PhD Thesis Writing Tips
Many students make the mistake of looking for a single universal recommendation related to PhD writing. In reality, the quality of a thesis is usually determined by a combination of multiple elements including:
- Originality of the research.
- Novelty of the findings.
- In-depth analysis of the selected topic.
- New data that has not been used in other studies and/or publications.
- Attention to details shown via thorough proofreading.
This may seem like a lot of ground to cover, which is why many students lacking the support of their tutors seek professional PhD guidance from third parties providing additional PhD thesis writing assistance. Below, you will find some tips for writing a PhD thesis that were formulated by our expert writers.
PhD Thesis Writing Tips and Tricks
1. Develop a Long-Term Plan
The sheer number of daunting tasks associated with PhD thesis writing implies the need to structure this chaos in order to make it manageable. As soon as you confirm the main aspects of your work with your supervisor, you must create a basic Gantt chart to get every phase of your project under control and make your intermediary goals SMART.
2. Expect Multiple Re-Writes
While planning is an integral first step of writing your PhD thesis, re-writes are almost inevitable. In many scenarios, you may find that you need to revise your earlier work, perform additional analyses or add some sections to your Literature Review to make the discussion of the findings more specific. Hence, you need to include these activities in your plan. Allocate several days for adjustments after every conference with your supervisor to have sufficient time for these activities that substantially improve the quality of your work.
3. Proof-Read and Revise Your Draft as You Go
While this may seem counter-intuitive to many students, it is always better to regularly proofread your completed sections rather than delay this activity until you finalise your draft. On the one hand, this type of work tends to accumulate leaving you with an unmanageable task left until the last moment. On the other hand, regular revisions of the already written parts allow you to build stronger and more coherent overall arguments as you gradually ‘amalgamate’ separate sections into a holistic narrative.
4. Do not Oversell or Undersell Your Results
While your initial expectations may be set high, not every data analysis leads to ground-breaking discoveries in your targeted sphere. Do not try to exaggerate the relevance of your findings if you feel that they may seem ‘generic’ or lack radical differences from prior research in this sphere. However, you can always improve your PhD thesis level by:
- Working on your presentation quality.
- Providing extensive descriptions of your data collection and analysis procedures.
- Demonstrating excellent reliability and validity of your findings.
- Building multiple graphs, tables, and charts to improve the readability of your results.
5. Discuss Your Strengths and Limitations
No study covers all aspects of the studied phenomenon. This puts your PhD thesis against the background of existing academic and practitioner literature as well as the body of new studies that will be published afterwards. When discussing your results and conclusions, make sure that you demonstrate how you have closed the earlier identified gaps in past research and what new areas of interest for future research you have uncovered.
How Can PhD Centre Help You?
Since the length of this article is limited, it is not possible to cover all guidelines to PhD thesis writing in it. If you want to learn more or get professional PhD thesis writing assistance, feel free to contact our agency to get more specific recommendations on how to write a top-level PhD thesis.
