Writing a dissertation or thesis is not a simple task. To get to the finish line, you need a lot of willpower, time, and energy. While it's not simple, the procedure doesn't have to be a painful process. Your research endeavors will be considerably more seamless if you understand the comprehensive procedure for writing a dissertation or thesis.  

I'm going to lay out the general steps involved in writing a dissertation or thesis of the highest caliber without going crazy in this piece. This is the ideal post for you if you're just getting started with your study. Alternatively, this article on dissertation structure might be more useful if you have already turned in your proposal.

Step 1: First, make sure you know exactly what a dissertation is.

This may seem obvious, but far too frequently, when students come to us for assistance with their research, the real problem is that they are unsure of what a dissertation (or thesis) is.

Now, let's define a dissertation.

A dissertation or thesis, in its most basic form, is a formal research work that follows the prescribed or standard research process. But you wonder, what is the typical research procedure? There are four main steps in the research process:

1. Ask a very specific, well-articulated question(s) (your research topic)
2. Check out what other researchers have to say or said about it (if they’ve already answered it).
3. If they haven’t answered it adequately, undertake your own rigorously scientific data collection and analysis
4. Answer your original question(s), based on your analysis findings

A formal research work that follows the conventional four-step academic research method is a dissertation or thesis.

To put it briefly, the research process consists of formulating and addressing issues in an organized manner. It is about asking and answering questions in a systematic way. Although it may seem obvious, many mistakenly believe they have conducted "research" when, in reality, what they have done is: 

1. Started with a vague, poorly articulated question
2. Not had the time to see what studies have already been conducted on the subject or the question
3. Collected data and opinions that support or validate their intuition and conducted a superficial analysis
4. Drawn a shaky conclusion, based on that analysis

Watch out for the next Facebook post where someone claims to have done "research" to to see the perfect example of this in action. Far too frequently, individuals mistake reading a few blog posts for study. Thus, it should come as no surprise that their final product is an opinion piece rather than research. 

It is important to remember that a dissertation, also known as a thesis, is a formal research document that reflects the research process. It's not a place to express your opinions, advance your agenda, or attempt to persuade someone of your point of view. Asking a question and taking a systematic, rigorous approach to answering it are essential components of writing a strong dissertation.

You're off to a great start if you recognize this and feel at ease putting your biases and preconceptions aside! A dissertation is not the place to express your opinions, advance your goal, or attempt to persuade someone of your point of view.

Step 2: Find a worthwhile, original research topic

As we've seen, formulating a precise, well-stated research topic is the first step in the process. Stated differently, you must identify a research topic that poses a particular question or series of questions (referred to as research questions). It seems simple enough, doesn't it? All you need to do to have a successful research topic is to identify one or more questions. Alright, not quite....

A strong dissertation or thesis topic should contain a few key components. To be more precise, a good study topic is:

1. Clear
2. Unique
3. Important

Let's examine these in more detail:

Attribute #1: Clear

Your research topic needs to be crystal clear about what you’re planning to research, what you want to know, and within what context. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity or vagueness about what you’ll research.

Here’s an example of a clearly articulated research topic:

An analysis of consumer-based factors influencing organisational trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms.

As you can see in the example, its crystal clear what will be analysed (factors impacting organisational trust), amongst who (consumers) and in what context (British low-cost equity brokerage firms, based online).

Attribute #2:  Unique

Your research should be asking a question(s) that hasn’t been asked before, or that hasn’t been asked in a specific context (for example, in a specific country or industry).

For example, sticking organisational trust topic above, it’s quite likely that organisational trust factors in the UK have been investigated before, but the context (online low-cost equity brokerages) could make this research unique. Therefore, the context makes this research original.

One caveat when using context as the basis for originality – you need to have a good reason to suspect that your findings in this context might be different from the existing research – otherwise, there’s no reason to warrant researching it.

