how many chapter thesis have

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 .

Dissertation structure and layout - the basics

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.

A dissertation's structure reflect the research process

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?

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 (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project.

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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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While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence)

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.

Arguable thesis with analytical claim

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.

Arguable thesis with normative claim

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.

Questions to ask about your thesis

Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?
Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?
Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?
Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?
Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
picture_as_pdf Thesis

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Writing Tips

How to Write a Thesis Chapter Outline

4-minute read

30th April 2023

Are you writing a thesis ? That’s amazing! Give yourself a pat on the back, because reaching that point in your academic career takes a lot of hard work.

When you begin to write, you may feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. That’s where outlines come in handy. In this article, we’ll break down an effective outline for a thesis chapter – one that you can follow for each section of your paper.

What Is a Thesis Chapter?

Your thesis will be broken up into several sections . Usually, there’s an introduction, some background information, the methodology, the results and discussion, and a conclusion – or something along those lines.

Your institution will have more specific guidelines on the chapters you need to include and in what order, so make sure you familiarize yourself with those requirements first. To help you organize the content of each chapter, an outline breaks it down into smaller chunks.

The Outline

While the content and length of each chapter will vary, you can follow a similar pattern to organize your information. Each chapter should include:

1. An Introduction

At the start of your chapter, spend some time introducing what you’re about to discuss. This will give readers the chance to quickly get an idea of what you’ll be covering and decide if they want to keep reading.

You could begin with a link to the previous chapter, which will help keep your audience from getting lost if they’re not reading it from start to finish in one sitting. You should then explain the purpose of the chapter and briefly describe how you will achieve it.

Every chapter should have an intro like this, even the introduction ! Of course, the length of this part will vary depending on the length of the chapter itself.

2. The Main Body

After introducing the chapter, you can dive into the meat of it. As with the introduction, the content can be as brief or as lengthy as it needs to be.

While piecing together your outline, jot down which points are most important to include and then decide how much space you can devote to fleshing out each one. Let’s consider what this might look like, depending on the chapter .

If your thesis is broken up into an introduction, a background/literature review section, a methodology chapter, a discussion of the results, and a conclusion, here’s what the main body could include for each:

● Introduction : A brief summary of the problem or topic and its background, the purpose of the thesis, the research questions that will be addressed, the terminology you’ll be using, and any limitations or unique circumstances.

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● Background/literature review : A more thorough explanation of the problem, relevant studies and literature, and current knowledge and gaps in knowledge.

● Methodology : A detailed explanation of the research design, participants and how they were chosen, and how the data was collected and analyzed.

● Results/discussion : A thorough description of the results of the study and a discussion of what they could mean.

● Conclusion : A summary of everything that’s been covered, an explanation of the answers that were (or weren’t) found to the research questions, and suggestions for future research.

This is a rough plan of what the main body of each chapter might look like. Your thesis will likely have more chapters, and some of these topics may be broken down into multiple paragraphs, but this offers an idea of where to start.

3. A Conclusion

Once you’ve detailed everything the chapter needs to include, you should summarize what’s been covered and tie it all together. Explain what the chapter accomplished, and once again, you can link back to the previous chapter to point out what questions have been answered at this point in the thesis.

If you’re just getting started on writing your thesis, putting together an outline will help you to get your thoughts organized and give you a place to start. Each chapter should have its own introduction, main body, and conclusion.

And once you have your draft written, be sure to send it our way! Our editors will be happy to check it for grammar, punctuation, spelling, references, formatting, and more. Try out our service for free today!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you outline a thesis chapter.

Each chapter of your thesis should have its own introduction, the main content or body of the chapter, and a conclusion summarizing what was covered and linking it to the rest of the thesis.

How do you write a thesis statement?

A thesis statement should briefly summarize the topic you’re looking into and state your assumption about it.

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The Quintessence of Basic and Clinical Research and Scientific Publishing pp 769–781 Cite as

Writing a Postgraduate or Doctoral Thesis: A Step-by-Step Approach

Usha Y. Nayak 4 ,
Praveen Hoogar 5 ,
Srinivas Mutalik 4 &
N. Udupa 6
First Online: 01 October 2023

647 Accesses

1 Citations

A key characteristic looked after by postgraduate or doctoral students is how they communicate and defend their knowledge. Many candidates believe that there is insufficient instruction on constructing strong arguments. The thesis writing procedure must be meticulously followed to achieve outstanding results. It should be well organized, simple to read, and provide detailed explanations of the core research concepts. Each section in a thesis should be carefully written to make sure that it transitions logically from one to the next in a smooth way and is free of any unclear, cluttered, or redundant elements that make it difficult for the reader to understand what is being tried to convey. In this regard, students must acquire the information and skills to successfully create a strong and effective thesis. A step-by-step description of the thesis/dissertation writing process is provided in this chapter.

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Department of Pharmaceutics, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India

Usha Y. Nayak & Srinivas Mutalik

Centre for Bio Cultural Studies, Directorate of Research, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India

Praveen Hoogar

Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara University, Dharwad, Karnataka, India

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Professor & Director, Research Training and Publications, The Office of Research and Development, Periyar Maniammai Institute of Science & Technology (Deemed to be University), Vallam, Tamil Nadu, India

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Division Cardiology & Nephrology, Office of Cardiology, Hematology, Endocrinology and Nephrology, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, US Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, MD, USA

Fortunato Senatore

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Nayak, U.Y., Hoogar, P., Mutalik, S., Udupa, N. (2023). Writing a Postgraduate or Doctoral Thesis: A Step-by-Step Approach. In: Jagadeesh, G., Balakumar, P., Senatore, F. (eds) The Quintessence of Basic and Clinical Research and Scientific Publishing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1284-1_48

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Knowledge Base
Dissertation

How to Write a Dissertation | A Guide to Structure & Content

A dissertation or thesis is a long piece of academic writing based on original research, submitted as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

The structure of a dissertation depends on your field, but it is usually divided into at least four or five chapters (including an introduction and conclusion chapter).

The most common dissertation structure in the sciences and social sciences includes:

An introduction to your topic
A literature review that surveys relevant sources
An explanation of your methodology
An overview of the results of your research
A discussion of the results and their implications
A conclusion that shows what your research has contributed

Dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an argument by analysing primary and secondary sources . Instead of the standard structure outlined here, you might organise your chapters around different themes or case studies.

Other important elements of the dissertation include the title page , abstract , and reference list . If in doubt about how your dissertation should be structured, always check your department’s guidelines and consult with your supervisor.

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Acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review / theoretical framework, methodology, reference list.

The very first page of your document contains your dissertation’s title, your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date. Sometimes it also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and the university’s logo. Many programs have strict requirements for formatting the dissertation title page .

The title page is often used as cover when printing and binding your dissertation .

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The acknowledgements section is usually optional, and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, participants in your research, and friends or family who supported you.

The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about 150-300 words long. You should write it at the very end, when you’ve completed the rest of the dissertation. In the abstract, make sure to:

State the main topic and aims of your research
Describe the methods you used
Summarise the main results
State your conclusions

Although the abstract is very short, it’s the first part (and sometimes the only part) of your dissertation that people will read, so it’s important that you get it right. If you’re struggling to write a strong abstract, read our guide on how to write an abstract .

In the table of contents, list all of your chapters and subheadings and their page numbers. The dissertation contents page gives the reader an overview of your structure and helps easily navigate the document.

All parts of your dissertation should be included in the table of contents, including the appendices. You can generate a table of contents automatically in Word.

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If you have used a lot of tables and figures in your dissertation, you should itemise them in a numbered list . You can automatically generate this list using the Insert Caption feature in Word.

If you have used a lot of abbreviations in your dissertation, you can include them in an alphabetised list of abbreviations so that the reader can easily look up their meanings.

If you have used a lot of highly specialised terms that will not be familiar to your reader, it might be a good idea to include a glossary . List the terms alphabetically and explain each term with a brief description or definition.

In the introduction, you set up your dissertation’s topic, purpose, and relevance, and tell the reader what to expect in the rest of the dissertation. The introduction should:

Establish your research topic , giving necessary background information to contextualise your work
Narrow down the focus and define the scope of the research
Discuss the state of existing research on the topic, showing your work’s relevance to a broader problem or debate
Clearly state your objectives and research questions , and indicate how you will answer them
Give an overview of your dissertation’s structure

Everything in the introduction should be clear, engaging, and relevant to your research. By the end, the reader should understand the what , why and how of your research. Not sure how? Read our guide on how to write a dissertation introduction .

