A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author’s research and findings. In some contexts, the word “thesis” or a cognate is used for part of a bachelor’s or master’s course, while “dissertation” is normally applied to a doctorate, while in other contexts, the reverse is true.
The term “thesis” is also used to refer to the general claim of an essay or similar work.
A thesis (or dissertation) may be arranged as a thesis by publication or a monograph, with or without appended papers, respectively, though many graduate programs allow candidates to submit a curated collection of published papers. An ordinary monograph has a title page, an abstract, a table of contents, comprising the various chapters (e.g., introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion), and a bibliography or (more usually) a references section. They differ in their structure in accordance with the many different areas of study (arts, humanities, social sciences, technology, sciences, etc.) and the differences between them. In a thesis by publication, the chapters constitute an introductory and comprehensive review of the appended published and unpublished article documents.
Dissertations generally report on a research project or study, or an extended analysis of a topic. The structure of a thesis or dissertation explains the purpose, the previous research literature impinging on the topic of the study, the methods used and the findings of the project. Most world universities use a multiple chapter format :
* a) an introduction, which introduces the research topic, the methodology, as well as its scope and significance;
* b) a literature review, reviewing relevant literature and showing how this has informed the research issue;
* c) a methodology chapter, explaining how the research has been designed and why the research methods/population/data collection and analysis being used have been chosen;
* d) a findings chapter, outlining the findings of the research itself;
* e) an analysis and discussion chapter, analysing the findings and discussing them in the context of the literature review (this chapter is often divided into twoanalysis and discussion);
* f) a conclusion.
In some contexts, the word “thesis” or a cognate is used as part of a bachelor’s or master’s course, while “dissertation” is normally applied to a doctorate, while in other contexts, the reverse is true.
At most universities, dissertation is the term for the required submission for the doctorate, and thesis refers only to the master’s degree requirement. In the US, these committees usually consist of a primary supervisor or advisor and two or more committee members, who supervise the progress of the dissertation and may also act as the examining committee, or jury, at the oral examination of the thesis (see below). The examination board often consists of 3 to 5 examiners, often professors in a university (with a Masters or PhD degree) depending on the university’s examination rules.
Required word length, complexity, and contribution to scholarship varies widely across universities in the country. The academic dissertation for a PhD is called a dysertacja or praca doktorska. The submission for a Habilitation, which is an academic qualification, not an academic degree, is called Habilitationsschrift, not Habilitationsarbeit. PhD by publication is becoming increasingly common in many fields of study[citation needed]. A doctoral degree is often earned with multiple levels of a Latin honors remark for the thesis ranging from summa cum laude (best) to rite (duly).