If you are in your final year, you probably know that you should start working on your thesis. Everyone speaks about this subject and this can become quite stressful and overwhelming. Especially if you have no prior experience, writing your thesis can seem difficult and sometimes impossible.
But, what should you think about? Where to start? How to choose your subject? How to build the thesis? These are among the most common questions a student asks himself before starting to write the thesis. You do not know what you must include or must avoid. This is a new experience and you need some guidelines on where to start and how to build the entire thesis.
We have divided the thesis writing into various easy to understand steps which will help you write a good thesis:
- Before Writing
- Choosing the topic
- The purpose of your thesis
- Choosing the instrument
- Writing
- The purpose of your study
- Analysis of the literature
- Methodology
- Findings
- Discussion
- Reference Chapter
Before Writing
Before you start writing, you need to find the topic you want to study and the purpose of your study. You will also choose a professor that will coordinate, guide and advise you all along the process.
Choosing the Topic
Choosing your subject can be the most difficult task you have to do. There are plenty of interesting and controversial subjects you can present in your thesis. Think about your study years and if there was a specific topic that has drawn your attention.
Were there any theories that seemed interesting? Is there a topic you want to find out more about? Then, that might become your thesis subject. Try to choose a topic that is appealing, interesting and challenging. You need to keep your motivation level high, so if you work on something you love, for sure you won’t have problems finishing it. Keep in mind that you must also choose a coordinator from your professors.
The Purpose of Your Thesis
If you have a theory or a specific subject in your mind, you are one step closer to the end. Now you should begin searching for more information related to your topic. You need to be well informed to formulate the aim and purpose of your thesis.
Read everything you can and you have access to. Try to find scientific studies or articles from scientific journals. Search for books, journals, magazines and everything that can offer you a valuable piece of information.
After you have become more familiar with the topic, you can start thinking about the purpose of your paper. Why do you want to study this subject? Which is the significance of your study? What are your expectations regarding the results of your study? Maybe you have thought about some hypothesis also.
Choosing the Instrument
You should consult with your coordinating professor regarding future steps. Share with him your ideas and choose together the best option. Being caught up in a stressful situation can make us lose things from sight and here is when the coordinator comes in handy.
Choose the instrument you want to collect data with. Read about its internal validity and other psychometric details. Then start collecting data and facts while you start working on your theoretical part.
Writing
Well, the first two chapters of your thesis should present the purpose of your study and its significance, as well as the review of the literature. These two chapters need to be well-developed and argued.
The Purpose of Your Study
You should highlight what your study adds to the body of knowledge. Why is your study important for education and which are your expectations? Why is it significant and what brings new to the table? Which is its main purpose and how you have chosen the topic?
Analysis of the Literature
The second chapter should be an analysis of the literature and studies related to your topic. Keep in mind that you should not tell a story of what other scientists have discovered. Instead, you should analyze the body of literature to highlight what is known about your subject and what is not known. For sure you already have a theoretical framework you need to explain. All your prior research leads you to choose this topic, so this is the perfect chapter to state your hypothesis.
After you have briefly reviewed the literature, you can formulate your hypothesis. You need to formulate them as clear as possible. Keep in mind that you will be presenting your work in front of a jury of professors, so everything needs to be clear and simple. Whenever you feel that you need assignment help, you can communicate it to your coordinator. You have chosen him to support and advise you, so take advantage of this.
Methodology
This chapter of your thesis focuses on the instruments you have chosen to measure specific constructs. It is also an analysis of the data collected Here you need to offer more information on the instrument you have chosen. Why is that scale better than any other one? How have you chosen to analyze the data gathered? Why is this method of analyzing the data better than others?
After you have offered all the details that led to your choices, you should start giving details about your actual data. Talk about the internal and external validity of your instrument. Give information on the population that was part of your study. Focus on their age, gender and other socio-demographic factors that might be of interest. Communicate why you have chosen this specific sample.
This is the chapter where all the information about how you have gathered data must be presented. Were the participants needed to fill in the scale online or offline? Did they have to take part in interviews? How did you make observations?
Further, you must detail how you have coded the data and how you have conducted the data analysis. This chapter is mostly about technical details and numbers, so a new chapter about findings needs to be written.
Findings
Do you remember that section full of tables that exists in all studies? Well, this is the chapter where you should do this. You have analyzed the data, so you need to communicate your findings. Keep in mind that you should not detail the implications of your findings.
Instead, you should highlight all the tests that were conducted and present the results in the form of tables and charts. If you did not have a scale but an interview, you can paraphrase the most important data from participants’ replies.
Related: Tips for Writing a Thesis, Data Visualisation Methods | Graphs, Charts, Lines, Graphs
Discussion
So, this chapter is about analyzing your results in relation to your hypothesis and body of literature. You do not need to make another review of the literature, but to discuss your findings in relation to the body of literature and research.
Here you should discuss the practical implications of your thesis. Why your results are important and which is the impact of your study. Most students skip this part, although is the most important one. It is not enough to just collect data and analyze it but to also interpret it.
Here you can also discuss the limits of your study. Some details of your thesis might interfere with your study, so present them here. Maybe the population sample was too small. Maybe you could have chosen another method of conducting the study. The thing is you realize what you could have done better after you finish it, so you can expose those things here.
Reference Chapter
What is important not to forget is to include a reference chapter where you detail all the studies and researches read. This information should be presented in a certain format style, like APA style so you need to strictly follow the format style rules.
What to Keep in Mind?
Follow this structure to build your writing paper and you will not forget any information. Always edit and proofread your thesis before submitting it. Ask your coordination to guide and advise you. Get ready to answer the jury’s questions and to rock it. Writing a thesis is stressful and overwhelming because you do not know what to expect. But with these guidelines, everything will be easier.
