I was assigned this book as part of my Master's dissertation course and it has been a lifesaver. Our instructors were found of not giving a lot of guidelines, so all the structure suggested by this book was very helpful because it gave me somewhere to start. I consulted it repeatedly during the process of writing my dissertation and modeled my paper pretty closely to what it recommended.
I would advise giving it a quick read through before even beginning work on a dissertation. Had I done so, instead of waiting till my research was already underway, my work would have been much more organized and effective. And, even though the examples were on very different topics from mine, they still helped me get a better idea of what my work should look like.
A quick word of warning though, my advisor has had me change some of the things I only wrote because this book advised me to, so know that it only provides guidelines. In the end, always go with what your advisor tells you to, since generally he or she is one of the people marking the paper anyway. Still, I would have been pretty much completely in the dark without this book, so I definitely recommend it to anyone undertaking a Master's dissertation.
I can’t describe the chaos that I had when I started my masters' dissertation. What should be my research objectives? What research questions I am trying to answer? How do I proceed with my literature review, my findings, my analysis and discussion and finally, my conclusions? If you are a postgraduate student, I am sure you can relate to this. The best resource that helped me to structure my dissertation was this golden book! The book clarifies the whole Dissertation Life Cycle and the steps that you need to follow during that process. Each chapter in the book may correspond to a chapter in your research; therefore, you don’t have to read the entire book at one time. Instead, you can read it chapter by chapter according to the current stage of your research. The book has a separate chapter for each main stage of your dissertation: the introduction, the literature review, the research methods, the findings and finally, the conclusions. Interestingly, when you feel like running out of useful verbs, the book can also be very useful because it has an appendix that you can use for this purpose.
Hands down THE best guide for research writing out there. 4th Edition.
I have read this for my PhD dissertation. This book should not only apply to MA students. Perfectly set out with clear and concise examples. Repetitions just as you'd find in research writing to emphasize the most important points. Discusses, in my view, simple and obvious points about the research process that shall appear logical to most. In this sense left me with a great feeling of self-esteem while reading!
Highly recommend for those pursuing graduate studies and if i ever do graduate i will be recommending this guide to my students.
Grateful to my professor who suggested this book and said it’s a must read one. If you’ve never written an academic paper or a thesis then this is the best guide for you to read during your first semester.
Very clear, and the structured step-by-step organisation of this book makes it a great companion throughout the writing process. It got me through some really bumpy areas.
I read this on the recommendation of my academic advisor and found it really clear and helpful and it made the whole process of planning and writing my MA dissertation much less overwhelming.