Your opportunity to demonstrate that you have acquired the skills and knowledge required to plan and carry out a research project is provided by the dissertation, which is the last component of the master’s degree. It should show that you are capable of choosing a topic or discussion that is appropriate for writing a dissertation; setting research objectives; locating, organizing, and critically analyzing pertinent secondary data and authoritative literature; developing an appropriate research methodology; analyzing the primary data chosen, and drawing on the literature in the field; drawing conclusions; and, if necessary, making pertinent recommendations and indicating areas for further research.
What is a Dissertation?
A dissertation is a “formal” document, and certain “rules”, which specify how it should be presented. It must include chapters with an introduction, a review of the literature, justification of the data chosen for study and the research technique, data analysis, and, in the end, a conclusion and suggestions.
Recommendations for action may also be needed if the subject revolves around a business or applied situation. Your program director or the course dissertation coordinator will guide the range of appropriate topics that pertain to the field of study for your Master’s degree.
The endeavour to analyze situations in terms of the “bigger picture” sets the Masters’s level dissertation apart from other types of writing. It looks for solutions, justifications, contrasts, and generalizations that might be applied to broaden theory.
Specific and carefully targeted dissertations are the most effective ones. This manual is designed to be a top source of masters dissertation help for you while you are writing a dissertation.
It can only make suggestions; nothing that is said can ensure the creation of a high-quality piece of work, but these are suggestions that have proven to be both useful and effective throughout time.
This guide should be studied before beginning your dissertation and used as needed.
Goals and Significance of the Study:
Explain the study’s significance and clearly outline the study’s goal in the first chapter. The study’s theoretical contributions to the area are discussed, as well as the study’s application to communication professionals in the field under consideration.
Additionally, Master’s candidates must describe how their research adds new understanding to the field’s body of knowledge. The importance of the subject for mass communication education should also be covered.
This chapter’s development is very important. Writing a dissertation is inherently defective if it lacks a clearly stated goal and a solid theoretical foundation.
Literature Review:
The study’s goal ought to provide a theoretical framework that will be further upon in this chapter. Thus, the literature review describes and evaluates earlier studies on the subject. But this chapter should not only summarize what other researchers have discovered.
Instead, you ought to debate and evaluate the body of information with the end in mind of figuring out what is and is not understood about the subject. Your research questions and/or hypotheses are derived from this conclusion. Of course, you can find it is necessary to repeat earlier studies in some circumstances.
Methodology:
The data collection technique utilized is explained and supported in this chapter. This chapter also describes the data analysis process you used. Start by outlining your approach and why it was the best option.
You should cite sources from the method’s reference material while doing this. Next, describe in detail the entire data collection and analysis procedure. These methods and techniques are frequently covered:
- Description of research design – internal validity and external validity
- Description of population and description of and justification for type of sample used or method for – selecting units of observation.
- Creation of a tool or procedure for making observations (such as a question bank or categories for content analysis).
– Pre-test
– Reliability and validity of instrument or method - Administration of instrument or method for making observations (e.g., interviews, observation, content analysis)
- Coding of data
- Description of data analysis (statistical analysis and tests performed, identification of themes/categories (qualitative or historical research)
Findings:
This chapter only discusses the outcomes of your data analysis. This chapter does not discuss other research publications or the ramifications of your findings. The outcomes of the hypothesis tests are the next topic you discuss. Afterwards, you talk about any ex-post analysis.
All numerical data should be represented and condensed into tables and/or figures. This chapter is often organized by the themes or categories that emerged from your study for qualitative and historical studies.
It is frequently good to give a brief descriptive (e.g., demographic) description of the participants initially if you have performed focus groups or interviews. Then, data from focus groups, interviews, or historical artefacts are directly quoted and paraphrased to substantiate the generalizations established.
This analysis occasionally also incorporates data from field notes or other interpretive sources (e.g., life history information)
Discussion:
This chapter’s goal is not to just restate what you discovered but to explain the implications of your findings in light of the field’s theoretical body of knowledge and your line of work.
Even though this chapter may be the most significant because it explains the “So what?” question, students typically skim over it.
Start by relating your conclusions to the theoretical framework outlined in the literature review. In some circumstances, you might need to offer fresh reading (particularly qualitative research).
What are the study’s real-world applications, in other words? Doctoral students ought to talk about the study’s educational implications as well. What does the study proposal for the teaching of mass communication?
A succinct conclusion that offers closure concludes the thesis or dissertation. The conclusion should be compelling.
Finishing:
- You shouldn’t expect to start and finish your thesis in the same semester.
- Do not count on your chair or committee members to proofread or revise your dissertation or thesis.
- Before delivering your finished thesis or dissertation to your committee members, give the chair enough time to read it at least twice. Expect to wait at least a week before defending your completed thesis or dissertation and submitting it to your chair for the first time.
- The student is responsible for making a reservation for the defence and bringing the signature page and the examination form.
- Be ready to make changes after the defence. Letting the staff review a draught of the thesis or dissertation before you defend will speed up graduate school clearance.
- Giving your committee members a bound copy of the completed thesis or dissertation is customary.
Wrapping Up:
We hope our dissertation writing guide has been of help to you. If you have any questions about this guide or need assistance with your dissertation, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to help and would be more than happy to give you some guidance with your dissertation.
