Your thesis or dissertation is probably the longest academic text you’ve ever had to write, and there are a lot of different elements to keep in mind.
Use this simple checklist to make sure you’ve included all the essentials and submit your dissertation with confidence.
Continue reading: Checklist: Writing a dissertation
Your research methodology discusses and explains the data collection and analysis methods you used in your research. A key part of your thesis, dissertation, or research paper, the methodology chapter explains what you did and how you did it, allowing readers to evaluate the reliability and validity of your research and your dissertation topic.
It should include:
Continue reading: What Is a Research Methodology? | Steps & Tips
The discussion section is where you delve into the meaning, importance, and relevance of your results.
It should focus on explaining and evaluating what you found, showing how it relates to your literature review and paper or dissertation topic, and making an argument in support of your overall conclusion. It should not be a second results section.
There are different ways to write this section, but you can focus your writing around these key elements:
If you’re unsure about your field’s best practices, check out sample dissertations in your field or your departmental guidelines.
Continue reading: How to Write a Discussion Section | Tips & Examples
Every paragraph in your paper needs a topic sentence. The topic sentence expresses what the paragraph is about. It should include two key things:
After the topic sentence, you expand on the point zwith evidence and examples.
To build a well-structured argument, you can also use your topic sentences to transition smoothly between paragraphs and show the connections between your points.
Continue reading: How to Write Topic Sentences | 4 Steps, Examples & Purpose
A hypothesis is a statement that can be tested by scientific research. If you want to test a relationship between two or more variables, you need to write hypotheses before you start your experiment or data collection.
Daily apple consumption leads to fewer doctor’s visits.
Continue reading: How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples
Quoting means copying a passage of someone else’s words and crediting the source. To quote a source, you must ensure:
The exact format of a quote depends on its length and on which citation style you are using. Quoting and citing correctly is essential to avoid plagiarism which is easy to detect with a good plagiarism checker.
Continue reading: How to Quote | Citing Quotes in APA, MLA & Chicago
A research design is a strategy for answering your research question using empirical data. Creating a research design means making decisions about:
A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research objectives and that you use the right kind of analysis for your data.
You might have to write up a research design as a standalone assignment, or it might be part of a larger research proposal or other project. In either case, you should carefully consider which methods are most appropriate and feasible for answering your question.
Continue reading: What Is a Research Design | Types, Guide & Examples
In MLA style, the list of Works Cited (also known as a reference list or bibliography) appears at the end of your paper. It gives full details of every source that you cited in an MLA in-text citation.
Like the rest of an MLA format paper, the Works Cited should be left-aligned and double-spaced with 1-inch margins.
You can use our free MLA Citation Generator to create and manage your Works Cited list. Choose your source type and enter the URL, DOI or title to get started.
Continue reading: How to format your MLA Works Cited page
Summarizing, or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.
There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:
Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source. You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).
Continue reading: How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples
A direct quote is a piece of text copied word-for-word from a source. You may quote a word, phrase, sentence, or entire passage.
There are three main rules for quoting in APA Style:
Continue reading: Direct quotes in APA Style