Before you start on your research, you should have conducted a literature review to gain a thorough understanding of the academic work that already exists on your topic. This means:

Collecting sources (e.g. books and journal articles) and selecting the most relevant ones
Critically evaluating and analysing each source
Drawing connections between them (e.g. themes, patterns, conflicts, gaps) to make an overall point

In the dissertation literature review chapter or section, you shouldn’t just summarise existing studies, but develop a coherent structure and argument that leads to a clear basis or justification for your own research. For example, it might aim to show how your research:

Addresses a gap in the literature
Takes a new theoretical or methodological approach to the topic
Proposes a solution to an unresolved problem
Advances a theoretical debate
Builds on and strengthens existing knowledge with new data

The literature review often becomes the basis for a theoretical framework , in which you define and analyse the key theories, concepts and models that frame your research. In this section you can answer descriptive research questions about the relationship between concepts or variables.

The methodology chapter or section describes how you conducted your research, allowing your reader to assess its validity. You should generally include:

The overall approach and type of research (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, experimental, ethnographic)
Your methods of collecting data (e.g. interviews, surveys, archives)
Details of where, when, and with whom the research took place
Your methods of analysing data (e.g. statistical analysis, discourse analysis)
Tools and materials you used (e.g. computer programs, lab equipment)
A discussion of any obstacles you faced in conducting the research and how you overcame them
An evaluation or justification of your methods

Your aim in the methodology is to accurately report what you did, as well as convincing the reader that this was the best approach to answering your research questions or objectives.

Next, you report the results of your research . You can structure this section around sub-questions, hypotheses, or topics. Only report results that are relevant to your objectives and research questions. In some disciplines, the results section is strictly separated from the discussion, while in others the two are combined.

For example, for qualitative methods like in-depth interviews, the presentation of the data will often be woven together with discussion and analysis, while in quantitative and experimental research, the results should be presented separately before you discuss their meaning. If you’re unsure, consult with your supervisor and look at sample dissertations to find out the best structure for your research.

In the results section it can often be helpful to include tables, graphs and charts. Think carefully about how best to present your data, and don’t include tables or figures that just repeat what you have written – they should provide extra information or usefully visualise the results in a way that adds value to your text.

Full versions of your data (such as interview transcripts) can be included as an appendix .

The discussion is where you explore the meaning and implications of your results in relation to your research questions. Here you should interpret the results in detail, discussing whether they met your expectations and how well they fit with the framework that you built in earlier chapters. If any of the results were unexpected, offer explanations for why this might be. It’s a good idea to consider alternative interpretations of your data and discuss any limitations that might have influenced the results.

The discussion should reference other scholarly work to show how your results fit with existing knowledge. You can also make recommendations for future research or practical action.

The dissertation conclusion should concisely answer the main research question, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of your central argument. Wrap up your dissertation with a final reflection on what you did and how you did it. The conclusion often also includes recommendations for research or practice.

In this section, it’s important to show how your findings contribute to knowledge in the field and why your research matters. What have you added to what was already known?

You must include full details of all sources that you have cited in a reference list (sometimes also called a works cited list or bibliography). It’s important to follow a consistent reference style . Each style has strict and specific requirements for how to format your sources in the reference list.

The most common styles used in UK universities are Harvard referencing and Vancouver referencing . Your department will often specify which referencing style you should use – for example, psychology students tend to use APA style , humanities students often use MHRA , and law students always use OSCOLA . M ake sure to check the requirements, and ask your supervisor if you’re unsure.

To save time creating the reference list and make sure your citations are correctly and consistently formatted, you can use our free APA Citation Generator .

Your dissertation itself should contain only essential information that directly contributes to answering your research question. Documents you have used that do not fit into the main body of your dissertation (such as interview transcripts, survey questions or tables with full figures) can be added as appendices .

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Rule of Three: advice on writing a PhD thesis

PhD students sometimes get the same bad advice on writing their thesis. I call this advice the Rule of Three . Typically, they get told that their thesis:

Will take 3 months to write
Should have 3 results chapters
Should be 300 pages

These bits of advice have one thing in common: they are all wrong.

If you have been organised (see below), it should not take 3 months to write a PhD thesis. It certainly shouldn’t involve leaving the lab 3 months before your hand-in date to write up.
Theses can have one results chapter or they can have more. How many chapters depends on your project, and your results. Trying to make three results chapters out of one chapter ends up in a weak or overlong thesis.
A thesis is like a piece of string and it will be as long as it needs to be. Aim for brevity and not producing a magnus opus (see below).

Disclaimer: what follows is some different advice. As with all “advice”, your mileage will vary. It is written for the people in my lab but likely applies to UK PhD students doing biomedical research.

Rule 1: aim for a thesis that is good enough

Who will read your thesis? Two people. Your examiners. OK, some parts – such as the Methods section – will be useful to future lab members (although with electronic lab notebooks this function is becoming redundant). Maybe your thesis will be downloaded by someone from the repository, but essentially, it will only be read by your examiners.

How long does an examiner spend reading your thesis? A few hours. One day maximum. They simply have no more time. Do you really want to spend three months of your life writing something that will be read for just a few hours by two people?

It’s for these reasons that spending too much effort writing a perfect thesis is a waste of time. It just needs to be good enough.

As well as being just good enough, it only needs to be long enough . A big mistake students make is to produce a really long thesis because they think that that is what theses should be (rule of 3). What happens is the examiner will receive the thesis, look at how many pages there are, subtract the bibliography, and their heart will sink if it is too long.

You might now be wondering: is writing a thesis a waste of time?

No, because you have to do it to get your PhD.

No, because you learn important writing skills. You also learn how to assemble a large document (it’s often how students learn to use Word properly or up their LaTeX game). It’s good training for writing papers and other technical documents down the line. Employers know this when they hire you.

But that is about it. So you just need to write something that is good enough to pass.

Rule 2: prioritise papers and the thesis will follow

Papers are the priority. They are more useful to you and to your PI. But this advice isn’t motivated by self-interest. If you go into the viva and the work in your thesis is already peer reviewed and published, it’s harder for the examiners to criticise it. At least, they will not approach your thesis with the question: is this work publishable? This is one criteria for passing your PhD, so demonstrating that it is publishable means you are (almost) there.

This was the one bit of advice I received when doing my PhD and it is still true today. OK, it is harder these days to get a first author paper published before you submit your thesis. However a preprint on bioRxiv before you begin writing will help you to prepare your thesis and will still tick the publishable box.

How long should it take to write your thesis?

There is tension here because you are at your most useful in the lab as you near the end of your PhD. One week of labwork now is worth one month (or more) earlier in your PhD. You are most valuable to your lab/PI/science/career at this point and keeping working in the lab will yield more rewards. But it won’t get your thesis written.

The first bit of writing is busywork and can be done around lab work. “Deep writing” and reading does need time away for most students.

If you have only collected data in the lab and not analysed it, if you’ve not presented your work very often, if you are disorganised… yes, it will take you a full three months to write your thesis.

All the folks in my lab are encouraged to get figures ready, analyse as they go and they also give regular talks. It should not take anyone in this position three months away from the lab to write their thesis.

Agreeing a timeline with your PI for when you begin writing is really important. Regular deadlines and a commitment to timely feedback from your supervisor make thesis writing easier. The discussion needs to be based on facts though. Often students want to budget a lot of time to writing, because of the rule of 3 or because they believe they are “bad at writing”. It helps to see some evidence. Writing draft chapters earlier in the PhD – which is a requirement at some universities – can reveal difficulties and weaknesses.

Reality check

If you hear the rule of 3 from everyone and your supervisor is giving you different advice. It might be time for a reality check. Have a look at past theses from the lab. How long were they? How many chapters? Information is good.

You can see that all theses are fewer than 300 pages in length, many substantially so. Four have three chapters and two have two. Although looking closer, two of the theses with three chapters use a results chapter as an expanded methods chapter.

Ultimately, the thesis is your work but you will get input from your supervisor. Regardless of what is written here or how many people tell you about the rule of 3, your supervisor will have their own ideas about how your thesis should be. Agreeing a sensible plan with them is the way to get started productively.

Getting started

This is not a comprehensive guide but in order to write a good enough thesis, you first need a plan.

Make a figure list. This should be every single figure you can think of. You can cross off ones you don’t need later if they don’t fit or are insignificant.
Plan the narrative. There is usually more than one way to put together the figures to make a thesis. Be prepared for this to change after you start writing! Sometimes the writing process reveals ways in which the narrative should be rearranged.
How many results chapters? Start with the idea that you will have one. Does it need dividing? If yes, then what are the titles of the two chapters? If you have difficulty titling them you may need to split to a 3rd.

Now you have a plan. It’s time to get going.

