universities worldwide. While working on papers, students learn how to:

• Do science rather than discuss the outcomes that other scientists have obtained.
• Explore their personal areas of interest.
• Develop research questions and select methods to get reliable answers.
• Create new knowledge and validate it.
• Organize and manage a scientific project.
• Use their information-seeking, communicational, and analytical abilities.

Some skills that students obtain are academic while others are much broader, so they might help them find dream jobs. For instance, ability to collect, manipulate, and analyze data is useful in any kind of employment.

What Elements Should a Dissertation Include?

It’s a good idea to realize what your paper should look like before you start working on it. Remember that all assignments vary in format, design, and style; so you should get familiar with the requirements of your degree program and recommendations of your professor. Typically, most papers include the following elements:

1. A literature review.

   This section includes information about why the research topic is important and how it corresponds to the existing work in the field.

2. Methods and approaches.

   This part of dissertation should describe the methods and approaches that you’ve used in order to answer your research question, along with their brief description.

3. Key findings.

   Here you need to present your key findings, including obtained data and evidence. This section should be well-structured and provide facts with your interpretation.

4. Discussion.

   You should re-discover your key argument and discuss it considering your findings, methodological approaches you’ve used, and ideas presented in the literature.

5. Conclusion and further study.

   It’s necessary to provide practical recommendations for those who might be concerned. Re-state your main ideas and don’t claim any new points. This dissertation section should contain your reflection on the results you’ve obtained and suggestions on the potential research directions.