Richard de Neufville's TPP SM Thesis Manual - Title Page - MIT

Data CollectionPrepare a two-page report indicating and justifying:• The evidence you intend to collect to support your thesis;• Where your data may be found and how you plan to collect them;• The amount of your time, the cost, and the delays required to obtain the data;• How you will insure the reliability, validity, representativeness and significanceof the data; and• What you will do to maximize the efficiency with which you collect the data.Construction of ArgumentStep by step, describe:• The point you are trying to make. Use 1 or 2 sentences at most. Describingyour point so briefly is, in fact, much more difficult than using fifteen or thirtysentences to talk generally about the subject. This is part of the point of theexercise, to get you to think hard about what you are really trying to say.• What there is to demonstrate: You need to specify the distance between thepoint your thesis is trying to make and what is currently accepted by youraudience. For example, if you are writing about privatization to economistsyou would not have to demonstrate microeconomics. If however, youraudience consists of members of a public interest group, you might need todemonstrate why economics is relevant to their priorities.• The logic you will use to show that your thesis is plausible, that is, consistentwith findings of your research (or with other evidence).• The alternative explanations for this evidence, for example, as generated byalternative political or professional perspectives.• Why alternative explanations of your findings will be less satisfactory thanyours.Generally speaking, the parts of your thesis that do not relate to these 5 issuesare extraneous on the principle that "Less is more," that is that less clutter, theclearer the message, the extraneous parts should be dropped from your thesis.Thesis and Report Preparation - Richard de Neufville 53