Set some goals – but make them small. Having a goal of “I am going to complete my thesis” is too demoralising. You need to feel like you are making progress constantly to stay motivated. Break it down into smaller chunks. “I will finish this chapter by next Friday”. “I will write the cloning section this morning and then go for a walk”.

Write the materials and methods first . It’s the easiest bit to write because it is all technical writing with little wordcraft required. You can fit it around labwork. In fact, it is easier to write whilst in the lab because you can look up all the stuff you need. Importantly, it gets over the “blank page syndrome”.

Next get your figures together . This should already be done if you have been organised.

Then write the figure legends . You already have the title for each figure from your plan. All you need to do is describe each panel. Again, quite low energy writing required for this task.

Now write the results sections ! This is the same way that we put papers together. The results parts of the thesis are more extended but in principle you will guide the reader though the figures that you’ve made. Remember, you already have the legends written. So you are already partly on your way.

Time to regroup . At this point you can refine your plan for the introduction and check the rest of your plan still makes sense. Now is the time for some deep writing and reading.

The post title comes from “Rule of Three” by The Lemonheads.

Graduate Research Hub

Preparing my thesis
Incorporating your published work in your thesis
Examples of thesis and chapter formats when including publications

The following examples are acceptable ways of formatting your thesis and chapters when including one or more publications.

Essential requirements

All theses with publications must have the following:

Declaration
Preface – noting collaborations, and contributions to authorship
Acknowledgements
Table of contents
List of tables, figures & illustrations
Main text/chapters
Bibliography or list of references

Main text examples

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature review
Chapter 3: Methods
Chapter 4: Paper 1 & general discussion
Chapter 5: Paper 2
Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter – results
Chapter 7 : Regular thesis chapter/general discussion tying in published and unpublished work
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Appendices - May include CD, DVD or other material, also reviews & methods papers
Chapter 2: Methods
Chapter 3: Paper 1
Chapter 4: Regular thesis chapter
Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter, final preliminary study
Chapter 7: General discussion
Chapter 5: Regular thesis chapter
Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter
Chapter 7: Regular thesis chapter, final preliminary study
Chapter 8: General discussion
Chapter 4: Paper 2 - e.g. data paper, including meta analyses
Chapter 5: Paper 3
Chapter 6: Paper 4
Chapter 7: Paper 5
Chapter 3: Major paper
Chapter 4: Normal thesis chapter, final preliminary study
Chapter 5: General discussion

Chapter examples

Introduction – including specific aims and hypotheses
Introduction – including specific aims, hypotheses
Methods – results (including validation, preliminary) not included in the paper
Results (including validation, preliminary) not included in paper
Discussion – expansion of paper discussion, further method development
Resources for candidates
Orientation and induction
Mapping my degree
Principles for infrastructure support
Peer activities
Change my commencement date
Meeting expectations
Working with my supervisors
Responsible Research & Research Integrity
Guidelines for external supervisors
Pre-confirmation
Confirmation
At risk of unsatisfactory progress
Unsatisfactory progress
Add or drop coursework subjects
Apply for leave
Return from leave
Apply for Study Away
Return from Study Away
Change my study rate
Check my candidature status
Change my current supervisors
Request an evidence of enrolment or evidence of qualification statement
Change my project details
Change department
Transfer to another graduate research degree
Late submission
Withdraw from my research degree
Check the status of a request
Re-enrolment
Advice on requesting changes
Extension of candidature
Lapse candidature
How to cancel a form in my.unimelb
Resolving issues
Taking leave
About Study Away
Finishing on time
Accepting an offer for a joint PhD online
Tenured Study Spaces (TSS) Usage Guidelines
Tenured Study Spaces Procedures
Research skills
Academic writing and communication skills
Building professional and academic networks
Research internships
Commercialising my research
Supplementary PhD Programs
Writing my thesis
Thesis with creative works
Research Integrity in my Thesis
Graduate researchers and digital assistance tools
TES Statuses
Submitting my thesis
Depositing multiple components for your final thesis record
The Chancellor's Prize
TES Graduate Researcher FAQs
Career planning
Publishing my research
Getting support
Key graduate research contacts
Melbourne Research Experience Survey
Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT)
Current Students

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Your Outline

As I stated earlier, I love reading books in the productivity/self-help sort of space. When I was starting to realize that things were going south in the first incarnation of my thesis, I turned to these types of resources. I knew that I needed to bring some clarity to the task at hand if I was going to succeed on this project. I went to every library system in the central Ohio area, CML , Grandview , Upper Arlington , OSU … and got every book I could that seemed related to writing in any variation of long-form writing or thesis writing. I read a lot of stuff, in books and online, and a pattern started to emerge. I cross-referenced this pattern with several theses that had been written recently in the department and it seem to hold true. This works in your favor quite a bit.

This is the pattern, or maybe more accurately, the observation made by myself and countless authors on the subject.

The Overall Thesis Structure

A thesis is an extremely formulaic type of writing.Every thesis follows pretty much the same organizational structure.

There are four primary parts of every single thesis. They may vary a little as to how many chapters each part has, but every thesis has at least one chapter covering thesis four parts.

Introduction: Don’t mess around with it! The only purpose is to introduce the research. You will outline the problem you intend to investigate, state the aim of the research, limit the scope of the investigation, and provide an overview of what lies ahead. 3-5 pages is usually sufficient.
Background: The purpose is to position your research into the context of what has gone on before, what is currently taking place, and prove you know how research is generally conducted in this area. This is generally where your literature review goes. You might have chapters that cover the brief history of the topic area, current theory or practice, and/or results of any preliminary studies you may have carried out to help define your problem.
Your Own Work: This part is really comprised of two parts nearly always: Your methodology and your Data and Analysis . Your methodology is the design of research developed to test hypotheses or answer questions developed from the background section. Your Data & Analysis is just that, the data and results of your methodology.
Synthesis: This is your new contribution to the body of knowledge and is usually handled in two parts. This first part is a discussion that examines your work (part 3) in light of the background you presented (part 2). This may lead to the development of a new model or theory. The second part is a set of conclusions that should arise directly out of the discussion and and respond directly to the aim of the work stated in the Introduction (part 1)

How Many Chapters?

Largely this will develop out of your content and will be a bit different for everyone, but for planning and visualizing the end goal, I found the following useful.

In “How to write a better thesis” by David Evans and Paul Gruba , it states these general guidelines for thinking about the overall structure.

Each of your four parts, Intro, Background, Your Own Work, and Synthesis should have between 1-3 chapters. I can tell you now… your introduction will only be one chapter, and a short one.
If you have more than 10 chapters total, you should suspect that some are actually only subsections of other chapters and start consolidating. You might be framing your chapters in a less than logical way or attempting to cover more than you need.
We should expect no more than 8-10 chapters. Many theses are accomplished in 5-7 chapters.

For right now though, do not worry too much about this. Now just seemed like the most logical place to include this. For now, we are going to operate under the assumption that you are going to have exactly five “chapters”.

I know what you are thinking, five chapters? But Gabe, you said there were Four primary parts. You are right, and kudos to you for reading so attentively. I also said that the “Your Own Work” part (part 3) is nearly always accomplished in two parts: Your methodology and your Data and Analysis. This gives us five parts.

How to begin structuring a chapter

I do not want to get too into the specifics of chapter construction just yet, as this will be covered a bit more in the “Managing Writing” section, but chapters are also extremely formulaic. This should really be a refresher from your high school composition, but here is the big insight for now.

With the exception of the Introduction Chapter, which is its own sort of beast, every chapter will follow this basic structure:

Introduction: Every chapter should have an introduction of some kind. People who read theses will scan these to decide if they want to read the chapter. This will link back to previous chapters, state the aim/purpose/function of the the chapter, and outline how you intend to achieve this aim/purpose/function.
Content: The stuff of your chapter.
Conclusion: Every Chapter should have a Conclusion. This should cover what has been achieved or established in the chapter that previously had not.

That is it. With this information your very first outline is already complete. It is very generic, but the basic structure is there ready for you to start capturing ideas and making the outline about YOUR thesis.

Your FIRST Outline

Just to make this easy on you, here is your first outline. You should be able to essentially copy and paste this into your text editor of choice and get to work organizing your ideas.

Your outline will expand from here, but this is the bare minimum to achieve something resembling a thesis document. In case you are wondering, my outline started exactly this way, and this is what it grew into.

So now that we have your basic outline as a way to start wrangling the content of your thesis, time to address the materials that are related to this process.

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Thesis Structure: Writing Guide For Your Success

If you are about to start writing your thesis, then it is extremely important to know as much as possible about the thesis structure. Learning the main thesis chapters should enable you to quickly structure your academic paper. Keep in mind that not structuring the paper correctly usually leads to severe penalties. We know some of you are probably having questions about numbering dissertation chapters. Basically, you just need to give all the major sections consecutive numbers. Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, and so on). Check out the most frequently asked questions and them move on to the 7 parts of the thesis or dissertation structure.

