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What does a cover page include? |
1. Title of the work, 2. Author's name (full first and family name), 3. Class / degree-course major 4. "Introductory dissertation submitted as part of the requirements for the BSc in Business Administration at the School of Business, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts", 5. Month and year, 6. Additional: a suitable illustration / picture. |
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What does a title page include? |
The title page should repeat the information on the cover page. Plus, email addresses of author, and directly after first and family name of supervisor + academic titles + business email address. |
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What does an abstract / management summary include? |
This should be a brief, comprehensive summary of your work. It is intended to allow readers to survey the contents of your article quickly. You should ensure that the first paragraph contains a statement of the topic of the dissertation and its significance, as well as an indication of the major outcome of your research. Abstracts are often placed on databases and the first paragraph may be all the user of such a database reads. Many database users will be reluctant to scroll down and read the whole of your abstract if their attention is not caught by the first paragraph. |
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What does a preface include? |
This is an optional part of a dissertation which should not include the scientific or academic discussion of the topic. This is rather the place to include personal comments. These may be, for example, on: your choice of subject, the place of your subject in your field of study, your experiences during the process of producing your work and the thanks you wish to express to those who have helped you. |
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What does a literature review include? |
In a practically oriented degree course literature reviews are often seen as “nice to have”. They are frequently described as unnecessary for the external commissioner of the work. A literature review is, however, most necessary to give you as a writer credibility. It does this because in the review you should provide a scholarly analysis of the work of others on, and relevant to, your subject, as well as a comment on the usefulness of other desk-based sources that you have drawn on. In this way you show that you are aware of the context your work is taking place in and that you have selected |
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What does a method/procedure section include? |
This part of your dissertation describes in detail how your study was conducted. You should make it possible for the reader to evaluate the appropriateness of the methods you used and therefore the reliability and validity of your results. If your study involves a piece of interview-based or qualitative research, you should explain the questions you put, the selection of your sample of interview partners, and the analytical methods you intend to use. If, on the other hand, you are doing a quantitative survey, you should describe the survey instrument you used (e.g. the questionnaire), the size |
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What does a results section include? |
In this section you should give the results of your research in such a way that they are clear and easily grasped overall by the reader. Tables, charts and other diagrammatic figures may help in achieving this. These should always be referred to and commented on in the text. Generally your results should be given in sufficient detail to support your conclusions. |
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What does a discussion/conclusion section include? |
In this part of your dissertation you should give your reasoned opinions about the results you have detailed. Everything must be justified by the results, by a combination of relevant theory and results, or by a drawing together of your desk and field research. There should be no generalizations or speculations that lack this foundation. This section should not simply reach conclusions. There must be a discussion, or critique, of what has been carried out that leads up to such conclusions. If this section involves a repetition of the results to make it intelligible, then it may be sensible to |
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How do you start a discussion/conclusion section? |
You should start this section by answering positively or negatively the problem posed in the dissertation statement, research question and hypothesis, if you included one, given in your introduction. At this point you should comment on the appropriateness of the methods you chose to use and the resultant validity and reliability of your results. |
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How do you end a discussion/conclusion section? |
You should end this discussion/conclusions part of your dissertation by commenting on the practical and theoretical importance of your findings. If this commentary is to be extensive, then it may be appropriate to adopt the order “Results and Discussion” and then “Conclusions”. Whether your comments on the importance of your findings are included in the same chapter as the discussion, or whether they stand alone as a “Conclusions” section, you should consider at this stage whichever of the following issues are relevant to your dissertation: why the problem was important and what larger issues |
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What does a recommendation section include? |
In dissertations completed for an external commissioner this may be the part of your work that gets most attention. In contrast to the reserved, conditional and relative tone of your methods, findings and discussion/conclusions sections, the recommendations part of your work should be direct and decisive. You can afford to make justified choices here. You can also feel free to choose a form which makes clear how your recommendations could be implemented. This might not be a text, but, for example, a time chart with commentary. This part of your dissertation should be kept short and the reader |
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What is key when it comes to the bibliogrpahy? |
All citations in the text of your dissertation must appear in the bibliography and all the works listed in your bibliography must be cited in the text. Your bibliography does not need to be exhaustive but rather succinct. It should include enough references to support your research and should not be padded out with items simply intended to impress. |
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What does an appendix section include? |
This is the place to include material which would disturb the flow of your dissertation if it were included in your main text. Usually the reason is its bulk. Examples include detailed tables with the raw data of a questionnaire-based survey, or a list of questions used for a semi-structured interview with the answers of interview partners so entered as to disguise their identity. Other material which might be included in an appendix includes any special computer programme used, or a statistical test that may not be widely known. If there is more than one appendix they should be numbered. If y |
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What is a declaration of sole authorship? |
It may especially be a requirement of final degree dissertations to include a signed Affidavit or Declaration of Sole Authorship with each copy submitted for examination. You should use a recognised formula for this and it should appear on a separate page of its own. |
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What does an introduction include? |
Attention: present tense (no future tense)!!. An introduction introduces the problem and why it is important ("Why is this topic worth pursuing?". An introduction includes a dissertation statement, what the aim of the work is, and introduces related / relevant sub-topics (Ex: This dissertation seeks to assess the effecf of.... A discussion of this topic naturally requires an analysis of...). An introduction also offers a research question and (if appropriate) a hypothesis of the dissertation which the followin work will either prove or disprove (Ex: Research question: "Are tighter credid condi |
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Remme
