Helpful Advice On Effective Doctoral Thesis Writing

A doctoral dissertation is a major undertaking that many people take years to complete. This is not a project that can be finished in a night, a week, or even a month. It is very important to take this assignment seriously and to understand that failure to complete this requirement could result in a failure to obtain your doctorate degree. You can visit this website for helpful advice on effective doctoral thesis writing.

Picking Your Topic Or Focus

The easiest way to begin a doctorate capstone project is to pick a topic very early on in your program. You will find that you are able to tailor many of your smaller papers and assignments to this topic, so without even realizing it you will be gathering research in preparation for your final work. There will be times along the way when you get tired of your topic and you want to change it, but this is a very bad idea. The more research you have accumulated, the more important it is to stick with the topic. Even if your research design or methods change slightly over time, the overall focus of your work should remain the same.

Read Articles And Summarize Them To Build A Literature Review

It is a good idea to try to find at least one article per week and to read it and write a short paragraph summarizing it so you can file it away for when you need it later. These articles will later help build your literature review, which is a key component of any thesis. Some things you should be looking for when you are reading articles is their research design (whether the study was qualitative or quantitative), what theories they focused on, and how they analyzed their results. You should also look at the authors and articles they cite in their paper as that will help point you in the direction of new information that may pertain to your topic.

Choosing A Research Design

Once you have started to build a literature review, you will have to choose a research design. If you are good with numbers and statistics, you may want to consider a qualitative design. If you prefer words and discussions, qualitative may be better for you. It is important that your design fits your skills and your interests. Do not let your advisory committee lead you in a direction you do not want to go because ultimately you will have to defend this piece of work to a group of people and if you do not have a full understanding of the methods that were used, you could fail your defense.

Writing The Paper

After you have conducted the research according to your chosen design and analyze the results, it is time to put together the actual paper. Many people believe that the first chapter, your introduction chapter, should actually be the last thing you write because it summarizes everything that is yet to come within the paper. This is a good piece of advice that can ensure your introduction is clean and effective.

Conclusion

After you have written your draft, your committee will be able to help you perfect it. But, by following these steps, your first draft should be high quality.