Thesis Structure Frequently Asked Questions

What is a basic good structure for a thesis? A: The best structure is the one listed below. It contains the 7 important parts any thesis should have.
What does “the structure of this dissertation is in manuscript style” mean? A: It means that the thesis includes one or more manuscripts that have been written in a way that facilitates publication. The thesis can, in this case, be a collection of papers that have been written or co-authored by the student.
Which chapters of dissertation are mandatory? A: All the 7 chapters below are necessary, if you want to get a top score on your paper.
Where can I get a thesis structure template? A: You can quickly get a thesis structure example from one of our seasoned academic writers. Don’t base your thesis on mediocre samples you find online.
What is the preferred thesis sentence structure? A: There is no set sentence structure that you have to follow. Just make sure your writing is organized in a logical manner and that all complex terms are explained the first time you use them.

Thesis Abstract

The first part of the thesis structure is the abstract. It is basically an overview of the entire paper. There is no set dissertation abstract structure. It is just a summary of your thesis and it should be just 200 to 300 words long.

Thesis Introduction

The introduction is one of the most important dissertation chapters. It should contain all of the following information:

A bit of background about the topic. Some information about the current knowledge. The aim of your research (the gap in knowledge that prompted you to write the thesis).

Remember that the introduction must present the thesis statement. It is very important to learn more about the thesis statement structure. A great thesis statement will pique the interest of the evaluation committee.

Thesis Literature Review

Many students who are looking to learn how to structure a thesis don’t know about the Literature Review section. Why? Because many people prefer to include it into the introduction. However, by separating the literature review from the intro, you can focus more on why your research is important. You can evaluate the most important research on your topic and clearly show the gap in knowledge.

Thesis Methods

In most cases, the Methods section is the easiest part of the structure of a thesis. All you have to do is present the method or methods you chose for the research. Don’t forget to also explain why you chose that specific research method. Your audience needs to understand that the chosen method is the best for the task.

Thesis Results

This is one of the most important chapters of a dissertation. In the Results chapter, you need to present your findings. Remember that written text is not enough. You need figures, stats, graphs, and other forms of data. This section contains all the facts of your research and should be written in an objective, neutral manner. It would be unusual for your to discuss your findings in this section.

Thesis Discussion

The Discussion chapter is very important in the dissertation chapters structure. It is the reason why you didn’t discuss your findings in the Results section. This is the section you can use to talk about your findings and provide your own opinions about the results. Here is what you can do in the discussion section:

Explain to the audience what your results mean for the scientific community. Comment on each of the results and discuss how your findings support your thesis. Explain any unexpected results so the evaluation committee can see that you know what you’re doing. Interpret the results and tie them with other research on the subject. How does your research help the academic community?

Thesis Conclusion

While not the most important chapter, the conclusion is one of the important chapters in a dissertation. It is the part where you can show your readers that you have achieved your research objectives. You can talk a bit about what you’ve learned in the process and even make some suggestions regarding the need for future research. In most cases, students also reiterate the thesis statement at the beginning of the conclusion, followed by a short summary of the paper’s most important chapters.

Still Not Sure How to Structure Thesis?

In case you are still struggling to find the best history dissertation structure, you should get some help as fast as possible. Remember that writing a thesis takes weeks, if not months. Don’t spend too much time trying to find the best structure. Instead, get in touch with a reliable academic company and get some quick assistance. For examples, one of our writers can create a thesis outline for you. You can just follow the outline and everything will be just fine.

Of course, you can also get some help with the thesis formatting. Citations and references can be difficult to master. Each academic writing style (MLA, Chicago, APA, etc.) has its own requirements. The way you format your academic paper is very important. Bolding and italicizing can emphasize certain ideas. A professional editor can help you make the thesis stand out from the rest. After all, a pleasantly-formatted dissertation that impresses the evaluation committee with its structure and quality of content has a very high chance of getting a top score.

Master’s Thesis Length: How Long Should A Master’s Thesis Be?

Writing a thesis is one of the requirements for obtaining a master’s degree. If you are currently running a postgraduate program, you may be wondering what the actual length of a master’s thesis is.

A thesis is a comprehensive exploration of a topic or area of interest. The idea is to chart your learning journey and conclude by discussing what you have learned and what others might learn from it, including opportunities for further research.

It can be as long as it takes to discuss your topic in detail. This is anything around 50 to 300 pages, including a bibliography. However, different institutions have standards for content, format, and length expectations.

This article discusses the length and structure of a master’s thesis in detail.

What is a master’s thesis?

A master’s thesis is a research project written by students in a master’s degree program to demonstrate their interest and expertise in a specific topic within their field of study. It is the final requirement for a master’s degree.

The thesis is a culmination of existing research and data that master’s students marshal and combine to make up a hypothesis that challenges an existing argument in the field or develops new arguments for academic debate.

Students are usually assigned an advisor who provides guidance and supervises their work. Once the thesis is complete, students must defend their work to a panel of two or more departmental faculty members.

How long is a master’s thesis?

A master’s thesis has no mandatory length. It can be anywhere from 50 to 300 pages depending on factors such as departmental requirements, university guidelines, topic, and research methodology.

However, what is most important is that your thesis contains all the necessary information about the topic clearly and concisely. Your argument must also be well structured with relevant references, figures, and tables to support your claim.

In fact, the quality of your work should be prioritized above the length of your work.

Ultimately, the aim is to demonstrate your mastery in the field by demonstrating the academic expertise and research skills you have developed throughout the master’s program.

Master thesis structure

Given the differences in the degree requirements between universities, Master’s theses do not follow the same structure. However, a typical master’s thesis follows these format:

Title page
Acknowledgment
Table of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature review
Chapter 3: Data collection
Chapter 4: Analysis
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Reference list
Statement of independent work
Appendix (optional)

1. Title page

This is basically a page to tell your name, university, essay topic, and supervisor’s name.

2. Acknowledgment

This is the part where you appreciate those who contributed to the preparation of your thesis. If you probably received a fellowship or obtained data from an institution, then you should recognize and thank them here.

You should also thank your advisor, friends, and family who supported you during the course of your work.

3. Abstract

The abstract is a crucial part of your thesis. It is a one-page summary covering the questions you intend to answer, the data used, the methodology employed, and your findings.

The aim of an abstract is to give the thesis committee a brief but concise insight into what your research work entails.

4. Table of contents

It is a list of all the chapters and subsections contained in your work alongside the page number where each chapter begins.

Additionally, you need to provide a list of figures and tables with the page number to find them in the thesis.

5. Introduction

The introduction is the first chapter of a thesis. It provides context for the rest of the paper, telling readers what the scope of your work is and what you aim to achieve.

It doesn’t have to be technical rather it should communicate why your topic is relevant. The introduction should also highlight other chapters of your work and touch down on at least one research question.

6. Literature review

The literature review is the part of your thesis where you establish your arguments using various pre-existing scholarly publications and demonstrating your knowledge about your topic.

It is aimed to give a scientific overview of how your work contributes to existing knowledge on the subject matter. In other words, it shows readers the literature gap you hope to fill. For instance, your thesis may be based on new sets of data, methods, or applications.

7. Research methods

This chapter details the data used in your research and the method of gathering or collecting them. This could be qualitative data such as open-ended surveys, case studies, and more.

However, not all theses require a section covering research methods. Arts and humanities students for instance do not undertake research that involves fixed methodologies.

Instead, they outline their theoretical perspectives and methods in their introductions without explaining their data collection and analysis methods in detail.

8. Data analysis and findings

Data analysis and finding involve experimenting with the gathered data and presenting your result in a graphical, tabular, or chart form. The result could also be a written description of the research and findings.

9. Discussion

This is the largest part of a thesis containing a series of chapters. The chapters should flow logically and build your arguments from one chapter to the next.

The length of the discussion is based on the total length of the thesis. So, for a thesis of about 20,000 words, the discussion section may be 15,000 words.

10. Conclusion

A thesis conclusion is where you tie up your arguments and evidence and summarize your discussions stating key points.

It should also include explaining whether your research questions are confirmed or rejected based on your research and comparing your findings with existing publications.

Not only that, the conclusion should state parts of your topic that you couldn’t touch. This helps buttress what your research has achieved and parts others can explore for future studies.

11. List of reference

This is simply a list of all the sources you cited in your work.

12. Statement of Independent work

It is a declaration to confirm that your thesis was done independently by you. The declaration takes the format:

“I hereby confirm that this paper was written independently by me and did not use any sources other than citations and that all passages and ideas taken from other sources are cited accordingly”.

