Critical Components of a Thesis research

As per the definition given in a guide to the preparation and writing of thesis research.

“A thesis is a primary publication that describes new original research and contains information that enables peers to identify objectives, assess observations and evaluate conclusions.”

The thesis research paper is an important part of a doctoral degree as it initiates the scholar into independent research work. Since supervision is less during this part of the study it is necessary to understand the details in order to correctly structure and format the thesis. Once the entire process is outlined, it becomes much easier to implement.

A typical thesis research paper has five major critical components

1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Experimental methods or model development
4. Results
5. Conclusions

Other than these major components, the thesis research paper also includes Preparatory pages (title page, acknowledgement page, table of contents, list of tables and figures and the abstract), References and Appendices.

1. Introduction: The introduction gives a clear insight into one’s core research question i.e. one can give an overview of the problem statement and approaches of how they have been solved in the course of study. Since it is written for a wider audience it should be written in a way that it can be understood by a college-educated person. It should also be able to justify that the answer to one’s problem statement is not known from previous research and that the answer has value.
2. Literature Review: The second part of the thesis serves three main purposes, to justify one’s work, to prove to the reader that the one understands the context of their work and to introduce newcomers to the important research relevant to the subject. It is basically a survey about what other professionals have written or demonstrated about the problem that one is addressing.
3. Experimental methods or model development: This is the easiest part of any thesis because it tells what, how, why and when one has done his/her work. This section is written in the past tense as one describes specifically what one has done in past. The research design should be such that it is able to explain a set of questions like, what experiments were used in the study and what the purpose of those experiments was.
4. Results: This is an extremely important section which gives a detailed overview of what happened along with the interpretation of what happened. This chapter of the thesis should be written in a way that it is able to unfold a story weaved through appropriate figures and tables. The layout of the result part can take different forms but the basic rule is that one should follow the proper chronological order of the happenings. After the results have been presented, explained and interpreted in chronological order, a globalized interpretation of the thesis is advisable.  During this interpretation, one can discuss how the results changed compared to previous studies and how these have been able to fill the gaps if any in the literature review section and applications of these results in the real world.
5. Conclusions: This part should act as a summary of the whole thesis for the readers. The conclusion must contain a very brief synopsis of research and design, a summary of the approach used and a glimpse of the results. One has to make sure that the conclusion part is brief, crystal clear and very concise with absolutely no new information.