The Process of Writing a Dissertation Paper

The Importance of  Better Organization

Writing a dissertation paper can be an odious task. To make the process least troublesome and exhausting, proper organization and planning comes in handy. This is essential in ensuring that the dissertation realizes the set objectives and produces reliable results. In avoiding incidences of rewriting your work, it is important to subdivide your dissertation into distinctive parts. Each part will entail a different task, where each precedent task lays a foundation for the following task. Dissertation paper writing could be summed up in the following steps.

Steps of Writing a Dissertation Paper

Step 1: Selecting a subject

This is most important step in the dissertation writing process. It determines the acceptability of the dissertation paper by the Supervisory Committee, potential funding, and even potential academic performance.  The subject should be chosen wisely with such factors as availability of requisite financial and human resources, available time, and target audience being taken into consideration.

Step 2: Narrowing down the topic

This entails efforts made in enhancing the focus of the dissertation topic. It demands some research on previous works to find out the various pertinent issues encompassed by the topic. In this, such factors as key issues, causes of the problem the topic is focusing on, and different opinions on the topic should be considered.

Step 3: Formulating the thesis

A thesis statement is essential as it defines the approach the dissertation paper is going adopt. The thesis statement should be formulated with the required resources in mind since they influence the validity of your dissertation paper. It must be possible to prove the thesis statement.

Step 4: Conducting a preliminary literature review

This entails finding potential sources for the dissertation paper. Sources are key to forming the background of your research and the writer should only rely on credible sources. You should take note of all the relevant sources as you move along.

Step 5: Developing a working outline

A working outline is essential in enhancing order in the note taking process. This outline encompasses different topics and subtopics that define the key components of the dissertation paper. It is important in ensuring that information collected is in line with the intended dissertation content.

Step 6: Taking notes on the dissertation

This task is quite rigorous and entails gathering the relevant information and data pertinent to the dissertation paper topics. It could be done by collecting the information and the noting down the sources and the respective page number.

Step 7: Creating the dissertation outline

This outline entails a more detailed version of the working outline. It incorporates all the topics and subtopics in the dissertation paper. The respective topics and subtopics should be grouped together to ensure that they follow in the right order.

Step 8: Editing the dissertation

This entails going through the dissertation paper to ensure that it has the right content and in the right order. Issues to focus on at this step may include ensuring that there are effective transitions, clear topic sentences for the paragraphs, and that the topic sentences are backed by evidence.

Step 9: Writing the final draft

This step involves reconciling all the dissertation paper parts into a single and typed document. Citations are reconciled with their respective references, formatting is done, title page is added, and footnotes where necessary included.