Structuring The Proposal Documents of Dissertations

In the higher education system of the United Kingdom, the dissertations are documents that are submitted to support the candidatures for academic degrees of undergraduate degree students, or postgraduate degree students. Before the actual writing of the dissertation document, an important step to be performed by the undergraduate degree or master's degree student would be writing and submission of the dissertation proposal document, which is the document that presents and states a summary of the student's research goals or objectives, the proposed methods of investigation, and other important aspects of the dissertation project.

The students would submit their proposal documents to the dissertation or supervising committee overseeing the projects of the students. If the committee approves the proposal documents, the students could proceed in the researching and writing tasks for their dissertations. The approved proposal document is very important because it is equivalent to a contract between the committee and the student in which he is committed to pursue and complete the actual dissertation project. Therefore, the student should write and complete a high quality and professionally written proposal document.



Before the actual writing of their dissertations, the students would usually first plan and write the structuring of the dissertation documents. The same process would be followed as the first step for the proposal documents. The structure of the proposal document is essential because the structuring would help the student in organising his thoughts and ideas, and in troubleshooting the correct and relevant information that should be included in each chapter or section of the proposal structure. The structure of the proposal consists of several chapters or sections that are partly based on the structure of the actual dissertation project.

The structure of the proposal document generally consists of: the title page; table of contents; the abstract; introduction; literature review; methodology or methods of investigation; analysis of data or data assessment; the expected findings or results; the schedule; resources and budget; bibliography; and appendices. The student should also consider the factors in making a good proposal, which is the content, the ethics for the methods of investigation, the significance of the research, the relevance of the research, and the quality of the writing of the document.