How to Organize Your Thesis

What Does Graduate Research Imply?

Graduate research has one very distinctive characteristic. It implies that the research has to make a unique contribution to a certain sphere of knowledge. Thesis is a document which signifies that the actual contribution has been made. Failure to prove this results in the failure of the thesis project itself.

Your thesis has to possess two features:

State a worthy problem which has not been researched before.
Provide a solution to this problem or answer to the question.

What Is the Purpose of a Graduate Thesis?

The purpose of any thesis is to prove that you have made a useful and valid contribution to knowledge. This purpose is met by addressing several issues and answers to the following questions are what examiners will look for in your work:

What is the research question?
Is it a proper question? (has it been research before? Is it worth researching?)
Was this question sufficiently answered? Is the answer convincing?
Was a useful contribution made to the knowledge?

Your statement of problem must be very clear so that you could easily prove that a serious contribution has been made. You should identify your research problem by investigating all literature available on your topic and related areas. The analysis of this literature should clearly show that (a) your research question has not been studied before, and (b) it is a question worth researching. Providing an answer to the question will not be that difficult as in the course of work you will become incredibly versed in the topic.

Unless your thesis provides adequate answers to the questions above, you will be required to significantly revise your work or could even completely fail your defence. The generic frame given below will provide you with guidance on how to answer these questions correctly and what sections should contain these answers.

Thesis is a formal document. Therefore, it must not contain any repetitive information. Everything has to be in its place. Although some professor may require a little different organization, the basic structure will remain the same for all thesis papers.

A Generic Thesis Frame

1.Introduction

Briefly, it is a snapshot of what your thesis is all about. Instead of summarizing the content of each chapter, you should shortly state your research problem, the main reasons why the research has been conducted and give a summary of your results. Later you will discuss each of the constituents in greater detail.

2.Background (Optional)

If you integrate several research areas in your thesis, your readers may not familiar with all of them. Therefore, it might be necessary to provide some basic information and acquaint your reader with the topic. It is recommended that you use a more specific title than the one given above.

3.Review of the Leading Edge

In this section, which should also have a bit more precise title, you give a review of the leading edge relevant to your thesis. The purpose is not to express your own ideas, but to simply summarize main current approaches to the topic. You should structure this thesis part by ideas instead of authors or dates of publications. For example, you deal with catalysts of artificial photosynthesis. Then you structure your review by catalyst types:

Manganese;
Dye-sensitized titanium dioxide;
Cobalt oxide.

4.Research Question (Problem Statement)

Engineering theses usually refer to solving a problem, while others tend to answer a research question. In any case, your thesis will contain:

A detailed statement of your research question.
Direct reference to the section 3 which will justify that your question has not been yet answered.
Convincing discussion explaining why your question is worth researching.

Subsection 2 of this section analyzes the information presented in the section 3 of your thesis. This is the time to give your ideas on how all of the current approaches/methods fail and what other solutions you can offer.

Use the words ‘problem’ or ‘question’ in the title for this section.

5.Sections Depicting How You Solved the Problem

This part can come in several sections or have a few subsections. Here you are required to convince the readers that you have solved the problem and show how exactly you did it. Do not include any dead ends unless they are necessary to demonstrate your unique approach.

6.Conclusions

Three components should be evident in this section:

Conclusions
Contributions
Future Research Suggestions

Conclusions are better organized in the form of brief and precise statements based on the inference from your thesis work.

Contributions are a vital and most read part of this section. Numbered paragraphs are also preferred starting from the most important to the least.

The Future Research Suggestions subsection is intended for other researchers who will be reading your thesis as reference material. Again it is recommended that you use bulleted points her.

7. References

The list of references is connected with section 3 discussing the leading edge. It is important to remember that every source referred to should be listed here. Most examiners search for the prominent works in the area and their own publications if they are topic relevant, so remember to include those.

In addition, every reference should be directly referred to in the main body of your thesis. It is recommended to organize references alphabetically by author surname.

8. Appendices.

This is the place to include any material which would interfere with the smooth flow of discussion and which holds important research results. Samples of such material would be lengthy mathematical derivations and proofs, tables of data, etc.

Notes about the Frame

As you already know, a thesis should answer two main questions of the reader. Sections 1 and 2 introduce the topic and problem to the reader. Parts 3 and 4 demonstrate that your problem is worthy of research and part 5 shows that you solved it. Section 6 provides the main value resulted from the whole pursuit.

Remember to precisely separate everything you did from anything other did.