13. Appendix (or appendices)

The appendix is usually optional in a thesis. It is material that complements your argument. This could be a questionnaire or a case study.

If the content is too large to go into the body of your paper or could distract readers, then your research could use an appendix.

How to write a master’s thesis

There is a lot that goes into writing a master’s thesis. Aside from the fact that this is a large project that cannot be rushed, there are some requirements that you must adhere to.

That said, the first thing you should consider is approaching your advisor for guidance on your work. Second, look at past publications to see their structure and study their content.

Additionally, when choosing a topic, it’s best to find a subject that interests you, then create an outline to direct your flow, and make sure to keep a list of references used in your work.

A master’s thesis is longer than an undergraduate thesis, so, it would help if you start working on time to avoid rushing or late submission.

How fast can you write a master’s thesis?

Generally, students have two semesters to write their master’s thesis (usually the last two semesters of their degree program).

Can you finish your thesis in 3 weeks?

Let’s say you write at least 1000 words daily in three weeks that would be around 20,000 words. But it will be really difficult to achieve. Plus, it would be hard to do quality work in 3 weeks.

Can a master’s thesis be written in 20 pages?

20 pages may be too little to capture your arguments comprehensively in a master’s thesis. A typical master’s thesis has a length of about 50 pages and above.

A master’s thesis can be any length depending on how long it takes to thoroughly discuss your topic. Basically, you should follow the guideline given by your institution and advisor.

Your work must also demonstrate great quality, so you want to give it your best shot. Perhaps you have a short time to complete your thesis, don’t fret. Simply think about how many words you need to write every day to meet up and develop plans to achieve your goal.

In all of this, you want to avoid plagiarism in your work, as this can have serious consequences. Read this article to know if paraphrasing is plagiarism.

I hope this article helped. Thanks for reading.

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Guidelines for Chapter Numbering in a Thesis: How to Structure and Order Your Research

Writing a thesis requires meticulous planning and organization. one crucial aspect of presenting your research in a coherent manner is chapter numbering. properly structuring and ordering your thesis chapters will not only enhance the readability of your work but also demonstrate your research skills. in this blog post, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to effectively number your thesis chapters..

Why is Chapter Numbering Important in a Thesis?

Chapter numbering serves several purposes in a thesis:

It facilitates easy navigation for readers and reviewers.
It creates a logical flow and structure for your research.
It allows readers to locate specific information or sections within your thesis quickly.
It showcases your organizational skills and attention to detail.

General Guidelines for Numbering Thesis Chapters

Follow these guidelines to ensure clarity and consistency:

Start with numbering from Chapter 1: Begin your chapter numbering with Chapter 1 instead of Chapter 0. This signifies the start of your thesis.
Use Arabic numerals: Number your chapters using Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) and avoid using Roman numerals (I, II, III) or alphabetical numbering.
Avoid duplicate numbering: Ensure that each chapter has a unique number. Do not assign the same number to multiple chapters.
Number your chapters in consecutive order: Follow a sequential order for chapter numbering. This helps readers understand the logical progression of your research.
Consider using decimal numbering: If your research requires a more nuanced breakdown, you can use decimal numbering (e.g., Chapter 2.1, Chapter 2.2). However, use this approach sparingly and only when necessary to avoid excessive complexity.

Special Cases: Preliminary and Appendices Chapters

While most thesis chapters follow a conventional numbering structure, there are a few exceptions to consider:

Preliminary chapters: The preliminary sections, such as the abstract, acknowledgments, and table of contents, should not be numbered. However, you can assign them lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, etc.) or use a separate style (e.g., Roman number format).
Appendices: Appendices are additional sections that provide supplementary information but are not an integral part of the main thesis. You can choose to number appendices as A, B, C or use alphanumeric combinations (e.g., Appendix A, Appendix B.1).

Final Thoughts

Proper chapter numbering in your thesis is essential for maintaining clarity and ensuring a smooth reading experience for your audience. By following the guidelines provided in this blog post, you can structure and order your research effectively, leaving a positive impression on your readers and evaluators.

Remember, maintaining consistency and logical progression in your chapter numbering reinforces the professionalism and academic integrity of your thesis. So, take the time to plan and organize your chapters meticulously, and you will have a well-structured, cohesive thesis that effectively communicates your research findings.

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Question : how many chapters are there in a thesis.

A thesis contains eight to nine chapters in general but may vary from university to university. The basic chapters that a thesis must contain are as follows: 1. Introduction 2. Literature Review 3. Methods 4. Discussion 5. Data Analysis 6. Results 7. Conclusion & Recommendations 8. References/Bibliography 9. Appendices

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How Many Chapters Does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Have? (All FF7 Rebirth Chapters)

M uch like its 2020 predecessor, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is broken up into chapters to help moderate the pacing of the game's narrative a little better. Whether or not it succeeds in this regard is certainly debatable, but it does at least give players a pretty decent idea of how far into the game they are.

Every Side Quest in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Of course, before they can gauge this, players will first need to know how many chapters there are in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth , as understanding this will provide them with a point of reference with which to measure their current progress. As such, the following Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth chapter list should come in pretty handy.

How Many Chapters Does Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Have?

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has 14 chapters in total . Many of these feature large open-world-style areas, providing players with plenty of opportunities to stray from the critical path. For those wondering, Chapter 13 serves as the point of no return, so players should think carefully before progressing past this point. As in the previous game though, players will unlock chapter select after finishing the main story, allowing them to return to and replay completed chapters at their leisure. It's also worth noting that the first chapter is the same as the one in the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo , meaning those who've already completed it can skip it on their initial playthrough if they really want to.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Chapter List (All FF7 Rebirth Chapters)

Fall of a Hero
A New Journey Begins
Deeper into Darkness
Dawn of a New Era
Blood in the Water
Fool’s Paradise
Those Left Behind
All That Glitters
The Planet Stirs
Watcher of the Vale
The Long Shadow of Shinra
A Golden Key
Where Angels Fear to Tread
End of the World

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Side Quests by Chapter

Every Side Quest in Chapter 2 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 4 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 7 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 9 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 10 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 11 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Every Side Quest in Chapter 12 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

How Does Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Compare to Final Fantasy 7 Remake?

Final Fantasy 7 Remake has 18 chapters ; 20 if the two chapters that make up the Intergrade DLC are included. However, when side content is taken into account, Rebirth actually ends up being the longer of the two games, with players able to sink fifty or sixty hours into a standard run if they engage with everything that's on offer. This is in large down to the game having significantly more side content outside of traditional side quests. Some of Rebirth 's chapters are a lot longer than the ones found in Remake too, making Rebirth a more content-rich game despite it having fewer chapters.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Developer(s) Square Enix

Publisher(s) Square Enix

Platform(s) PlayStation 5

Released February 29, 2024

How Many Chapters Does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Have? (All FF7 Rebirth Chapters)

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Knowledge Base
Dissertation

How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Introduction

Published on September 7, 2022 by Tegan George and Shona McCombes. Revised on November 21, 2023.

The introduction is the first section of your thesis or dissertation , appearing right after the table of contents . Your introduction draws your reader in, setting the stage for your research with a clear focus, purpose, and direction on a relevant topic .

Your introduction should include:

Your topic, in context: what does your reader need to know to understand your thesis dissertation?
Your focus and scope: what specific aspect of the topic will you address?
The relevance of your research: how does your work fit into existing studies on your topic?
Your questions and objectives: what does your research aim to find out, and how?
An overview of your structure: what does each section contribute to the overall aim?

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How to start your introduction, topic and context, focus and scope, relevance and importance, questions and objectives, overview of the structure, thesis introduction example, introduction checklist, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about introductions.

Although your introduction kicks off your dissertation, it doesn’t have to be the first thing you write — in fact, it’s often one of the very last parts to be completed (just before your abstract ).

It’s a good idea to write a rough draft of your introduction as you begin your research, to help guide you. If you wrote a research proposal , consider using this as a template, as it contains many of the same elements. However, be sure to revise your introduction throughout the writing process, making sure it matches the content of your ensuing sections.

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Begin by introducing your dissertation topic and giving any necessary background information. It’s important to contextualize your research and generate interest. Aim to show why your topic is timely or important. You may want to mention a relevant news item, academic debate, or practical problem.

After a brief introduction to your general area of interest, narrow your focus and define the scope of your research.

You can narrow this down in many ways, such as by:

Geographical area
Time period
Demographics or communities
Themes or aspects of the topic

It’s essential to share your motivation for doing this research, as well as how it relates to existing work on your topic. Further, you should also mention what new insights you expect it will contribute.

