Writing a PhD dissertation can be the most important part of your academic career. You do not want to mess it up by making stupid mistakes. Many PhD students make several mistakes because they do not prepare themselves properly before starting their dissertating writing. They feel confused and stressed the whole time and end up deteriorating the quality of their research. This article gives you ten important things you need to know before writing a PhD dissertation.
Choosing A Topic And Methodology That Work:
The first thing you need to do before writing a PhD dissertation is to choose your dissertation topic and suitable methodology. Make sure that you find a topic relevant to your degree. Your topic needs to be both significant and manageable. You should properly discuss it with your supervisor and with your peers to come up with a good topic. Another thing you need to decide on is a research methodology. There are many ways in which you can conduct your research. Nonetheless, you must decide on a method according to your research topic and feasibility. You can look into the most common research methods and then decide which method can serve you best to get the best results. You can also discuss it with your supervisor or an expert at a PhD dissertation writing service.
Plan Your Project:
Make a proper plan for your project before writing a PhD dissertation. Making a plan will give you a clear path. You should plan the whole structure of your dissertation. Divide your project into various sections and decide how much time you will give to each section. Planning your dissertation is very important for the writing process. It will set a clear foundation for your research.
Research Your Topic:
Before writing a PhD dissertation, you need to give enough time in researching the topic. Find the key studies and articles relevant to your research topic. You might have read some journals while choosing your dissertation topic. However, you need to save three to five journals most relevant to your topic. Its benefit is that you can use their procedures and methodologies in your research. You also can get useful information for your literature. You can also borrow some interview or survey questions for your data collection. However, it is important that you properly cite these articles in your research.
Study The Dissertation Guidelines:
You should not start writing your dissertation before properly studying the dissertation guidelines of your university. Furthermore, you can make major mistakes in your dissertation by missing even a small detail in the guidelines, such as the referencing style. You have to put extra effort into improving these mistakes then. Thus, it is crucial that you spare proper time to read the ethical policy of your institution. You must need to evaluate the potential issues and methods for compliance.
In many universities, there is a preferred style for referencing. They also prefer a specific type of structure and format of a dissertation. Make sure that you stick to their preferences. Your university might have given you the criteria for marking the dissertation. You use these criteria to plan your dissertation. For instance, many universities allocate 60 percent of the overall marks of the dissertation to results. If that is the case, you must put more effort into your dissertation’s results chapter.
Understand Plagiarism:
You should not start writing a PhD dissertation before understating the concept of plagiarism. It is because plagiarism can cause serious issues for you. It is considered a high academic offense, and your dissertation will not accept plagiarized content. Thus, you need to learn how to incorporate content from other sources. You should also learn to cite them properly. For this, making careful notes is crucial. It can help you to avoid using any plagiarized content.
Make A Schedule:
Before you start writing your dissertation, it is best that you make a proper schedule. First, find out how much time you have and then decide how many hours you can give daily to your dissertation writing. For unexpected delays, you should reserve at least thirty percent of your time.
Check Your Writing Ability:
A dissertation requires efficient academic writing. Thus, you need to check your writing ability before writing a PhD dissertation. Find out the issues in your writing, such as common grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes you make. You can also get help from someone who can check your writing style and suggest ways to fix it.
Check Your Writing Speed:
You also need to know your writing speed before starting dissertation writing. This is important to make realistic plans for dissertation writing. You can record the time you take to write 1000 words. You should conduct three similar experiments to get better results and take the average amount to check how much you can write in one hour.
Check Your Analytical Skills:
The quality of your dissertation relies on your analytical skills. Therefore, checking your analytical skills before writing a PhD dissertation is important. You should first determine the type of analysis you will do and then analyze your precious experience with this type of analysis. Find your weaknesses and spend some time improving them. Consistent practice can help you best in this situation. You can also read related literature or studies. There are also many tutorials available that explain to do a different type of analysis step-by-step.
Communication Skills:
You need good communication skills to collect data by using surveys and interviews as well. You need to make sure you can connect well with your participants. Thus, you must work on your communication skills before writing a PhD dissertation.
Conclusion:
The above tips are crucial to follow before writing a PhD dissertation. Make a proper plan and schedule according to your abilities and weaknesses. Try to do proper research and develop a suitable research topic and method. Do not rush into the writing process; take time to understand all the university guidelines.
