A Master’s thesis is a main student project, it’s time and efforts consuming, it requires a frequent and stable attention, and a clear vision of what has to be done. Here are lessons and tips that I’ve opened for myself while writing the thesis.

TOP 3 LESSONS

1) The world of the science has been unclear until I’ve revealed a research gap. Before I’ve done it, any topic that I’ve chosen has been too broad, and even professors’ advises have sounded too distant.

2) As soon as I’ve structured my thesis and its theoretical part, I’ve realized what I’ve been doing and what is the meaning of the study.

3) It is easy to mix up a research methodology, research methods, and a research design in a thesis, however all these things are  very different.

TOP TIPS FROM LESSONS

1) Research gap is something that comes from your literature overview. The hint is that a research gap should be detected and proved by other researchers in a field of your study, so that you can rely not only on your judgement of what kind of gap you’ve found by yourself while reading a literature but also on a fact  that stems from an academic research.

2) A typical structure of a thesis is usually known and provided by schools, but what is a structure of your thesis particularly? A challenge is to create kind of a story in academic language with a logically structured text. So that, every single chapter is an independent unit but also is a sequel of a previous chapter.

Particularly, each chapter should answer to the question “why it is important to include this information in the thesis?”. Remember that a pathway is to go from a broad scope to a narrow line with a focus. It has reminded me a proof of a theorem:  you should prove why the things that you propose are true.

3) I found a nice easy-to-read book that explains a difference between a research methodology, research methods, and a research design. It’s available on Books24x7 site: Ng, Wilson & Coakes, Elayne. (© 2014). Business research: enjoy creating, developing and writing your business project. After I’ve read the Chapter 2, everything concerning the design/tailoring of the thesis became clear for me.

Hope, it helps  you in detailing your thesis! Next time I’ll write more about overcoming difficult points during writing and provide some helpful strategies to clarify the thesis structure! Good luck!