When you are making formatting and stylistic decisions, existing theses can provide a useful frame of reference.When you are moving towards setting out the overall structure of your thesis in terms of chapters and sections it can give you a feel of whether you are on track.At the very start of your PhD it can give you a broad feel for what it is that you are aiming to produce.In fact, examining and deconstructing theses can be a useful exercise at multiple stages of your PhD candidature. When in candidature to spend time deconstructing: What is the standard expected of a thesis (e.g., seeing the imperfections of theses that have passed can be helpful should you fall victim to perfectionism).What was the overall scale of the thesis (e.g., amount of data collection, sophistication of analyses, etc.).How extensive or focussed was the literature review.How was literature, method,results, and discussion distributed (e.g., some in each chapter or over separate chapters).How were aims presented and how was the importance of the thesis justified.How many chapters were there and how was content distributed.For instance you can look at things like: Things to learn from deconstruction: Carefully deconstructing such manuscripts can teach you a lot about both what a thesis involves and also what are some of the alternative modes of presentation. follow a similar structural framework to your own (e.g., similar length, same in terms of whether it is a large thesis or PhD by publication).on a similar topic or at least in the same discipline as your thesis and with a broadly similar methodological orientation.The best theses are probably those that are Three is a good start, but I would be aiming to find about six or seven.
#Skim through how to#
However, I'd like to focus discussion here on the role of theses as a tool for teaching you how to write your own thesis.Īssuming you are writing a PhD thesis yourself, it can be really helpful to find a selection of other PhD theses in order to give you a sense of what the overall product can look like. Of course, you can use existing theses just like you would a journal article where you extract information to guide your research.
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