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A Story about a PhD Dissertation’s Outline I Had to Write
PhD Dissertation’s Outline: How It All Began
Two weeks ago we got a task of writing a PhD dissertation on motivating people in the work place. The first difficulty we faced was creating the PhD dissertation’s outline. The point here is that simple essay or report outlines are not applicable in the case when a PhD dissertation’s outline is required; mostly, because the complexity of both cannot be compared.
PhD Dissertation’s Outline: The Story Develops
Doing our research we realized that the major difference between a simple outline and a PhD dissertation’s outline is that for the former it is basically enough to use two levels of headings, while the latter requires a much more detailed structure. For example, a simple essay outline might look like this:
- Introduction;
- Main Body;
- Paragraph 1;
- Paragraph 2;
- Conclusion.
As contrasted, the PhD dissertation’s outline would rather be built on the following template:
- Introduction;
- Background;
- Research Rationale;
- Literature Review;
- Research Design;
- Research Questions;
- Research Hypotheses;
- Methodology
- Data Collection;
- Method 1;
- Method 2;
- Peculiarities;
- Pros and Cons.
So, you probably can imagine my situation when we realized that our PhD dissertation’s outline should follow the second example.
PhD Dissertation’s Outline: The Way Out
First, we were a bit afraid that we would not cope with it within the given timeframe but further research on PhD dissertations’ outlines proved that it was not all as bad as it seemed. Further on, we consulted our client and a couple of professionals in the area, and understood that writing our work will be even easier if we first create a PhD dissertation’s outline. So, now we are writing the literature review section of the dissertation, and if you face similar problems we advise you take the steps we took. Good luck!