Attribute #3: Important

Simply asking a unique or original question is not enough – the question needs to create value. In other words, successfully answering your research questions should provide some value to the field of research or the industry. You can’t research something just to satisfy your curiosity. It needs to make some form of contribution either to research or industry.

For example, researching the factors influencing consumer trust would create value by enabling businesses to tailor their operations and marketing to leverage factors that promote trust. In other words, it would have a clear benefit to industry.

So, how do you go about finding a unique and valuable research topic? We explain that in detail in this video post – How To Find A Research Topic. Yeah, we’ve got you covered 😊

Step 3: Write a convincing research proposal

Next, you need to persuade your university to grant you permission to do research on the carefully chosen research topic. Before you can continue with your research, your topic must have approval, regardless of how fantastic you believe it is. The tool you'll utilize for this work is the research proposal.

What then comprises a research proposal?

Convincing your university, advisor, or committee that your research topic is worthy of approval is the primary "job" of a research proposal. However, what can you persuade them of? Although this differs from university to university, in general, they are looking for the following:

1. You have a clearly articulated, unique and important topic (this might sound familiar…)
2. You’ve done some initial reading of the existing literature relevant to your topic (i.e. a literature review)
3. You have a provisional plan in terms of how you will collect data and analyse it (i.e. a methodology)

At the proposal stage, it’s (generally) not expected that you’ve extensively reviewed the existing literature, but you will need to show that you’ve done enough reading to identify a clear gap for original (unique) research. Similarly, In a similar vein, they usually don't anticipate that you have a well-defined research methodology, but you should have an idea of whether you’ll be undertaking qualitative or quantitative analysis, and how you’ll collect your data (we'll go into more depth about this later).

In summary, don't worry about having every aspect of your research carefully planned out at the proposal stage; this will come together as you work through your data. You must, however, demonstrate that you have "done your homework" and that your study is acceptable.

So, how might one go about writing a strong, persuasive proposal? In this post, "How To Write A Top-Class Research Proposal," we go over it in great detail. Additionally, we've included sample proposals here.

Step 4: Craft a strong introduction chapter

Once your proposal’s been approved, its time to get writing your actual dissertation or thesis! The good news is that if you put the time into crafting a high-quality proposal, you’ve already got a head start on your first three chapters – introduction, literature review and methodology – as you can use your proposal as the basis for these.

Handy sidenote – our free dissertation & thesis template is a great way to speed up your dissertation writing journey.

What’s the introduction chapter all about?

The purpose of the introduction chapter is to set the scene for your research (dare I say, to introduce it…) so that the reader understands what you’ll be researching and why it’s important. In other words, it covers the same ground as the research proposal in that it justifies your research topic.

What goes into the introduction chapter?

This can vary slightly between universities and degrees, but generally, the introduction chapter will include the following:

1. A brief background to the study, explaining the overall area of research
2. A problem statement, explaining what the problem is with the current state of research (in other words, where the knowledge gap exists)
3. Your research questions – in other words, the specific questions your study will seek to answer (based on the knowledge gap)
4. The significance of your study – in other words, why it’s important and how its findings will be useful in the world

As you can see, this all about explaining the “what” and the “why” of your research (as opposed to the “how”). So, your introduction chapter is basically the salesman of your study, “selling” your research to the first-time reader and (hopefully) getting them interested to read more.

How do I write the introduction chapter, you ask? We cover that in detail in this post.

Step 5: Undertake an in-depth literature review

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to do some initial review of the literature in Steps 2 and 3 to find your research gap and craft a convincing research proposal – but that’s just scratching the surface. Once you reach the literature review stage of your dissertation or thesis, you need to dig a lot deeper into the existing research and write up a comprehensive literature review chapter.

What’s the literature review all about?

There are two main stages in the literature review process:

Literature Review Step 1: Reading up

The first stage is for you to deep dive into the existing literature (journal articles, textbook chapters, industry reports, etc) to gain an in-depth understanding of the current state of research regarding your topic. While you don’t need to read every single article, you do need to ensure that you cover all literature that is related to your core research questions, and create a comprehensive catalogue of that literature, which you’ll use in the next step.

