How to Write a Dissertation Paper

Nailing Your Dissertation

            Every graduate student is expected to complete a dissertation related to the degree he is pursuing. As one of the final requirements in a graduate degree program, one’s dissertation must showcase the author’s knowledge in the degree. After all, one does not just take a graduate degree for nothing. Herein lies the question on how to produce a well researched and relevant dissertation.

            While there is no canonical blueprint of making a dissertation, at the minimum, it is indispensable for an author to pick a topic that he is innately interested him or has struck him while research other potential topics. Whichever is the rationale for choosing a topic, the first step in making a dissertation is exploring the literature (Levin, 2005). For instance, the author may be interested in organizational behavior, but this subject area is too broad for a dissertation. Scouring academic publications in journal banks like EBSCO and Oxford Journals can present the author an array of topics that are categorized under organizational behavior. In the case of our example, the author may choose organizational behavior topics like organizational culture and its effects on organizational performance. Ultimately, this step can provide various subtopics of a field that one may choose to focus on.

            After browsing through existing literature, it is time for the author to draft a strong introduction that succinctly provides the research questions and the rationale on why the chosen topic is relevant and timely. Following our example on organizational culture and organizational performance, a strong introduction can contain the current status of the topic, i.e. there is a multitude of efforts put forward by organizations to sustain a strong organizational culture. As such, the strength of an introduction relies on clearly stating the status of the topic and how it relates to the research questions at hand.

            With the desire of providing a strong background to the study, a succinct yet comprehensive review of literature is important. In the case of our example, the review of literature can include studies conducted on (1) organizational culture, (2) organizational performance, and (3) empirical studies that link the two variables. After presenting studies on relevant variables, this section must end by highlighting the research gap on present studies that one’s study can help address. For example, a research gap can be the failure to use a case of a country in understanding organizational culture and organizational performance.

            The third section of a dissertation should be devoted to the methodology of the study.  In essence, a methodology will answer how the research questions will be answered. Are there hypotheses that need to be tested? Will the author conduct survey and use its result in providing a statistical analysis? Will the author use in-depth interview? What are the methods of data collection and analysis? These are the relevant questions that must be answered in a dissertation’s methodology section.

            Amalgamating the data collected in a dissertation, the fourth section is about presenting a summary of data collected. For instance, the author can present the demographic profile of his survey respondents and the mean scores obtained in each survey questions. The knack in creating a findings section is to briefly present data collected without relating it to the research questions and hypotheses.

Consequently, a discussion section should come after the discussion section. The main difference of the results section with the discussions section is that the latter contains the analysis of the data vis-à-vis the research questions and hypotheses. In our example, a discussion section, an author can affirm or reject the notion that organizational culture and organizational performance have a relationship.

Finally, a dissertation must end with a conclusion that summarizes the study. Specifically, answers to the research questions and the need to conduct further studies may be stressed in this section. What is important, therefore, is to check whether all research questions have been answered in the discussion section.

This is a tip on how to write your dissertation paper.  from smartessaywriters.com – the leading provider of reliable and affordable essay writing services and research paper writing services in the United States and the United Kingdom