Inside Track to Writing Dissertations and Reports eBook
Published on 2. February 2010
257 pages
978-0-273-72737-8 (ISBN)
Description
Inside Track to Writing Dissertations and Reports eBook
More details
Content
- Cover
- Writing Dissertations and Theses
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Academic Research: An Overview
- Conducting academic research: common concerns
- The similarities and differences between a thesis and a dissertation
- Developing independence as a researcher and finding your voice
- Meeting the challenges of academic research
- Intellectual challenges
- Emotional challenges
- Motivational challenges
- Becoming a member of an academic community
- Research seminars and conferences
- Local chapters and special interest groups
- Networking in person and on the internet
- Creating a support group
- Choosing and working with your supervisor
- The supervisor's role
- Factors affecting your choice of supervisor
- Joint supervisions
- What can go wrong in the supervisor-supervisee relationship
- The Upgrading Process
- Preparing Your Research
- Introduction
- Familiarity with your university's rules and regulations
- Ethical considerations
- Identifying a gap in the literature
- Deciding on a research topic
- Generating research questions and research hypotheses
- Deciding on the research approach
- Philosophical inquiry
- Quantitative approaches
- Qualitative approaches
- Mixed-methods approaches
- Disciplinary and subject variations
- Preparing to Write
- Reading and planning before you write
- Sources of information
- Information literacy
- Types of source materials
- Electronic sources of information
- Oral sources of information
- Identifying and selecting appropriate information
- Know what you are looking for
- Search for titles of books or articles
- Perform an internet search of relevant theories or concepts
- Perform a name search of relevant scholars
- Read abstracts
- Read synopses of books
- Look through tables of contents
- Check indexes
- Scan books or articles for key terms
- Read bibliographies
- Scan library shelves
- Read book reviews
- Ask a librarian!
- A final note
- Note-making
- Directing your note-making
- Making your notes understandable
- Recording your sources
- Creating a plan and organising your argument
- Why plan?
- Laying out your plan
- Clear and Effective Writing
- The style of academic writing
- Clarity
- Level of formality
- Avoiding clichés
- Keeping your writing gender-neutral
- Supporting your statements
- Avoiding plagiarism
- Referencing and quotations
- Acknowledging alternative perspectives
- Introductions
- Summarising and concluding individual chapters
- Summaries
- Conclusions
- The mechanics of academic writing
- Capitalisation and punctuation
- English and Latin abbreviations
- Headings
- Figures
- Footnotes
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgements
- Table of contents
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Appendices
- The Research Project
- Introduction
- The abstract
- Keywords
- The introduction
- The background of the issue
- Creating a sense of interest
- Presenting key terminology
- Statement of the problem
- Purposes of the study
- Significance of the study
- Theoretical perspective
- The audience for the study
- Delimitations
- The literature review
- The purposes of a literature review
- Reading critically
- Options for writing the literature review
- How to review published papers and books
- Organising the literature review
- Synthesising and summarising major sections
- Presenting the gap in the literature
- Stating the major purposes of the study
- Stating research questions
- Stating research hypotheses
- Methodology
- Research participants
- Instrumentation
- Procedures
- Analytical approach
- The results
- Organising the results
- Using tables and graphs to present results
- The discussion
- Relate your results to previous research
- The theoretical consequences of your results
- The practical consequences of your results
- New contributions of your study
- The conclusion
- Summarising your findings
- Limitations of the study
- Suggestions for future research
- Final conclusions
- The Final Straight
- Submitting your dissertation/thesis
- Selecting your examiners
- Getting your dissertation/thesis bound
- The viva (oral examination)
- What is a viva and what is its purpose?
- Preparing for your viva
- What to expect in the viva
- Strategies for success
- The outcome
- Publishing and presenting your research
- Publishing in journals
- Publishing a book
- Presenting your research
- And finally . . .
- Appendix
- Sample table of contents (1)
- Sample list of figures (1)
- Sample table of contents (2)
- Sample list of figures (2)
- Selected answers to activities
- References
- Index
