How Long Should A Dissertation Be?
A professor told me once that the chapter sizes (measured in number of pages) in a PhD dissertation should be coherent. That is, the number of pages in each chapter should be somehow close to each other (to the average). Note: This does not include the Introduction and Conclusion chapters.
The conclusions can be summarised in a fairly short chapter (2 or 3 pages). This chapter brings together many of the points that you will have made in other chapters, especially in the previous results and discussion chapter.
THE LAYOUT OF THE DISSERTATION OR THESIS Before starting your dissertation or thesis you should start by setting out each chapter, section and sub-sections. The outline of the report should clearly reflect the logical details of the book. The logical structuring of chapters, sections and.
CONSIDERATION ONE Word count issues. Most students run out of words when writing up. At the start of the process, especially if you're an undergraduate doing a dissertation for the first time, 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 words (and up) sound like a lot, but they soon get eaten up.
The key to many dissertations and theses is the need to emphasise the contribution that it makes to research. In a dissertation or thesis, it is more likely that you will have a section on the need for future research. In an MA or MSc dissertation you may like to suggest something that could be developed from your work as a PhD thesis.
Dunleavy (2003, pp. 46-52) argues strongly that - apart from the Introduction and Conclusion - all chapters should be the same length, and recommends between 8,000 and 12,000 words for each chapter in a PhD thesis of 80,000 words.
The introduction of your dissertation has to show the main problem area of your dissertation’s statement. It will be awesome if you can write this statement in 3 sentences. It should be either a catchy argument or a claim that you have to prove in other chapters. The literature review chapter. This part should be the longest in your work.