Start by giving a brief overview of the current state of research. You should definitely cite the most relevant literature, but remember that you will conduct a more in-depth survey of relevant sources in the literature review section, so there’s no need to go too in-depth in the introduction.

Depending on your field, the importance of your research might focus on its practical application (e.g., in policy or management) or on advancing scholarly understanding of the topic (e.g., by developing theories or adding new empirical data). In many cases, it will do both.

Ultimately, your introduction should explain how your thesis or dissertation:

Helps solve a practical or theoretical problem
Addresses a gap in the literature
Builds on existing research
Proposes a new understanding of your topic

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Perhaps the most important part of your introduction is your questions and objectives, as it sets up the expectations for the rest of your thesis or dissertation. How you formulate your research questions and research objectives will depend on your discipline, topic, and focus, but you should always clearly state the central aim of your research.

If your research aims to test hypotheses , you can formulate them here. Your introduction is also a good place for a conceptual framework that suggests relationships between variables .

Conduct surveys to collect data on students’ levels of knowledge, understanding, and positive/negative perceptions of government policy.
Determine whether attitudes to climate policy are associated with variables such as age, gender, region, and social class.
Conduct interviews to gain qualitative insights into students’ perspectives and actions in relation to climate policy.

To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.

I. Introduction

Human language consists of a set of vowels and consonants which are combined to form words. During the speech production process, thoughts are converted into spoken utterances to convey a message. The appropriate words and their meanings are selected in the mental lexicon (Dell & Burger, 1997). This pre-verbal message is then grammatically coded, during which a syntactic representation of the utterance is built.

Speech, language, and voice disorders affect the vocal cords, nerves, muscles, and brain structures, which result in a distorted language reception or speech production (Sataloff & Hawkshaw, 2014). The symptoms vary from adding superfluous words and taking pauses to hoarseness of the voice, depending on the type of disorder (Dodd, 2005). However, distortions of the speech may also occur as a result of a disease that seems unrelated to speech, such as multiple sclerosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

This study aims to determine which acoustic parameters are suitable for the automatic detection of exacerbations in patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by investigating which aspects of speech differ between COPD patients and healthy speakers and which aspects differ between COPD patients in exacerbation and stable COPD patients.

Checklist: Introduction

I have introduced my research topic in an engaging way.

I have provided necessary context to help the reader understand my topic.

I have clearly specified the focus of my research.

I have shown the relevance and importance of the dissertation topic .

I have clearly stated the problem or question that my research addresses.

I have outlined the specific objectives of the research .

I have provided an overview of the dissertation’s structure .

You've written a strong introduction for your thesis or dissertation. Use the other checklists to continue improving your dissertation.

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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The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

A hook to catch the reader’s interest
Relevant background on the topic
Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

A thesis statement or research question
Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

Research objectives describe what you intend your research project to accomplish.

They summarize the approach and purpose of the project and help to focus your research.

Your objectives should appear in the introduction of your research paper , at the end of your problem statement .

Scope of research is determined at the beginning of your research process , prior to the data collection stage. Sometimes called “scope of study,” your scope delineates what will and will not be covered in your project. It helps you focus your work and your time, ensuring that you’ll be able to achieve your goals and outcomes.

Defining a scope can be very useful in any research project, from a research proposal to a thesis or dissertation . A scope is needed for all types of research: quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods .

To define your scope of research, consider the following:

Budget constraints or any specifics of grant funding
Your proposed timeline and duration
Specifics about your population of study, your proposed sample size , and the research methodology you’ll pursue
Any inclusion and exclusion criteria
Any anticipated control , extraneous , or confounding variables that could bias your research if not accounted for properly.

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Regions & Countries

8. the changing demographic composition of voters and party coalitions.

Mirroring changes in the U.S. population overall, registered voters have become more educated, more racially and ethnically diverse, older, and more religiously diverse over the past three decades.

Many of these changes have altered the makeup of both parties, but several have had a more pronounced impact on the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

Race and ethnicity

As the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse, so too has the electorate.

Bar charts over time showing the changing racial and ethnic composition of registered voters overall and in the Republican and Democratic coalitions since 1996. Today, 67% of registered voters are White, 13% are Hispanic, 11% are Black and 4% are Asian. As racial and ethnic diversity increases, there has been more change in the composition of the Democratic coalition than the Republican coalition.

Today, 67% of registered voters are White, 13% are Hispanic, 11% are Black and 4% are Asian. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton was running for reelection, 85% of voters were White, 4% were Hispanic, 9% were Black and about 1% were Asian.

Both parties are more racially and ethnically diverse than three decades ago, but not to the same degree. There has been more change in the composition of the Democratic coalition than the Republican coalition.

White voters make up 79% of Republicans and Republican leaners. In 1996, they constituted 93% of the party’s voters. Hispanic voters have tripled from 3% to 9% of the GOP over this period. Black and Asian voters are each currently 3% of the party.
Within the Democratic coalition, the share who are non-Hispanic White has fallen 21 percentage points since 1996 (from 77% to 56%). The share who are Hispanic has about tripled, from 5% then to 16% today. Asian voters have increased from less than 1% of Democrats’ coalition to 6% over the same period. The share of Black voters within the Democratic coalition has remained fairly stable, and they currently make up 18% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

Age and the U.S. electorate

The electorate has grown older in recent decades. Currently, about six-in-ten voters are ages 50 and older (29% are 50 to 64 and 29% are 65 and older). By comparison, 41% of voters were 50 and older in 1996.

Bar charts showing the age composition of registered voters overall and among Democrats and Republicans. Voters have gotten older since the 1990s, but the change is particularly evident in the GOP.

Reflecting this broader change, both parties’ voters are significantly older now than they were 20 years ago. But today Republican and Republican-leaning voters tend to be older than voters in the Democratic coalition. (In 1996, there was very little difference between the age profiles of the two parties.)

About two-thirds of voters who align with the Republican Party are 50 and older (32% are 50 to 64 and 33% are 65-plus), compared with slightly more than half of those who associate with the Democratic Party (27% each for ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older). The share of voters under 30 is twice as large among Democrats (16%) than Republicans (8%). A similar share in each party falls between the ages of 30 and 49 (27% among the Republican Party and 31% among the Democratic Party).

The share of voters with a bachelor’s degree or more has increased significantly among registered voters since 1996, from about a quarter (24%) to four-in-ten today.

Voters with a high school degree or less education have declined roughly in parallel, so that now about three-in-ten have a high school degree or less (28%), compared with nearly half (47%) in 1996. The share of voters with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree has remained relatively stable across this period (32% today, 29% in 1996).

Among voters who associate with the Democratic Party , the share of voters with a college degree or more has approximately doubled since 1996, from 22% to 45% now. The share of Democratic voters who have no college experience has fallen by about half (from 51% to 25%).
The Republican coalition has also become more educated, but much more modestly. Today, the GOP’s supporters are divided about equally between those who never went to college (31%), those who attended college but didn’t receive a bachelor’s degree (34%) and those who have a bachelor’s degree or more (35%).

Education by race and ethnicity

The dual trends of increasing education levels and increasing racial and ethnic diversity over the last three decades have resulted in dramatic changes to the electoral landscape.

Bar charts over time showing the changing racial, ethnic and educational composition of registered voters overall and in the Republican and Democratic coalitions. White voters without a bachelor’s degree now make up 51% of GOP voters and 26% of Democratic voters.

White voters without a bachelor’s degree remain the largest single group of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity. But where they once represented a clear majority (63%) in 1996, they are now about four-in-ten voters overall (38%).

Overall, about two-in-ten voters are Hispanic (9%), Black (7%) or Asian (2%) and without a bachelor’s degree.

Non-Hispanic White adults with a bachelor’s degree or more represent 28% of voters today, which is up modestly since 1996 (21%). Approximately one-in-ten registered voters are Hispanic (3%), Black (3%) or Asian (3%) and have bachelor’s degrees.

The Republican Party

White voters without a college degree remain the largest bloc within the Republican coalition, but their share has fallen by 17 percentage points since 1996 (from 68% to 51%).
28% of those who associate with the GOP are White voters with a bachelor’s degree, roughly on par with the 25% who were White college graduates in 1996.
7% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters are Hispanic without a degree, up from 2% in 1996. Another 3% are Hispanic with a degree (1% in 1996).

The Democratic Party

The Democratic Party does not have a single dominant bloc of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity.

