Project Summary: DISSERTATION GUIDE AND TIPS ______________________________________________________________________________ Craft an 80 page paper Chapter 1: Introduction The introduction of your study begins the body and designed to present the specific underlying problem of the investigation and should describe the implied research strategy. Based on the default position of the introduction on the manuscript, it is therefore, irrelevant to insert a heading labeling it the introduction. There are some key factors to keep in mind before you begin writing the introduction and they include answers to some of the following questions: Why is your research problem important? How can you relate your study to previous research work in your discipline? Inquire if there has been previous study reported in the area, how does your study differ from, and/or build on, the earlier work? What are the primary and secondary hypotheses and objectives of the study, and what, if any, are the link to the theory? How do the hypotheses and research design relate to one another? What ae theoretical and practical implications of the study? Ultimately, a good introduction should provide answers to all these questions in a reasonably less number of pages and, summarize all the relevant arguments and the past evidence, gives the reader a complete and firm sense of what was done and why. Introduce you research topic by providing a comprehensive history about the issue and include any citations that are relevant to help make your study stand out, and provide the reader with an overview of the topic and lead the reader to develop and interest to know more about the study. Briefly explain the rationale for selecting the topic and clearly state its importance and determine why you considered writing about it. Present the problem and state the type of research engagement describing if it is a qualitative, quantitative or a mixed method study. By stating the importance of the problem and ascertain why a new research is necessary and may resolve the need to resolve inconsistency in results of past work. Conclude the statement of the problem in the introduction with a brief but formal statement of the purpose that summarizes the material preceding the problem. Background of the study Explain the primary purpose for the study and include any citations related to other previous studies in the discipline that may add more relevance to, and legitimacy to your work. Mention if and any targets that the problem intends to resolve or address in the background of the study section. By providing a comprehensive background of the study, enables your readers to engage with your line of thought throughout the rest of your work. Goals of the study Briefly describe the main goals of your study including any citations from a previous work that would help to emphasize or elaborate on the rationale for your goals. In this section also discuss any specific intent of your study clarify what the research intends to accomplish. Discuss about the participants if any and sate the rationale for selection and carefully stating the underlying alignment to any previous research work. Gap in the Literature Carefully discuss and explain any gaps in the literature of previous work specifying what the filling the gap would accomplish for your work. To determine the gap in the literature, you need to discuss previous research in the discipline and identify what the work did not emphasize upon, or what the work failed to acknowledge. Define those gaps and then explain how your study intends to fill those gaps. Mention what the previous work did not consider and also discuss the limitations. Like the gaps, the limitation provides an avenue for the researcher to clearly understand the need for further research in the area of discipline. Statement of the Problem Discuss any alarming issues concerning the underlying problem of your investigation and provide any related or relevant citations to substantiate your argument. Reference what previous researchers have stated about the problem or comment on their findings and discuss any relationships to you investigation efforts. Research Questions Pose your questions and elaborate on the importance to address and/or resolve the issues surrounding the need for the study keeping in mind that your own research study may yield certain gaps that may also require future research. Mention the intended goals that solving your research problem may yield and what others who have been engaged in previous research on the topic or subject matter have stated to validate your points of views. Finally, list your research questions aligning them in numerical order of importance and preference. Purpose of the study Clearly and briefly state the purpose of your study keeping in mind that the purpose should align with your intended methodology chosen in order to address the problem in question. This is a good time to state what type of research study you are going to be engaged upon either a qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed method study. Justify your methodology choice for the study and cite specific related articles or previous research that would support your choice of the method you intend to use. Discuss any involvements that the study would invoke and clearly state the rationale why these are the best options and substantiate your choice be using citations from previous work in your field of discipline that relate to similar studies and outcomes. Briefly mention how you intend to collect data for your study, and state what contributions each data collected would bring to benefit your work. Theoretical Framework Theories are very important in the scientific community and they can be used to guide how your study would align with specific theories based on the type of study and the results you are seeking to obtain. Here you may need to provide an adequate number of citations that would support your framework and aligns you study