If you’re looking for a complete, precise guide on how to create an outline for a dissertation, you’ve come to the right place.
For many of us, a dissertation is one of the most tedious projects ever introduced in the institutions of higher learning. While a 150 to 300-page long dissertation can be the biggest headache for many students yet, creating an outline for the assignment can make a big difference in the writing process.
So in this guide, you’ll learn how to create an outline for your dissertation project if you don’t have one already.
The purpose of a dissertation structure is to help you organize your work in a way that demonstrates a logical flow of your ideas and arguments. Also, it makes writing your dissertation easier because you’re able to plan the sections to write and how much actual writing to do within a given period.
Dissertation Outline: The Complete Guide to Creating Your Template
The structure of your dissertation will vary based on your location, discipline, topic, and methodology. Some colleges recommend starting with a conclusion followed by the discussion. Others allow you to use the standard format.
As such, it’s important to review your department’s standards and talk with your supervisor if you have questions about how to outline your thesis or dissertation.
If your school hasn’t provided any specific guidelines on the structure (or template) to use, you can adopt the following outline and use it to write your dissertation.
Title Page
It’s the first page of your dissertation document and the easiest to work on. All you have to do is to include the following details:
- Dissertation title
- Student’s name
- Department
- Institution’s name
- The degree program
- Submission date
Note that how you format the title page vary from program to program, so it’s best to check with your supervisor to make sure you’re on the right path.
Acknowledgement
The acknowledgements part is normally optional, and it allows you to express gratitude to everyone who assisted you in the composition of your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, close friends, study participants, family members, and schoolmates who helped you.
Abstract
The abstract is a brief description of your dissertation. It’s typically between 150 and 300 words long. When you’ve finished the remainder of the dissertation, you should write it at the very end. Make sure the abstract:
- Includes your research’s key topic and objectives
- Describes the techniques you employed in the research
- Shows a list of the most important findings
- Gives a summary of your findings
An abstract may be short, but it’s the most important section of the paper that someone will read. In some cases, the abstract tends to be the only section that people actually read.
Table of Contents
List all of the chapters and their related subheadings here. Make sure to indicate the page number for each so your reader can have an easy time accessing the information they need.
Introduction
The purpose of the introduction chapter is to establish your topic, aim of the study, and the significance of your research. The goal is to inform your readers about what to expect from the rest of the work.
Literature Review
This section shows that you looked into already existing literature on your topic to understand what past researchers have done in the same area of study.
Methodology
The methodology chapter explains how you carried out your study and allows the reader to judge its validity. In general, you should include:
- The overarching strategy and study design
- Your data collection techniques
- Where, when, and with whom the research was conducted
- Your data-analysis techniques, which can be statistical analysis or discourse analysis
- A list of tools or materials you used to conduct your research
- A discussion of any difficulties you encountered while doing the study and how you overcome them
- An assessment or justification of your procedures
Your goal is to summarize what you performed while also persuading the reader that this was the best way to answer your research questions.
Results
Present the findings of your investigation by organizing this section around sub-questions, hypotheses, or topics.
In certain disciplines, the findings section and the discussion are distinct, whereas in others, the two are integrated.
In qualitative methodologies such as ethnography, data presentation is braided together with debate and interpretation. If you’re dealing with quantitative and experimental research, you should present findings independently before discussing their significance.
State relevant results in a clear and concise way. Briefly describe how the finding relates to the issue and whether you managed to prove the hypothesis. Feel free to include tables and figures if you strongly believe they will help the reader to understand your findings.
Discussion
Dig further into the significance and magnitudes of your findings in respect to your research topics. You should describe if the outcomes fulfilled your expectations and show how well they fit into the framework you created in previous chapters.
Your discussion needs to include an explanation of any result that you didn’t expect. It’s is also good idea to think about several ways to interpret your data. You also need to explain how your findings connect with current knowledge, so make sure the discussion use relevant sources as reference.
Conclusion
Address the major research question to give your reader a clear comprehension of your key point that underlines the value of your study.
It’s in the conclusion chapter that you tell your reader about the significance of your study. Make them see why writing the project was necessary in the first place.
Reference List
Give precise details of all the sources that you have mentioned in your thesis or dissertation. It’s crucial to have a consistent citation style, which can be Harvard, MLA, and APA. You can use MLA or APA for style for referencing, but that’s provided your program hasn’t specified what style to use.
Each style has its own set of rules for how to structure your references in the bibliography. So check our guide on how to site sources for more information.
Appendices
Appendices would be the right section to include documents that do not fit into the main body of your dissertation. These may include interview transcripts, survey questions, and tables with full figures.