Dissertation Structure | What Are the Sections Included in a Dissertation?

Dissertation Structure
Whether you are an average student or a class topper, we understand that dissertation writing is the most exhausting task for you. However, its technical part comes after selecting a topic, which is dissertation structure. A dissertation may become complicated and fail to deliver the intended point if it lacks a clear structure.

In dissertation structure, we divide the main parts of a dissertation into chapters, sections and subsections. If you don’t know how to structure a dissertation, this guideline is for you as we will give you a thorough explanation of dissertation structure in this blog.
 

What Are the Sections Included in a Dissertation Structure?

It is important to organise all the parts of dissertation research to form a dissertation structure. It is divided into different parts and sections that contribute to making a successful and winning dissertation. It is important to maintain a flow in your dissertation to guide the reader through the concepts.

Before structuring your dissertation, you should ask your department some questions; how should dissertation chapters be structured? Because different academic areas call for different dissertation structures. But most universities follow the traditional structure, whose overview is as follows:
  • Preliminary or Initial or Starting pages
  • Dissertation Body
  • Reference List
  • Bibliography (if required)
  • Appendix (if required)
Let's discuss them in detail here.
 

Starting Pages

The dissertation structure starts from the starting pages, including a title page as the very first page of your dissertation. It contains the title of your dissertation on the top, then the student name, supervisor name, department and institution name with your degree designation.

You may add your university logo here. The components of the title page must be arranged differently depending on the discipline. Make sure to ask your faculty for its arrangement. A list of starting pages includes:
  • Declaration
  • Approval Certificate
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication Page
  • Acknowledgement
  • Table of Contents
  • Figures List
  • Tables List
  • Abbreviations List(if required)
 

Structure of Dissertation Body

The dissertation structure has a main body that consists of 5 main chapters, such as:
  • An Introduction
  • Lengthy Literature Review
  • Methodology Including Materials and Research Methods
  • Presenting Findings of Research in Results and Discussions Chapter
  • A Short Summary as a Conclusion
 

Chapter 1: Introduction

An introduction includes more explanation of your abstract. In dissertation structure, the introduction serves as the dissertation's official opening and should be compelling enough to attract the reader. The introduction must be relevant to your research work and should not contain unnecessary information.

Write an introduction in such a way that will be able to answer the entire question of your research, like how, what, and why. A dissertation introduction structure should have the following information:
  • Basic information about your topic of research
  • Background of your research issue
  • Goals of your study that what you will discuss in the dissertation
  • The focus of your dissertation writing
  • Your study's objectives and its scope
  • Research questions that you will discuss
  • Your Hypothesis
  • Limitation of your research work
  • A short conclusion
 

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter requires thorough research on the dissertation topic. A dissertation structure must include a literature review. It is meant to provide readers with a thorough understanding of the subject through prior scholarly publications. You should follow the following steps while writing a literature review:
  • Assembling the most reliable, relevant and trustworthy sources, including books, articles, journals, etc.
  • A review of each source.
  • Examining every source to double-check everything.
  • Establishes links between the topics, contradictions, and other issues.

The focus of your literature review dissertation is:
  • To fill the research gaps in the earlier works
  • To develop fresh methodological and theoretical viewpoints on the subject
  • To offer a resolution to an unsolved issue
  • To start a theoretical discussion
  • To add fresh knowledge in that area of study

Chapter 3: Methodology

It is 3rd chapter of your dissertation structure in which you aim to describe the materials and methods that you will use to conduct your research and gain results. Here you will discuss all the techniques that you use in your study and research. It clearly describes to the readers how you got these results and through it, so that they can evaluate its credibility and reliability.

Furthermore, the dissertation methodology structure should cover the following points:
  • Your research's methodology; whether it is experimental, quantitative, or qualitative must be added to your dissertation structure.
  • Techniques and procedures used to gather the data.
  • The techniques you used to analyse the data.
  • Materials and instruments that you used to collect the data.
  • An overview of the research's restrictions and challenges.
  • A review of the techniques and methods.

Chapter 4: Results and Discussions

As the name indicates, here you will discuss the end results of your dissertation research. In this chapter, you must add the details that are relevant to your research objectives. For example, if your topic is about the synthesis of nanoparticles, it must contain the figures, graphs, tables and results related to it.

In your dissertation structure, you can add a discussion chapter with the results or separate it from it. Here you discuss some new findings of your work and their contribution to the existing knowledge. Furthermore, you can also add some recommendations that you think will be useful for research in the coming days.
 

Chapter 5: Conclusion

In this last chapter of your dissertation body, you discuss the whole dissertation research. Here you need to answer the required research-related questions to clear everything for the reader. You can call it the final reflection of your dissertation writing. You have to prove your work and its results in this part of your dissertation structure.
 

Reference List or Bibliography

It is an essential and the last part of your dissertation structure as it has all the information of your research sources. You can add these references manually or with the help of some online tools.

You can get dissertation help online from various tools or websites to write your bibliography, including Endnote, Quillbbot, Zotero, Citavi and more. These reference management tools help you to minimise your time and save the energy that you waste in creating a reference list manually.
 

Final Words

Dissertation structure is the most important step that everyone goes through before writing a dissertation. Abstract, introduction, review of literature, materials and methods, results, discussions, conclusion and references are the main parts of a dissertation structure.

A dissertation demands a lot of hard work and time, from its structuring to performing and then writing everything. Some students need dissertation help online to make this process easy and stress-free. For them, The Academic Papers UK is the best service provider that offers the best dissertation writing services online.

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