with those in your area of discipline consider the strengths and/or weaknesses from previous research work that may be used to validate your study and provide insight to the readers of the research product. Provide any trends that may exist in the industry or area of study that could legitimize your need to embark on your studies a specific manner or add more clarity to he points you are trying to make. Nature of the Study Clearly explain the nature of your study in this area and determine why the study is designed in a specific way by citing other research work in your discipline that justifies your perceptions. It is important to keep in mind that a research study is traditionally design for an academic audience therefore; you should state and defend the appropriateness of your study method and provide citations if possible. Mention and support your research design and also indicate which type of sample you wish to collect. Be advised that this chapter is an introduction where you are intending to provide the prospective readers with as much information about the vitality of your work to enable and encourage them to read even further. Definition of Terms Begin mentioning each scientific term used in the introduction with an indentation and italic character, and provide a concise definition for the term to enable your readers to understand the full meanings of the terms. Assumptions State any assumptions that were made in the introduction and provide a rationale as to why those assumptions were made. For example, (I assumed that participants provided honest answers in their responses to open-ended questionnaires). This is because; participants would have the luxury to in-ardently explain themselves in their free from being restricted into yes-or-no questions which is leading in a way. It would then be up to each individual reader to ascertain if your assumptions make sense or not but you have provided a clear rationale at the very least. Limitations Clearly indicate in this section if you faced or expect any limitations in your study, briefly state what the limitations are and explain how the limitations affects every aspect or stages of your study. Limitations are a very good and justifiable aspect to have in your work because it opens room for the scientific community or academia to find gaps in your study. Keep in mind that if your research work is not read, gaps cannot be found, and subsequently the less citations of your work. As a researcher, you for the scientific community with an expectation of your work to be peer-reviewed, cited, and further researched upon to fill any gaps. However, be clear to indicate that there were no limitations if your research work does not have any. For example, a research study about unemployment about one of twenty Counties within a single state shall produce a result with limitations if all twenty states were included in the study. Therefore, your findings will be limited both in its scope and results because the one County may not provide a general representation for the entire state. Scope Clearly state the scope of your work and mention any inclusions or exclusions of the study, the boundaries of you work determines the scope and must be mentioned. Like the example above, the scope of your study make only include a certain group of people or a certain geographical boundaries that would significantly affect the results of your findings Delimitations You can comment on accepting the results for your study by disregarding any potential limitations that exist in within the study, therefore, indicating that you are taking into consideration that the results form one County for your study can authentically be generalized to represent the entire state if the research had included all twenty Counties. This is however, debatable and depends on a lot of other underlying factors within your scope and the nature of your work. Significance of the Study This section contains a discussion on the valuable contribution of the studys findings about your research topic and indicates how it addresses the underlying research problem, and clearly list in bullet points, the significance of your study. In doing so discuss what the study identified such as any structural gaps experience in the work, briefly discuss why the study is important, and state why the findings of the study can be helpful by your results or in further studies. Summary Summarize your study and indicate what major obstacles if any were introduced during the study, state all the main points and elaborate on how each section was of relevance to the work and what can be done to improve any impeding situations. Discuss how the purpose of the study explored and aspect of the study and provide examples that we mentioned or cited in the study. Explain where your data was collected and analyzed. Mention if the study filled any potential gaps or experience any limitations and those were taking into consideration to determine the outcome of how you derived at your conclusions. Introduce the content of chapter 2, indicating it is a review of the literature, and explain any significant contribution provided by a review of the literature; introduce the contents of chapter 3, indicating it contains a discussion on the methodology used I the study, and specifically state any significant contribution by the chapter without side stepping the fact that this chapter also contains the socio-demographic profile of the participants, the data collection instrument, and the data collection and analysis procedures; introduce chapter 4, indicating it contains the presentation of field data, in which you highlight the description and narrative text of your sample, and state you documented the data collection procedure for the validity and credibility of the conclusions, which appears in chapter 5; introduce chapter 5, indicating it includes conclusions generated from the findings of the study, discuss any implications of the findings to the existing body of literature, and last but not the least mention the recommendations inferred from you findings and conclusions drawn for the study since the summary section should provide a comprehensive review of your study and should introduce and summarize the inclusions of all the chapters that follows. