How do you tie your dissertation together?

Hello, my friend,

 It’s Maria.

 

One of the most frequent answers to my question “What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to dissertation writing?” is “piecing together” different parts of dissertation, organizing chapters, and combining different experiments in a logical way.

 

If you struggle with building logic and tying together different chapters or essays that your dissertation is comprised of, then you need to clarify your research goal and your message.

 

How do you do that?

 

Well, what is your main research question? What kind of problem are you trying to solve with your dissertation? And what is your major “why”?

 

Start with the issue or problem leading to a need for your research. Why does this specific study need to be conducted? What contribution will your dissertation make to resolving this issue? Who will benefit from your study and in what way?

 

This could be a real-life problem, a deficiency in literature on your topic, or a need to explore a certain topic more in depth.

 

Then, once you define your research problem, you will want to formulate the purpose of your study.

 

Being clear on one major issue that you are trying to solve and on the objective that you are willing to reach, will help you organize your dissertation around this central axis and pull its different parts together.

 

 

I’ll give you two examples:

1. From political science 2. From mechanical engineering.

 

And if you are not a political scientist or an engineer, neither am I. But keep reading, because you will see how the authors of the studies I’m about to discuss managed to make their research captivating and accessible to wider audiences, and how you can do that too. These academic authors figured out how to tie everything together in one powerful conceptual knot, which allowed them to capture their readers’ attention from the very beginning.

 

1. My first example is an excellent book by Barbara Walter (professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego) “Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars.” The book, first published twenty years ago, was based on Barbara Walter’s PhD dissertation, and is a really fine example of scholarly prose. If you are in the social sciences, I highly recommend that you check out this book to see how the author builds her argument and organizes the book structure around her central concepts.

 

So how does Barbara Walters tie everything together? Here’s how. The very first sentence of her Introduction (and her entire book) is her main research question: “Why do some civil wars end peacefully, while others are fought to the finish?” followed by a few examples.

 

Take action. Have you considered making your main research question an opening sentence of your dissertation? Why don’t you try it as an exercise?

 

By the way, I get questions from my people all the time on how to write an Introduction to your dissertation. My advice is that if you are in the social sciences, follow Barbara Walter’s lead! The key parts that she includes in her Introduction are: The Puzzle, The Argument, Current Theories of Civil War Resolution, Research Methods, and How the Book Is Organized. That’s an excellent way to write an Introduction to a book-size research project. That’s how she makes the burning issue at the center of her book, her main argument, and her book organization, clear and transparent to her reader from the start.

 

 

Significance of the study (the big “why”):

One would say that the significance of Walter’s study is self-evident. But she makes you think that way, first, when you read the title of her book and, second, when you read the very first page of her Introduction.

 

Her title contains a promise to solve a major theoretical and real-life problem: find out the conditions under which successful settlements of civil wars can be reached.

Next, in the Introduction, she offers her solution: a reconceptualization of the resolution of civil wars as a three-step process: 1. Negotiations 2. Agreement, or compromise 3. Implementation of the peaceful agreement. This three-phase theory is a significant theoretical step forward in research on civil war settlements.

 

Take action. And what is your dissertation title? Does it refer your readers to a problem that you are seeking to solve in your study? If not, can you reformulate it that way?

 

[The conditions under which successful settlements of civil wars can be reached are rapidly becoming central to both policy and theoretical concerns. Barbara Walters offers reconceptualization of the resolution of civil wars as a three-step process: 1. negotiations 2. Agreement, or compromise 3. Implementation of peaceful agreement.]

 

Problem:

“The biggest challenge facing civil war opponents at the negotiating table is not how to resolve disagreements over land reform, majority rule, etc. The greatest challenge is to design a treaty that convinces the combatants to shed their partisan armies and surrender conquered territory. When groups obtain third-party security guarantees, - Walter argues, -they will implement their settlement.”

 

The aim of the study: 

 

 

2. My second example is from the Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science. It’s quite an eye-opening publication on the fuel system of marine diesel engines by Liyun Fan, Liming Wen, et al., titled “Research on the correlation between fuel injection quantity and key structural parameters for the fuel system of marine diesel engines.”

 

You may wonder why you’d need to know anything about the fuel system of marine diesel engines if you are not a researcher in the field. But you can tell that the authors of the publication have anticipated your question and answered it in the very first sentence, thus making their work accessible and appealing to a wider audience than just specialists in the field.

 In the opening paragraph, they state the significance of their subject not just for mechanical engineering, but for the development of the modern world in general. Then they clearly state the research problem which arises from a conflict between the diesel engines’ design and the modern energy crisis. The burning problem asks for a well-researched solution, which leads the authors to describing their research purpose.

 [(then they show what is threatening to disrupt the big role that this technological advancement, diesel engines, plays in today’s society.)

 

Significance of the study:

“Diesel engines, playing an important role in the development of modern society, have been widely used in many fields because of the advantages, such as high thermal efficiency, good economy, high reliability and wide power range.”

Problem:

“However, the development of modern diesel engines is facing a huge challenge under the dual pressure of energy crisis and environment pollution. On the one hand, the petroleum used in diesel engines is non-renewable energy. On the other hand, the emissions produced during the operation of diesel engines contain many harmful components, which causes serious environment pollution.”

 Research purpose:

Therefore, both “the performance and fuel consumption for the diesel engines must be improved.”

 

The authors also explain why they focus on the large marine engines in particular. The literature on diesel engines is abound. However, there is a gap in literature on the marine engines, even though they cause greater pollution to the environment than the smaller engines.

 

So, to recap, here is how the authors make their case: 1) The significance of the study, 2) The problem, or the disruption to technical progress, and 3) The purpose of their study. Then they offer their model, describe their experiments, and, in conclusion, share their results that help prove their case.