Three-in-ten voters in the Democratic coalition are White with a bachelor’s degree, up from 18% in 1996.
About a quarter are White voters without a degree (26%). In 1996, this group made up a majority (59%) of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.
Black voters who do not have a bachelor’s degree make up 13% of the Democratic coalition today, nearly identical to the 14% in 1996, while 5% of Democratic voters are Black college graduates (3% in 1996)
Hispanic voters without a college degree constitute 11% of Democratically aligned voters today (up from 4% in 1996), while Hispanic voters with a degree are 4% of the coalition (1% in 1996).
4% of voters who affiliate with or lean to the Democrats are Asian voters with a bachelor’s degree, and 2% are Asian voters without a degree (in 1996, Asian voters overall made up no more than 1% of all Democratic voters).

Religious affiliation

Americans have become less Christian and less religious in recent decades, and the electorate reflects those changes. Two-thirds of voters identify with a Christian denomination, while about a quarter say they are religiously unaffiliated (26%). Fifteen years ago, about eight-in-ten voters were Christians (79%) and 15% were unaffiliated. (We used different questions about religious affiliation prior to 2008, so comparable data only goes back 15 years.)

Bar charts over time showing the changing religious makeup of registered voters overall and among the Republican and Democratic coalitions since 2008. Declining shares of voters are Christian in both party coalitions, but the change is much more pronounced in the Democratic Party than the GOP.

These broader trends of declining shares of Christians and increasing shares of religious “nones” have impacted the demographic composition of the two parties’ coalitions in diverging ways.

The Republican coalition remains overwhelmingly Christian. About eight-in-ten Republican and Republican-leaning voters (81%) identify with a Christian religious denomination, which is down modestly from 2008 when 86% identified as Christian.

Among GOP voters, the shares who identify as White evangelical Protestants (30% now, 33% in 2008) and White Catholics (18% now and in 2008) are little changed over the past 15 years. White nonevangelical Protestants have declined as a share of Republican and Republican-leaning voters from 22% to 15% over the same period, while religious “nones” have grown from 9% to 15% of GOP voters.

About half of voters in the Democratic coalition are Christian (54%), while 38% are religiously unaffiliated and 8% are of non-Christian faiths. As recently as 2008, Christians made up 74% of Democratically oriented registered voters. Over this time period, the share of religiously unaffiliated voters in the coalition has roughly doubled.

Today, White evangelical (5%) and White nonevangelical Protestants (10%) are 15% of the Democratic coalition, down from 28% 15 years ago. The share of Democratically aligned voters who are Black Protestants has changed very little over this period (15% then to 14% now).

Ideological composition of voters

The electorate continues to have more voters who call themselves conservative than call themselves liberal. About a quarter of voters say they are liberal (16%) or very liberal (8%), while 37% say they are conservative (26%) or very conservative (10%).

Bar charts over time showing the changing ideological makeup of registered voters overall and among the Republican and Democratic coalitions since 1996. The GOP coalition is now majority conservative, while Democrats are split between liberals and moderates.

Almost four-in-ten voters say they are moderate (36%).

These shares are little changed since 2019.

The Republican coalition is overwhelmingly conservative: 49% of Republican-aligned voters say they are conservative and 20% say they are very conservative. About three-in-ten GOP voters say they are moderate (27%), and there are very few liberal identifiers in the party (less than 5%).

The Democratic coalition is more ideologically mixed than the Republican coalition. Among voters who associate with the Democrats, about half say they are very liberal (16%) or liberal (31%), while nearly as many say they are moderate (45%). Around 6% say they are conservative.

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Guest Essay

Why Is Biden Struggling? Because America Is Broken.

By Damon Linker

Mr. Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground.

Seven months away from a rematch election pitting President Biden against former President Donald Trump, the incumbent is struggling. Mr. Biden suffers from persistently low approval ratings, he barely manages to tie Mr. Trump in national head-to-head polls and he lags behind the former president in most of the swing states where the election will be decided (despite some recent modestly encouraging movement in his direction).

The question is why.

When Mr. Biden’s defenders seek to answer the question, most of them tick off declining rates of inflation, historically low unemployment, strong economic growth, a list of legislative accomplishments and other evidence of a successful presidency. This suggests the problem is primarily a failure of communication — the thing flailing administrations always blame first, since it implies the path to improvement requires little more than doing a better job of “getting the message out” about how great the president is doing.

It’s usually wiser to listen to what voters are saying — beyond the obvious concerns about the president’s age.

Recently, Gallup released the latest edition of its longstanding survey measuring “satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S.” Three out of four Americans (75 percent) claimed to be dissatisfied. The long-term trend tells a clear story: From the mid-1990s to late 2004, the level of satisfaction bounced around between 39 percent and 71 percent. But in the aftermath of the George W. Bush administration’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and during a yearslong violent insurgency challenging American military occupation of the country, numbers began to slide. They would reach a low of 9 percent satisfaction in October 2008, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

What followed was a very slow 12-year recovery of satisfaction across almost the entirety of the Obama and Trump administrations, with a post-2004 high of 45 percent reached in February 2020, on the eve of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. By January 2021, the level of satisfaction was back down to 11 percent, just two points off its historical low. Under Joe Biden, Americans briefly became somewhat more upbeat — but figures have sunk again from the mid-30s to the high teens and low 20s in recent months.

These findings mirror what other pollsters have found when they asked respondents about whether they think the country is on the right or wrong track, and about their trust in government and confidence in American institutions . The latter number has been slowly falling since the 1960s, but it, too, really began to collapse in 2004, eventually reaching the low 30s by 2007. In 2023, just 26 percent of Americans expressed confidence in our institutions.

In January 2021, Alana Newhouse published an essay in Tablet, “Everything Is Broken,” that gave voice to this incredibly widespread (but underreported) sentiment. Why did so many people in the United States believe that, as Ms. Newhouse put it in a follow-up essay , “whole parts of American society were breaking down before our eyes”?

The examples are almost too numerous to list: a disastrous war in Iraq; a ruinous financial crisis followed by a decade of anemic growth when most of the new wealth went to those who were already well off; a shambolic response to the deadliest pandemic in a century; a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan; rising prices and interest rates; skyrocketing levels of public and private debt; surging rates of homelessness and the spread of tent encampments in American cities; undocumented migrants streaming over the southern border; spiking rates of gun violence, mental illness, depression, addiction, suicide, chronic illness and obesity, coupled with a decline in life expectancy.

That’s an awful lot of failure over the past 20-odd years. Yet for the most part, the people who run our institutions have done very little to acknowledge or take responsibility for any of it, let alone undertake reforms that aim to fix what’s broken. That’s no doubt why angry anti-establishment populism has become so prominent in our politics over the past decade — with Mr. Trump, a political outsider, taking over the Republican Party in 2016 by running against the elites of both parties, and Senator Bernie Sanders giving the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton a run for her money that same year by taking on the banking and finance sectors of the economy, along with their Democratic and Republican enablers.

Mr. Biden has never been that kind of politician. Most of the time he speaks and acts as if he thinks American institutions are doing perfectly fine — at least so long as Mr. Trump doesn’t get his hands on them. Part of that is undoubtedly because Mr. Biden is an incumbent, and incumbents always find themselves having to defend what they’ve done in office, which isn’t compatible with acting like an insurgent going to war against the system.

Then there’s the fact that Mr. Biden has worked within our elected institutions since the Nixon administration, making him deeply invested in them (and implicated in their failures). Finally, as a Democrat who came of age during the heyday of mid-20th-century liberalism, Mr. Biden is wedded to the idea of using a functional, competent and capable federal government to improve people’s lives — whether or not more recent history validates that faith.

This places him badly out of step with the national mood, speaking a language very far removed from the talk of a broken country that suffuses Mr. Trump’s meandering and often unhinged remarks on the subject. The more earnest statements of the third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Cornel West and Jill Stein also speak to aspects of our brokenness, taking ample and often nostalgic note of what’s gone wrong and promising bold, if vague, action to begin an effort of repair.

That leaves Mr. Biden as the lone institutionalist defender of the status quo surrounded by a small army of brokenists looking for support from an electorate primed to respond to their more downcast message.

There may be limits to what Mr. Biden can do to respond. For one thing, his 81-year-old frailty can’t help appearing to mirror the fragile state of our public institutions. For another, in an era of political bad feeling, when presidential approval ratings sink quickly and never recover, incumbents from both parties may no longer enjoy the kind of advantage in seeking re-election that they once did, at least at the national level.

Still, there are things the Biden campaign could do to help the president better connect with voters.

First, he should stop being so upbeat — about the economy in particular — and making the election entirely about the singular awfulness of his opponent. While the latter sounds evasive, the former makes the president seem hopelessly out of touch and risks antagonizing people who aren’t in the mood for a chipper message.

Mr. Biden should instead try to meet Americans where they are. He should admit Washington has gotten a lot of things wrong over the past two decades and sound unhappy about and humbled by it. He could make the argument that all governments make mistakes because they are run by fallible human beings — but also point out that elected representatives in a democracy should be upfront about error and resolve to learn from mistakes so that they avoid them in the future. Just acknowledging how much in America is broken could generate a lot of good will from otherwise skeptical and dismissive voters.