Reading and digesting all the relevant literature is a time consuming and intellectually demanding process. Many students underestimate just how much work goes into this step, so make sure that you allocate a good amount of time for this when planning out your research. Thankfully, there are ways to fast track the process – be sure to check out articles on how to quickly read journal articles.

Literature Review Step 2: Writing up

Once you’ve worked through the literature and digested it all, you’ll need to write up your literature review chapter. Many students make the mistake of thinking that the literature review chapter is simply a summary of what other researchers have said. While this is partly true, a literature review is much more than just a summary. To pull off a good literature review chapter, you’ll need to achieve at least 3 things:

1. You need to synthesise the existing research, not just summarise it. In other words, you need to show how different pieces of theory fit together, what’s agreed on by researchers, what’s not.
2. You need to highlight a research gap that your research is going to fill. In other words, you’ve got to outline the problem so that your research topic can provide a solution.
3. You need to use the existing research to inform your methodology and approach to your own research design. For example, you might use questions or Likert scales from previous studies in your own survey design.

As you can see, a good literature review is more than just a summary of the published research. It’s the foundation on which your own research is built, so it deserves a lot of love and attention. Take the time to craft a comprehensive literature review with a suitable structure.

But, how do I actually write the literature review chapter, you ask? 

Step 6: Carry out your own research

Once you’ve completed your literature review and have a sound understanding of the existing research, its time to develop your own research (finally!). You’ll design this research specifically so that you can find the answers to your unique research question.

There are two steps here – designing your research strategy and executing on it:

1 – Design your research strategy

The first step is to design your research strategy and craft a methodology chapter. I won’t get into the technicalities of the methodology chapter here, but in simple terms, this chapter is about explaining the “how” of your research. If you recall, the introduction and literature review chapters discussed the “what” and the “why”, so it makes sense that the next point to cover is the “how” –that’s what the methodology chapter is all about.

In this section, you’ll need to make firm decisions about your research design. This includes things like:

• Your research philosophy (e.g. positivism or interpretivism)
• Your overall methodology (e.g. qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods)
• Your data collection strategy (e.g. interviews, focus groups, surveys)
• Your data analysis strategy (e.g. content analysis, correlation analysis, regression)

If these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these in plain language in other posts. It’s not essential that you understand the intricacies of research design (yet!). The key takeaway here is that you’ll need to make decisions about how you’ll design your own research, and you’ll need to describe (and justify) your decisions in your methodology chapter.

2 – Execute: Collect and analyse your data

Once you’ve worked out your research design, you’ll put it into action and start collecting your data. This might mean undertaking interviews, hosting an online survey or any other data collection method. Data collection can take quite a bit of time (especially if you host in-person interviews), so be sure to factor sufficient time into your project plan for this. Oftentimes, things don’t go 100% to plan (for example, you don’t get as many survey responses as you hoped for), so bake a little extra time into your budget here.

Once you’ve collected your data, you’ll need to do some data preparation before you can sink your teeth into the analysis. For example:

• If you carry out interviews or focus groups, you’ll need to transcribe your audio data to text (i.e. a Word document).
• If you collect quantitative survey data, you’ll need to clean up your data and get it into the right format for whichever analysis software you use (for example, SPSS, R or STATA).

Once you’ve completed your data prep, you’ll undertake your analysis, using the techniques that you described in your methodology. Depending on what you find in your analysis, you might also do some additional forms of analysis that you hadn’t planned for. For example, you might see something in the data that raises new questions or that requires clarification with further analysis.

