Q: How do I go about writing my masters thesis?
I am writing my masters thesis in the field of public health. I would like to know the order and exact steps before I start researching on my thesis.
A typical thesis should be structured as follows:
1.Summary/abstract
2. Background including a literature review
3. Objectives
4. Methodology
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. References
The organization is almost similar to a research paper, except that the thesis can be more elaborate and can be used to describe all the details of your research. Ideally, before starting your research, you should do a thorough literature search to identify the topic you would like to research on. You should then define your exact problem statement, followed by designing a methodology.
Once that is done, you can start collecting all the results. Once you have sufficient data, you can start writing your thesis. Always begin with the methods and results sections as these are straightforward and therefore easy to write. Additionally, writing these sections first would mean that you can revisit any experiments that need rework. Follow this with the writing of the introduction and conclude with the discussion.
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This content belongs to the Conducting Research Stage