Different types of dissertations
Do all dissertations look the same?
Video clip transcript:
Kevin Bonnett, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Development and Society: I think when students look ahead to doing dissertations, perhaps when they first start it, the word limit looks like this very frightening huge thing.
“How on earth will I be able to write this much on this topic?” And then about three quarters of the way through, they think,
“How on earth can I write this little about this topic, because I’ve done all this work, I’ve got all these stats and notes on these interview schedules”? And so on. “How on earth am I going to get them in here?”
Dr Malcolm Todd, Senior Lecturer in Sociology: So often, there will be an introduction to write - a literature review - a methodology chapter - findings - conclusion - bibliography - appendices and so on and so forth. And I think one of the problems students often have is actually conceptualising the amount of time that each part or portion of the dissertation will take to produce. So one of the things I do with students is produce a timeline in which they can work towards.
Shawna McCoy, Lecturer in Criminology: And the best way to do a timeline is to start from the day the dissertation is due and work your way backwards and not work forwards. And what it does is it gets you to start realising when you need to have drafts completed, when you need to have primary and secondary research completed, when you need to have done all of the reading - and it moves you backwards. Especially when you are working with the supervisor and you are looking for the supervisor to provide you with guidance and support in relation to the draft chapters that you are doing, it is very important that you give time for the supervisor to look at the work that you are doing. So you need to put that into your timeline. So if your dissertation is due 29th April, you can't finish the dissertation on the 20th and expect your dissertation supervisor to be able to give you feedback. You should have it done the month before. You should have chapters done two to three weeks before you want them finished and then give them to the supervisor so that they can give you feedback.
Kevin Bonnett, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Development and Society: And that actually makes the dissertation much more manageable because you haven’t got to have a great theme - have a great set of conclusions simultaneously with finding bits if evidence - finding bits of crucial literature searches and so on. You can divide it into chunks. It's probably good at an early stage to a have a very schematic chapter or set of chapters because it means that some of those chapters are doing a different set of jobs from the others and that means that you can get some of them under your belt. So that students can actually do the core literature search in one chunk, or can do a core piece of methodological work in another chunk. In another chunk again, you could reflect on your choice of methodology and research question. That’ll be an important chunk. So the role of the supervisor is to encourage the student to break it up into manageable pieces, and to take a different approach and step through systematically.
Shawna McCoy, Lecturer in Criminology: You need to write something down in order to determine whether it is relevant. And sometimes you will write something and at the end of the day you will not use it at all. But that actually is a very important part of the process; recognising what you don’t need to say because it is not relevant or it's not necessary.
Christopher Christopher-Dowey, Principal Lecturer in Criminology: And bear in mind that what you write at the start won’t be used in the final dissertation. Even if it might not be very good, it gets you into the practise of writing and revising and screwing up bits of paper - throwing away floppy discs. Just start writing and use that as a vehicle for exploring different ideas and the limitations of what you are doing. And you will do it bit by bit.
Kevin Bonnett, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Development and Society: And you’ll say right this is the bit where I did my literature review and I’ll give myself a target of 3000/2000 words, or whatever is appropriate for the literature review. This maybe your first crack at the literature review. It will be longer than 3000/2000 words and too wordy and you need to distil it and in the process of distilling it, you’ll tighten up your argument and tighten your understanding. But of course there is an assumption that you have the luxury of time and organisation to do more than one draft with different sections. If you don’t give yourself this time you’re in trouble and then it becomes less manageable. If you do give yourself time you will have the satisfaction of producing something really good because you will have distilled it - you will have tightened it up and you will have got it within the word limit.