The type(s) of analysis that you’ll use depend entirely on the nature of your research and your research questions. For example:

• If your research is exploratory in nature, you’ll often use qualitative analysis techniues. 
• If your research is confirmatory in nature, you’ll often use quantitative analysis techniques
• If your research involves a mix of both, you might use a mixed methods approach

Again, if these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these concepts and techniques in other posts. The key takeaway is simply that there’s no “one size fits all” for research design and methodology – it all depends on your topic, your research questions and your data. So, don’t be surprised if your study colleagues take a completely different approach to yours.

Step 7: Present your findings

Once you’ve completed your analysis, it’s time to present your findings (finally!). In a dissertation or thesis, you’ll typically present your findings in two chapters – the results chapter and the discussion chapter.

What’s the difference between the results chapter and the discussion chapter?

While these two chapters are similar, the results chapter generally just presents the processed data neatly and clearly without interpretation, while the discussion chapter explains the story the data are telling  – in other words, it provides your interpretation of the results.

For example, if you were researching the factors that influence consumer trust, you might have used a quantitative approach to identify the relationship between potential factors (e.g. perceived integrity and competence of the organisation) and consumer trust. In this case:

• Your results chapter would just present the results of the statistical tests. For example, correlation results or differences between groups. In other words, the processed numbers.
• Your discussion chapter would explain what the numbers mean in relation to your research question(s). For example, Factor 1 has a weak relationship with consumer trust, while Factor 2 has a strong relationship.

Depending on the university and degree, these two chapters (results and discussion) are sometimes merged into one, so be sure to check with your institution what their preference is. Regardless of the chapter structure, this section is about presenting the findings of your research in a clear, easy to understand fashion.

Importantly, your discussion here needs to link back to your research questions (which you outlined in the introduction or literature review chapter). In other words, it needs to answer the key questions you asked (or at least attempt to answer them).

For example, if we look at the sample research topic:

An analysis of consumer-based factors influencing organisational trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms.

In this case, the discussion section would clearly outline which factors seem to have a noteworthy influence on organisational trust. By doing so, they are answering the overarching question and fulfilling the purpose of the research.

For more information about the results chapter, check out the posts on qualitative studies and quantitative studies. 

Step 8: The Final Step

Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

Finally, the conclusion chapter should be where you bring your research to a close. You'll complete the circle on your research in this chapter by summarizing the main findings of your study and explaining their implications. 

What exactly are key findings? The key findings are those findings which directly relate to your original research questions and overall research objectives (which you discussed in your introduction chapter). The implications, on the other hand, explain what your findings mean for industry, or for research in your area.

Sticking with the consumer trust topic example, the conclusion might look something like this:

Key findings

This study set out to identify which factors influence consumer-based trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms. The results suggest that the following factors have a large impact on consumer trust:

1. Factor X
2. Factor Y
3. Factor Z

While the following factors have a very limited impact on consumer trust:

1. Factor E
2. Factor H

Notably, within the 25-30 age groups, Factors E had a noticeably larger impact, which may be explained by…

Implications

The findings having noteworthy implications for British low-cost online equity brokers. Specifically:

The large impact of Factors X and Y implies that brokers need to consider….

The limited impact of Factor E implies that brokers need to…

As you can see, the conclusion chapter is basically explaining the “what” (what your study found) and the “so what?” (what the findings mean for the industry or research). This brings the study full circle and closes off the document.

Let's review the process of writing a thesis or dissertation.

Are you with me still? Amazing! Although this was a lengthy essay, I hope you have gained some knowledge about writing a thesis or dissertation and you are now more prepared to begin your own research.

In summary, the following are the eight processes to producing a high-quality dissertation or thesis:

1. Understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is – a research project that follows the research process.
2. Find a unique (original) and important research topic
3. Craft a convincing dissertation or thesis research proposal
4. Write a clear, compelling introduction chapter
5. Undertake a thorough review of the existing research and write up a literature review
6. Undertake your own research
7. Present and interpret your findings
8. Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

After finishing the main chapters, the abstract, reference list, and appendices are usually the only things remaining to complete. As usual, make sure to find out from your university whether there are any extra specifications about format or content.