The dissertation can also be described as a ‘research paper’ or thesis. The word "Dissertation" is derived from a Latin word which means "discourse." The word "Thesis" comes from a Greek word which means "position" and it points to an intellectual proposition in this instance.

Before writing a dissertation, a student must first pose a research question to his/her dissertation supervisor. The student must demonstrate that the research question has enough depth and breadth in it, in terms of the necessary research that needs to be undertaken by the student before it can be accepted by the university supervisor. If the candidate fails to show that he/she has clearly thought through and researched his/her dissertation research question then the supervisor will reject the proposal and the student will be asked to submit another research question at a later point.

Normally along with the research paper, the student will be asked to give a brief overview of how he or she sees the overall dissertation progressing. Typical questions that will be asked from the supervisor include: Does the student have access to interview candidates for primary research or not? How does the student intend to conduct both the primary and secondary research? Is there sufficient enough previous research on the subject? Is the research question progressing a previous field of study?

Dissertation Writing:

Writing a thesis or dissertation is not an easy task for any student. There are many different elements to a dissertation that need to be considered:-

• Deciding on a topic and theoretical Framework: The chosen topic needs to be one that can be described clearly to the reader. When deciding on an audience for your dissertation you should consider that the reader of the completed dissertation should be a layman in the subject and so you should write the dissertation accordingly for this type of reader. The execution of the research also needs to be clear and concise for third parties. So for instance the design of the research questionnaire and interview needs to follow an easy to complete format.

• Literature review and project development: In this part of the thesis, the purpose is to help the reader to consider the research question in more detail and identify the ‘gaps’ or ‘loopholes’ in the research study. Academic referencing also plays an important role in the Literature review, as it shows previous research within the subject area.

• Questionnaire development: One or more questionnaires need to be prepared in order to conduct surveys and to build a research database that can further be analysed and quantified within the dissertation.

• Data collection and database construction: There are various sampling techniques available for the collection of data through which the data can be retrieved from a particular population.

• Research design, analysis, and statistics: Descriptive designs can either be descriptive, causal or exploratory. Analysis tools may include pie-charts, bar-charts, tables, percentages and various other analysis software which are freely available to the student such as SPSS.

• Results presentation and preparation of the final report. The final report needs to follow certain predefined norms which are a must for a thesis to be completed.

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