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Writing Your Thesis

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Writing Your Thesis

Is there a standard format for writing the thesis?

Each discipline has its own way of writing and you should follow the instructions of your research mentor/advisor. For example, many advisors may recommend that the thesis be written in the form of a scientific article. There are considerable similarities in the elements of a report, whether written in article form or not. Usually the following elements are present:

  • A statement of the problem to study
  • A rationale for why it would be useful to do so
  • A literature review that shows a grasp of the state of the art on this topic, with formatted references listed at the end of the thesis
  • A description of how the study was conducted
  • A report on how the data were analyzed
  • A discussion of the findings
  • A report of conclusions and observations
  • A suggestion of what might be worth doing next

Students commonly ask for guidance about thesis length in terms of pages. This matter is largely between the student and the mentor, although theses between 10 and 20 pages are not uncommon. A cover page for the mentor should be included (see Submitting your thesis)

In this digital era, theses should be produced in pdf format, which may require the use of Adobe Acrobat (not the reader) or other software to produce.