Even better would be an effort to develop a reform agenda: Mr. Biden could declare it’s long past time for America to put its house in order, to begin cleaning up the messes of the past two decades, to face our problems and return to our own best national self. He might even think of adapting and repurposing for the center-left a few lines from Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural Address : “It’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”

In concrete terms, this means pledging to reform existing institutions and programs, not promising to build new ones on top of the ambitious legislation and substantial spending Congress passed during Mr. Biden’s first two years in office. It means, instead, a commitment to pause and begin assessing what government has been doing at all levels, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, over the past two decades.

It means, more specifically, a resolution to continue and expand existing reviews into what worked and what didn’t during the pandemic — in red states and blue states, in cities, suburbs and small towns — in order to prepare for a better response the next time we confront a public-health emergency. It means talking honestly about the surging and unsustainable national debt and what it will take to begin reining it in. It means trying to help government function better, including a concerted effort to increase state capacity , eliminate regulations that constrain the nation’s housing supply and build on the administration’s attempts at permitting reform to streamline or remove regulations that slow down and increase the cost of private as well as public development.

These projects will far outlast a second Biden term. But the president can promise to get them started, with the remaining work to be completed by presidents and generations to come.

Taking this approach may help to neutralize the populist advantages Mr. Trump enjoys (at least when he isn’t running as an incumbent). However much voters appreciate his denunciations of a corrupt and rigged system, as well as his management of the economy over the first three years of his presidency, they have no love for the G.O.P.’s obsession with pairing cuts to entitlement programs and upper-income tax rates with draconian restrictions on abortion — not to mention Mr. Trump’s focus on personal grievances and legal recklessness. That leaves plenty of room for Mr. Biden to make a case for himself as the guy who can enact the sweeping reforms American needs, and without all the unnecessary and dangerous drama a second Trump administration would surely bring.

Everything is broken — or so it feels to many of our fellow citizens. Denying this reality only empowers populist candidates whose message acquires its potency by pointing to an entrenched political establishment unwilling or unable to learn from (or even admit) its myriad mistakes. That shirking needs to stop. And it should do so with Joe Biden.

Damon Linker, who writes the newsletter “ Notes From the Middleground ,” is a senior lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101 (+ Examples)
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: Title page. Acknowledgments page. Abstract (or executive summary) Table of contents, list of figures and tables.
What Is a Thesis?
A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a master's program or a capstone to a bachelor's degree. Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Other than a dissertation, it is one of the longest pieces of writing students typically complete.
Thesis
Thesis. Your thesis is the central claim in your essay—your main insight or idea about your source or topic. Your thesis should appear early in an academic essay, followed by a logically constructed argument that supports this central claim. A strong thesis is arguable, which means a thoughtful reader could disagree with it and therefore ...
Dissertation & Thesis Outline
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 ...
How to Write a Thesis Chapter Outline
The Outline. While the content and length of each chapter will vary, you can follow a similar pattern to organize your information. Each chapter should include: 1. An Introduction. At the start of your chapter, spend some time introducing what you're about to discuss. This will give readers the chance to quickly get an idea of what you'll ...
PDF THE MASTER'S THESIS
The number of chapters in a thesis will vary from one project to another. However, the EMS Guidelines for the Preparation of a Proposal for a Master's Thesis set forth a series of sections and headings that can serve in many cases as the chapter titles of the thesis itself. For example, most theses will have the following
Writing a Postgraduate or Doctoral Thesis: A Step-by-Step ...
Institutional standards and guidelines, supervisor and researcher preferences all play a role in determining how many chapters a thesis should include. Ideally, the thesis is organised primarily like a scientific research report, with discrete chapters for the introduction, methodology, results, and discussion; this is known as the IMRaD ...
Thesis chapter
A thesis is built up of a series of chapters that construct a substantiated and convincing response to the research question (s). Typically, a thesis contains the following chapters: an introduction; a literature review; a description of methodology; a report and discussion of results; and a conclusion. A thesis may have five to eight chapters ...
A Guide to Writing a PhD Thesis
How many chapters should a PhD thesis have? There's no hard and fast rule for the numbers of chapters in a PhD thesis, but most will have four or five chapters (in addition to the introduction and conclusion).
How to Write a Dissertation
The structure of a dissertation depends on your field, but it is usually divided into at least four or five chapters (including an introduction and conclusion chapter). The most common dissertation structure in the sciences and social sciences includes: An introduction to your topic. A literature review that surveys relevant sources.
Rule of Three: advice on writing a PhD thesis
You can see that all theses are fewer than 300 pages in length, many substantially so. Four have three chapters and two have two. Although looking closer, two of the theses with three chapters use a results chapter as an expanded methods chapter. Ultimately, the thesis is your work but you will get input from your supervisor.
Examples of thesis and chapter formats when including publications
Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5. Chapter 1: Introduction. Chapter 2: Literature review. Chapter 3: Methods. Chapter 4: Paper 1 & general discussion. Chapter 5: Paper 2. Chapter 6: Regular thesis chapter - results. Chapter 7: Regular thesis chapter/general discussion tying in published and unpublished work.
Your Outline
If you have more than 10 chapters total, you should suspect that some are actually only subsections of other chapters and start consolidating. You might be framing your chapters in a less than logical way or attempting to cover more than you need. We should expect no more than 8-10 chapters. Many theses are accomplished in 5-7 chapters.
Thesis Structure
Learn everything about the 7 chapters of the thesis structure. All chapters of a dissertation are explained. Thesis formatting FAQ section provided. Toll-free: +1 (877) 401-4335. Order Now. About; Prices; Services ... It contains the 7 important parts any thesis should have.
How to Write a Thesis Statement
Step 2: Write your initial answer. After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process. The internet has had more of a positive than a negative effect on education.
PDF Overview of the Master's Degree and Thesis
Each chapter has a specific focus and objective. The titles of the five chapters are: (1) Introduction, (2) Review of the Literature, (3) Methods, (4) Results, and (5) Discussion. The structure of the five chapters is the same whether you are conducting a qualitative or quantitative study.
Master's Thesis Length: How Long Should A Master's Thesis Be?
This is the largest part of a thesis containing a series of chapters. The chapters should flow logically and build your arguments from one chapter to the next. The length of the discussion is based on the total length of the thesis. So, for a thesis of about 20,000 words, the discussion section may be 15,000 words. 10.
The Dissertation
A typical dissertation runs between 250 and 300 pages, divided into four or five chapters, often with a short conclusion following the final full-scale chapter.There is no set minimum or maximum length, but anything below about 225 pages will likely look insubstantial in comparison to others, while anything over 350 pages may suggest a lack of proportion and control of the topic, and would ...
Guidelines for Chapter Numbering in a Thesis: How to Structure and
Follow these guidelines to ensure clarity and consistency: Start with numbering from Chapter 1: Begin your chapter numbering with Chapter 1 instead of Chapter 0. This signifies the start of your thesis. Use Arabic numerals: Number your chapters using Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) and avoid using Roman numerals (I, II, III) or alphabetical ...
How many chapters should be included in a thesis?
Answer: As a guide, you will find many academics who would advocate a basic structure of the following chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Method, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. This general structure will serve to provide a basic road map for most doctoral candidates but I ...
How many chapters are there in a thesis?
A thesis contains eight to nine chapters in general but may vary from university to university. The basic chapters that a thesis must contain are as follows: 1. Introduction 2. Literature Review 3. Methods 4. Discussion 5.
How Many Chapters Does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Have? (All FF7 ...
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has 14 chapters in total. Many of these feature large open-world-style areas, providing players with plenty of opportunities to stray from the critical path. For those ...
How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Introduction
Overview of the structure. To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.
s3434629_Willems_D_PhD Thesis
This set of published documents contains necessary supplementary material files to support chapter 3 of my PhD dissertation (s3434629_Willems_D_PhD Thesis). There is only supplementary tables for this work and NO supplementary figures or other information. The DOI at the end of Chapter 3 should have directed you here. The supplementary information in this chapter in particular parts is too ...
Changing demographics of US voters and Republican, Democratic
Approximately one-in-ten registered voters are Hispanic (3%), Black (3%) or Asian (3%) and have bachelor's degrees. The Republican Party. White voters without a college degree remain the largest bloc within the Republican coalition, but their share has fallen by 17 percentage points since 1996 (from 68% to 51%).
Opinion
These findings mirror what other pollsters have found when they asked respondents about whether they think the country is on the right or wrong track, and about their trust in government and ...

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