Complete Your Thesis: A hybrid digital book Bachelor, Master’s and PhD Theses

By Henrik Hansson

What is expected in a thesis? Save time and follow useful advice about structure, what to write, where, why, and access research publications etc. The book empowers students by making them able to self-assess their writing at various stages, and preparing them regarding what is expected in a thesis, and what questions they will get from supervisors, peer reviewers, opponents and examiners. Without knowing what needs to be explicitly written and why, the thesis student is lost, losing time and motivation. The goal is to complete the thesis, writing with high quality and within the time frame. Both students and
supervisors are target groups for this book. What is hybrid? The book landscape is changing and the message is transmitted as an e-book, audiobook and as part of an online thesis process support system, ThesisPro.

Henrik Hansson © 2022
Stockholm, Sweden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9789198788709

Book preview

Introduction

Most How to - books are pretty useless, boring, contain self-evident superficial information and are filled with redundant words to create many pages¹. Often only a catchy title is what you get. I hope this book is different, but you decide. The purpose is to provide a practical information-rich guidebook to empower students who want to complete their bachelor, master’s or PhD thesis.

A bachelor, master’s or PhD thesis has basically the same structure as a research publication. In general, the following are clearly identifiable sections: Title, Abstract, Table of contents, Introduction, Aim and research question, Background, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References, Appendices. This is sometimes called the IMRaD structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. There are other ways you can structure your thesis and some academic disciplines differ; in fact, if you can justify it, break the rules. Many scientific breakthroughs are about doing things differently; however, a completely chaotic text will not help you to get the message across.

The completed thesis is presented as a linear narrative; however, the writing process and the actual research process are often non-linear and iterative.

What is expected and what should be written in each section? This book is an attempt to provide universal advice and instructions to any student finalising his/her thesis. Each academic area and department may have more or other requirements. Since everything can be questioned endlessly, and that is at the heart of scientific and intellectual development, the advice and recommendations suggested here can also be opposed. However, the proposed requirements are consistent with the requirements you will find at universities worldwide, as well as in research journals and course books. The purpose of this text is to provide essential and practical information that is useful for students in order to complete their theses.

The research process

This book is not about all types of research methods; there are hundreds of books about that with similar content. Personally, I think one of the best is Practical research: planning and design by Leedy and Ormrod (2015). Read as many methods books as you can, with as many perspectives as possible. You will find some more suggested books on research methods below. You also need to understand the philosophy of science. The ideas presented by Thomas Kuhn (2012) and Karl Popper are important contributions still valid today².

Before discussing what is expected in a thesis, it could be useful to remind you about the research process. The wheel of science provides an overview of different approaches, see the figure below. If you are doing a quantitative study you follow the steps on the right side in the figure, from testing hypotheses derived from a theory. Generally, this is done using quantitative methods. On the other hand, if you start not with a theory but with observations, then you move from the bottom up and on the left side of the figure with the aim of creating a new theory, or a new hypothesis or proto-theory with patterns and themes. This research approach is generally conducted using qualitative methods. It is an inductive process, starting with specific information with the aim of creating a general picture. The deductive process starts with general statements derived from theory and tests if they are valid in reality; for different groups, settings, time periods etc. Quantitative research is based on numbers and quantification, and qualitative research is based on words and interpretation of meaning. Examples of quantitative research questions are: How many...? How often...? How long...? To what extent…?

Examples of qualitative research questions are: What kind of...? What are the experiences of....? What is it like to...? How do…? Etc . There are many ways to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. The approach you choose depends on the problem and research question you want to study.

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Figure 1. Research approaches. Illustration created by Ranil Peiris. Inspired by the Wheel of science (Wallace, 1971).

There are many different combinations possible and other ways to classify research approaches. In action research³ and design science research⁴ the aim is to change the reality, and to develop and improve conditions, services, artefacts and situations with practical and applied solutions. Furthermore, pure theoretical research and non-empirical research do not follow the IMRaD structure.

What to write, where?

In this section each part of the thesis is discussed in relation to what is expected. The text is discussed from beginning to end – from the first to last page – as it is structured in a thesis: 1) Title, 2) Abstract, 3) Acknowledgements, Table of contents, additional information for a quick overview, 4) Introduction, 5) Aim and research question, 6) Background – summary of previous studies, 7) Method, 8) Results, 9) Discussion, 10) Conclusions, 11) References, 12) Appendices. In Appendix F you will find a template for a thesis, including technical aspects such as font size etc.

Title

This is the abstract of The Abstract. The title is the shortest and most concentrated way you can summarise your thesis. What is it about? What can the reader expect when reading your work? Don't promise too much if you cannot deliver. What is really surprising? Maybe you can use a surprising result as the main title or something catchy in order to get the attention of the reader.

If your title does not create interest you lose readers. If you are in a field where readers are already engaged you may not need any spectacular title, just be to the point. An unconventional title that attracts attention can be combined with a more descriptive subtitle providing information about the perspective, method, case, scope or target group. The subtitle narrows it down and clarifies for instance how the study was carried out, where or at what magnitude etc. Avoid writing never-ending thesis titles though.

Writing the title may be the last thing you do, after finalising your thesis. At that point you can really reassess what you have done and do the summary of summaries which is the final title. However, already at the start of your thesis work it is useful to provide a preliminary title to indicate what you are actually focusing on and to communicate to your supervisor what you intend to do. When you learn more, read more, dig deeper, collect data and analyse you might shift your perspective and therefore may need to update your title. That is perfectly alright; we can not summarise the point of an open-ended research study before it is done. For instance, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays by mistake when experimenting. He did not know what they were and therefore called them X-rays. Of course, he had to inform about this extraordinary but completely unplanned discovery with an appropriate title: About a new kind of rays [Eine Neue Art von Strahlen] 1896. His discovery changed the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize⁵ in 1901.

The title On the origin of species promises a lot. Charles Darwin added the subtitle by means of natural selection, and even an alternative title, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life for his ground-breaking work, which was published in 1859. The title was not written first; in fact, he collected data around the world