How-to-Write-a-Better-Thesis

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84 7 Establishing Your Contribution Kinds of Contribution I continue to be amazed by the breadth of kinds of contribution that research students can make. That is, not only do they work on a remarkable spread of questions, but even the nature of the questions varies dramatically. To help explain what I mean, here is a sample of research contributions that I found in my university’s PhD thesis collection: 1 • Design of health messages for display on the packaging of fatty foods. • Historical food advertising themes as a measure of population dietary changes. • Food choices in literature as signifiers of masculinity. • Historical marsupial dietary adaptations in response to climate change. • Marsupial dietary adaptation mechanisms for coping with climate change. • Practical tests for detection of salmonella in the home. • Low-energy fabrication of food-storage plastics. • Atomic models of carbohydrate-based metabolism. • Emergency-care identification of dietary causes of rapid-onset illness. • The effectiveness of taxation for reducing dietary causes of type II diabetes. • Statistical minimization of food wastage in complex distribution networks. • Energy accountancy practices for production and distribution of grains. • Diet in Camanderra: contrasts between rural and metropolitan Australia. • Quantification of the impact of diet in treatment of recovery from stroke. These truly are diverse. Some are theoretical. Some are based on data collected over time, prior to the research being done. Some are based on a new investigation of historical materials. Some are based on data gathered for the specific purposes of the project. Some are analyses of other people’s proposals or initiatives. Some propose a new technology, or treatment. The kind of evidence that can be used to validate the work varies too. Very probably, none of these projects is close to your own area of expertise, but you may find it interesting to work through them and try and characterize them against a range of properties. Does the work involve inventing something new, or observing something that already exists? (Example: new plastics are an invention, quantification of food choices is an observation.) Is the impact limited to the research question, or is it likely to have broader implications? (Example: marsupial biology may not apply to other animals, but diet in Camanderra may be representative of regional Australia in general.) Is it primarily theoretical or practical? And so on. The lesson here is that each kind of contribution is likely to be suited to a particular style of narrative. Your task is to figure out the narrative that best explains your contribution. 1 This is a good place to remind you that my descriptions of research are to some extent fictionalized. That is, except where a citation is given, I have used real students and research questions, but have altered the research descriptions in ways that I feel preserves their ‘feel’ while making them both anonymous and more accessible to a general reader.
Study or Case Study? 85 To arrive at a narrative, it helps to have an understanding of how your project might be characterized. A way of thinking about this is to consider projects as being measured in several dimensions. As examples, let me explore two dimensions on which projects can be described: observation versus innovation, and study versus case study. Another useful dimension, which is more or less self-explanatory, is theoretical versus practical; or, in some disciplines, mathematical versus empirical. Another is principled versus pragmatic. In some cases, it may not make sense to even ask where on a particular dimension the research lies—a literary analysis may be neither theoretical nor practical, for example. But in general your description of your contribution needs to be informed by what kind of research you are doing, and this needs to be communicated to the examiner. Observation or Innovation? Several of the research topics listed above concern description of phenomena in one form or another: for example, the correlation between advertising and diet; masculinity in literature; diet in Camanderra; and even the (presumably highly mathematical) physics-based atomic models of metabolism. These theses can be seen as based on observation, in that they propose a description of observed phenomena and then proceed to evaluate whether the description is valid. In these theses, the description is, or forms part of, the hypothesis. Other research topics concern construction or invention: a storage plastic, a salmonella test, an energy accountancy method, or a health message design. These theses can be seen as based on innovation, in that they involve creation of something new as well as evaluation of it. The description of the innovation may, in some cases, consume a substantial fraction of the thesis. There also needs to be a discussion of the properties that the innovation is expected to have (that is, what is it predicted to do?) and of criteria that it is intended to meet. These components together form a hypothesis, but one that is very different in form to that in an observational thesis. Other topics are neither one nor the other, such as the food wastage model. A model is by its nature descriptive, but may involve innovative mathematical constructs. Indeed, it is a simplification to regard any topic as purely observational or innovative—no topic is truly at these extremes—but it is a handy simplification, and helps us to understand how different thesis structures arise. Study or Case Study? A particular phenomenon can be studied in its own right or to provide information on a broad range of similar phenomena. For example, we might study the farming, processing, and distribution of potatoes because we wish to determine how to better manage particular aspects of bringing this vegetable to the consumer. In this
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How to Write a Better Thesis
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David Evans † University of Melbo
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Preface to the Third Edition When I
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Introduction Thesis writing can be
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Contents 1 What Is a Thesis? ......
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Contents xiii 8 Outcomes and Result
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Chapter 1 What Is a Thesis? Simply
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Types of Thesis 3 These questions
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Examiners’ Reports 5 layout. See
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Summary of Chapter 1: What Is a The
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10 2 Thesis Structure Research is u
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12 2 Thesis Structure Some of these
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14 2 Thesis Structure are ‘finish
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16 2 Thesis Structure 2. Background
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18 3 Mechanics of Writing that even
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20 3 Mechanics of Writing have oddi
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22 3 Mechanics of Writing I recomme
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24 3 Mechanics of Writing • Frequ
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26 3 Mechanics of Writing There is
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28 3 Mechanics of Writing The agric
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30 3 Mechanics of Writing wrong. Th
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Page 50 and 51: Chapter 4 Making a Strong Start In
Page 52 and 53: Creating a Structure 41 are trying
Page 54 and 55: Initial Efforts 43 of it in detail
Page 56 and 57: Starting, and Starting Again 45 ad
Page 58 and 59: The Creative Process 47 you must a
Page 60 and 61: Writing an Individual Chapter 49 H
Page 62 and 63: Literature 51 From ‘Chapter Five
Page 64 and 65: Styles of Working 53 And don’t f
Page 66 and 67: Working with Your Supervisor 55 Th
Page 68 and 69: Working with Your Supervisor 57 pa
Page 70 and 71: Summary of Chapter 4: Making a Stro
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Page 84 and 85: 74 6 Background Chapters Developing
Page 86 and 87: 76 6 Background Chapters Establishi
Page 88 and 89: 78 6 Background Chapters Throughout
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Page 96 and 97: 86 7 Establishing Your Contribution
Page 106 and 107: Chapter 8 Outcomes and Results In a
Page 108 and 109: From Data to Results 99 Jackie’s
Page 110 and 111: Presentation 101 Presentation In t
Page 112 and 113: Analysis 103 haste, and overconfid
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Page 116 and 117: Reflection 107 in his thesis, wher
Page 118 and 119: Illustrations 109 interpreted, and
Page 120 and 121: Illustrations 111 they can read an
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Page 124 and 125: Structuring the Discussion 115 can
Page 126 and 127: Writing with Authority 117 criteri
Page 128 and 129: Summary of Chapter 9: The Discussio
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Page 134 and 135: From First to Second Draft 127 abo
Page 136 and 137: Dotting the ‘i’s and Crossing t
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Chapter 12 Beyond the Thesis Studen
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Kinds of Dissemination 139 Feedbac
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Dissemination Plans 141 • Primar
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Seminar and Conference Presentation
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Being a Graduate Student 145 more
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The Arc of a Research Degree 147 t
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Summary of Chapter 12: Beyond the T
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Appendix Afterword The creation of
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Appendix 153 Appendix: Analysis of
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Appendix 155 • The text is unnece
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158 Notes on Further Resources Phil
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160 Index Books, writing, 25 Bracke
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162 Index H Harvard reference syste
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164 Index Proper names, 20 Punctuat
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166 Index discussion of results, 12
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