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
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