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 2: Literature Review Just as the names sounds, a Literature review means the revision of secondary or external sources, external in a sense that you are actually going out of your private zone or your frame of work to review the work of other researchers. It also implies that by identifying literature reviews conducted provides insight into what the problem entails and may also provide evidence to support your rational and approach. Therefore, you must expect to include a considerable number of quotations, citations, and references in this section. However, the literature review section includes current knowledge, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a research study.by design the literature review is to suite the current study within the body of literature and to enable the reader determine context within the content. There exist different types of literature reviews, so you may have to choose the type of review that aligns your study and within your area of discipline. The two main literature review types are: the systematic review that is s literature review that focuses on the research questions, engulfing all the arguments relevant to the research question, whereas, the latter is a meta-analysis review that uses statistical methods to effectively curb the data involved to generate more reliable results of the study in question. One can also say that a literature review is a collection of research-based literature about specific topics that can be used for analysis to integrate, compare and contrast new literature or information. Please keep in mind that you do not get confused between a literature review and a research paper, the literature review is a reviewing of existing literature in comparison to current literature whereas, the research paper such as the one you shall be writing, requires you to introduce new arguments to address a specific subject or a problem. Although these may sound confusing, but the differences are very clear and obvious and must not be misunderstood by any means, shape or form. Be firm to articulate why you use the chosen path to address the research problem such as referencing how previous research has dealt with a similar problem as an effort to justify, clarify, negate or fill in the gaps from the prior research. State the findings of the study and include the significance of each findings explaining how it relates to or addresses the problem in question and clearly mention all literature that you reviewed as a part of the study. Literature Search and Organization of the Literature Review In this section you should clearly state how you strategically searched for materials that would support the literature for your study, studies that would definitely serve the purpose must relate to how it addresses the problem and also indicating if the review of literature shed more or any light to the topic. Clearly state in this section where the articles were obtained from including if it a library and/or other public journal articles obtained through a general internet search to provide additional information about the subject. Indicate here if you had narrowed down the research literature from the broad spectrum to suit your specific topic, which in turn be viewed as a limitation to your study that should be explained under the limitations sections. Also make an effort to indicate in what other sources were used to gather the literature material and state the percent of use by such literature. Discuss the major representative aspects of the study separate paragraphs and sections Specifically mention and explain all the major aspects of supporting factions of your study and provide any citations and references that relate to any literature that was gathered in support of the topic. These may include but not limited to subsections of the problem, supporting policies that addresses the problem, any specific areas, entities or organizations that work with or are related to dealing with the problem, any previous study and adds more strength to your line of arguments, any limitations of the current situation and related implication and implementations of the problem, any current issues that surrounds the problem that needs to be addressed to help shed more light into the problem, this is actually the broadest area of the literature review section because you shall be discussing all the various sections that deals with the topic and provide the associated citations and references Summary and Conclusions Provide a summary and the conclusions of the literature review chapter by appropriately describing and defining the inclusion of the entire chapter materials and clearly stating what the conclusion was derived from the section. Endeavor to include what efforts were made if any and stipulate how these efforts transformed the outcomes that led to the conclusions that were made. Briefly include a couple pf references here to articulate how your conclusions may be in line or at odds with a previous research in the discipline to either substantiate or show the gaps between your work and that from a previous research. Clearly re-iterate what the purpose of the study was about, identifying the types of study, the goals of the study, and the expected result from the study. Indicate if the results of the study were of any benefit to addressing the problem in question and the introduce the next chapter by indicating the content of the chapter whereas in this case it is chapter 3, that contains a description of the methodology used to approach the problem. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 3: Methodology