This is Sylvia from WordifyScience. I know from personal experience what it is like to do a Masters in Science degree. If you have taken on an executive program which you are doing in parallel to your already demanding job, little time remains to dedicate to brushing up your thesis paper with the right structure and formatting. This blog post aims to highlight the essentials and how to get started from a blank page.
At the end of this blog post, you will find a link where you can request your free thesis template.
That daunting moment has finally arrived for you to pull out your laptop, open up a new document and start writing your thesis. But no matter how much preparation you have put into researching your chosen topic, perhaps you are still unsure of how exactly to lay out your findings. Fear not, because the good news is that a thesis paper usually follows a simple set structure with 5 main sections.
Depending on the guidelines you receive from your university, the order of the chapters could vary, or some elements such as the Literature Review may be included in your Introduction chapter. However, as the Literature Review is such a central piece of your thesis, especially in scientific research, I prefer to describe it separately. This blog post starts by focusing on the 5 main sections, which are:
Introduction
Literature Review
Materials & Methods
Results
Discussion with Conclusions
This main structure will be embedded in a broader thesis structure, which I will outline further below. But let's first get started with the 5 main chapters.
1. Introduction
By the time you come to writing the introduction to your thesis, you will already have a topic in mind that interests you and that you believe requires further expansion within your chosen scientific area. Depending on the requirements from your university, you may also already have gathered as much presently available research on it as possible.
The introduction to a scientific thesis will be more or less like any other introduction: it has to provide a broad explanation of what you are deciding to include in your thesis and why you have chosen to cover this specific subject area, particularly with regard to why you think it is important and what you wish to achieve from researching it further. For example, you will point to a rather less researched niche area in your scientific field, or you may consider continuing with a novel research that has not received much attention so far. The results from your Literature Review will help you identify exactly that 'scientific gap' that you wish to close with your unique scientific research.
2. Literature Review
The Literature Review is hence a very central piece of your thesis. It sets the scene for your research, and this is why it has to be outlined right at the start, after your introduction.
With it, you set the context for your scientific research, first by outlining the domains that will be relevant for your thesis, and second by identifying the gaps in each of these individual domains. The Venn Diagram is a good starting point to outline the individual areas that you are considering for your research.
For example, the Literature Review I performed when researching the effectiveness of Scientific Advisory Boards comprised not only 'Scientific Advisory Boards' but also 'Business Boards of Directors' and 'Effectiveness in Business Management'.
As can be seen in the Venn Diagram on the left, I examined the gap in the middle of the Venn Diagram, where all of the 3 areas intersected.
Once you have identified the individual areas that you want to examine, you follow a 3-step approach:
Search for relevant literature
Identify major themes and gaps
Write the literature review
These steps can be further broken down as follows:
Search for relevant literature
define literature search strategy with inclusion and exclusion criteria
evaluate sources
conduct literature search on PubMed, Web of Science or Google Scholar
Identify major themes and gaps
select papers for analysis based on title and abstract
final selection of papers based on full text (pdf file)
extract data from selected papers
Write the literature review
outline the structure
analyze results from extracted data
summarize results
In your thesis paper, you will summarize all of these 3 main elements in your literature review, but of course the majority of the work in this category will have been the actual literature review, which takes a lot of time and effort to carry out. I cannot highlight enough that you will want to document your steps early on, and not only then when it is time to write up your literature review approach and results. Especially documenting inclusion and exclusion criteria for your search, and having a clear search strategy in the first place, are essential elements.
3. Materials & Methods
The methods section – sometimes referred to as the ‘methodology’ – requires you to go into more detail about the type of research that you have conducted. This essentially means describing how you went about collecting your research data for your thesis. For this, you should be able to present which methods you chose to gather your data and how you have analyzed that data. You also need to justify why you chose that particular methodology; in other words, you must explain why the method(s) you used produced better or more reliable results than certain other methods that were available to you.
Another thing you will want to discuss in this chapter is the limitations that you came across whilst conducting your research. This shows an awareness of the pitfalls of your study and shows that you have meticulously thought over the pros and cons of your methods of research, which will give your work more credibility overall.
4. Results
The results chapter is pretty self-explanatory. Here is where you get to present and outline the results/findings of your research. This is one of the most important section of your thesis, as this is where you will provide the facts and evidence that should answer your research question and fill in any gaps within the previously conducted research about your subject area.
It is important here to only include the facts of your research, rather than any sort of analysis on what you have found out, as that belongs in the discussion section, so try to refrain from commenting on your findings. You should also include appropriate tables, graphs and images in this section to better visualize and provide evidence for your results. Remember to label each table, graph or image individually by inserting captions, so that they can be clearly referenced in your writing, therefore making it easier to navigate for whoever ends up reading your thesis.
5. Discussion with Conclusions
This is the final chapter of your thesis and is where you will analyze and comment on your results. First, you summarize your main findings and then you go into an analysis of what these findings are, what they mean, what has been learnt by them, and how they connect to other research that has already been done.
If there are any unexpected results, then you need to provide an explanation for why that occurred. Overall you have to show that you have a solid understanding of your own study, which once again will give you and your thesis more credibility.
It is important that you also point out the limitations of your study; in this context, it can be helpful to suggest how future research could be conducted in order to address those limitations and potential questions that may have remained unanswered by your study.
Your conclusion(s) will complete this section. As with any conclusion, you must look back over the rest of your thesis and tie everything up in a clear and organized manner, pointing out the main takeaways from your study and suggesting how to move forward after this study.
At this point, it will also be a good idea to come back to the Introduction chapter and make sure that it connects properly with the rest of your sections, especially the conclusion. This will eventually involve re-writing certain parts of your introduction.
The broader thesis structure
Everything mentioned above will make up the main and most important part of your thesis. I recommend that you will focus on these core chapters first, before diving into the broader thesis structure. But don’t forget that you also need to include and format the sections surrounding your 5 main sections. These are not included in your word count and may seem like a pain, but they are extremely necessary to make up a professional-looking thesis and will count towards your final grade. Here is one example how your broader thesis structure can look like:
Title Page
Table of Contents
Table of Tables
Table of Figures
Abbreviations
Abstract
Introduction
Literature Review
Materials & Methods
Results
Discussion with conclusions
Acknowledgments
References
Appendix
Declaration of originality
Now that you have a general idea of how to go about structuring your thesis, you can be more confident with setting out your thoughts and research in an organized manner. As long as you have chosen a topic that you are passionate about, you may find you actually have an enjoyable time writing it, so open up that Word document and get started!
At WordifyScience, we have developed a Master Thesis template, which we are happy to share with any interested student. This template already has a set Table of Contents with set formatting for title page, headings, sub-headings, table and figure captions, tables formatting, plain document text, references and bibliography.
I also encourage you to reach out to us at WordifyScience if you need help throughout the Literature Review process - our team of experienced Scientific Editors is always happy to assist you.
Contact us today to book a Literature Review orientation call or to receive your free Master thesis template.
"It was a true pleasure to work with Sylvia. She is exceptionally professional, gives valuable guidance and I benefited a lot from her experience. I can highly recommend her service." Former MAS student ETH Zurich
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