Postgraduate Tips
Advice for writing a PhD thesis
Question: What advice would you give someone writing a PhD thesis?
First priority is to have the doctoral research proposal finished and approved by your university and supervisor. This can take a while, especially if there are questions over the research methodology pertaining to ethics, for example.
But once you are passed to move onto the full PhD research (which in the UK will constitute a 90,000 word thesis), then you should plan it as follows:
1. Start writing the literature review. This is usually chapter 2 or 3 of the final thesis. This is the hardest chapter and cannot be attempted until you are fully familiar with the various theories and previously published research informing your study.
2. Then write the research methodology/methods chapter. You cannot complete this until you’ve at least started your field work as one informs the other. This will be chapter 3 or 4 of your thesis.
3. By this time you should ideally have completed your field work (assuming your study is based on qualitative or quantitative research). You then start to transcribe and analysis the findings/data according to your research methods/methodology. This will take time.
4. Based on your work at stage 3, and the evidence you have accumulated from your field research, you now start writing your Data Analysis Chapter - the chapter detailing your research findings. This will be the largest chapter of your thesis. Important that in this chapter you examine and test your findings against the theories and research discussed in your literature review.
5. By this point you are into the final stretch of your PhD. You now write the conclusion to the whole thesis. In this chapter you must show how you’ve addressed the original research questions. There are other aspects to this chapter which are important to address but your supervisor will guide you here.
6. Finally, write your introduction. This should be straightforward, given you’ve done all the main writing and research.
The only other chapter that might get included is a chapter 2 - contextual chapter. This needs to be discussed with your supervisor. It might be the case, depending on your study, that you can cover the contextual issues in your introductory chapter.
Once this is done, and every chapter signed off and approved by your supervisor, you are left with the nitty gritty stuff to write, which is the abstract, index, bibliography/checking references, appendices, and any other supporting information required to go into the thesis. Be careful to ensure you keep a track of your references throughout the writing process.
Have the whole thesis professionally proof-read. So allow time for that.
Once is it all approved by your supervisor you get the thesis professionally printed off and bound.
You then pass to your supervisor who will send copies to the internal examiner and the external examiner. You then prepare for, and await, your viva voce (oral examination).
This may sound all quite straightforward but what I have not done is include the multitude of challenges you’ll face while undertaking this task. For one thing, I’ve no idea what those challenges will be and nor will you until you face them.
Any doctoral study is unpredictable, but whatever the challenges and issues arising, you’ll still only have a limited time to completion. Ideally, you’ll complete a full time PhD within the allotted three years.
Since 2017, Dr Stephen Whitehead has answered over 10,500 Quora questions, mostly on relationships, education, sociology, life and living, and philosophy. To date, his answers have received approximately 3.2 million views increasing at the rate 60,000 views a month. He has nearly 1,000 followers.
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