How to write a social science dissertation: A student perspective

3, 2, 1… Start! 

Are you panicking? Is your head spinning? “How many words should I write? What methods will I use?” Ignore all of this for now. Instead, approach your dissertation systematically (a common theme throughout the whole process) and first consider this question alone: what interests you? Don’t worry too much about specificity yet. Find a relatively broad subfield of your discipline that you find fascinating. For example, economics students interested in studying the labour market may select minimum wage policies as their topic. 

Once you have chosen your topic, start collecting the literature on it. Use online, well-established journals within your discipline and tools like Google Scholar to find research papers on your topic. Reading research papers can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead, break down this task into smaller steps: read the abstract; judge if the paper is relevant to your topic; if so continue to other key sections like the introduction, methodology and conclusion. It may also be helpful to create a mind-map of the findings in your literature, perhaps through tools like VOSViewer, which can visually indicate the ‘structure’ of what academics know about your topic. 

Formulating the Research Question

So, you’ve selected a topic of interest and gathered existing literature on it. What next? Perhaps the most pivotal step of your dissertation: formulating your research question. This will be the entire focus as well as the title of your dissertation and so being hesitant when contemplating it is completely understandable. But remember, be systematic. Base your question around the existing research, and this often translates to finding the “research gap”: something that hasn’t been explored previously within your topic. A particularly important rule here is to avoid being vague. Unlike your topic of interest, your question should be specific.

Regarding the research gap, try to ‘build upon’ the existing literature, instead of asking a question in isolation to it. This doesn’t mean avoiding asking new, unorthodox questions, but instead asking yourself “how am I contributing to this area of research?” Sometimes building upon someone else’s findings can be valuable. Consider queries like how their methodology can be improved, or what other questions arise as a result of their findings. All of this will help you determine the direction of your research.

Approaches to Methodology: ‘How’ will you answer your question

You’ve asked your question, but how will you go about answering it? This task is for your dissertation’s methodology. The methodology is arguably what makes your dissertation ‘scientific’. It applies theory, data, experimentation (or in some cases, all the above!) to your question, retrieves results from this process and interprets them. This helps give structure to your conclusion and keeps your dissertation, say it with me, systematic.

Your choice of methodology is best determined by a mixture of what you’ve learnt in your classes and the methods of past literature. This is your time to showcase everything you’ve learnt in your modules, so use concepts and terminology from them within your methodology. At the same time, methodologies in existing research are equally as relevant. Ask how authors within your topic answered their questions, what was beneficial about their methods and how they could be improved or adjusted for your own research. 

Note that not all methodologies may be feasible for your question. A common example of this is a lack of available data for an empirical approach. If you find yourself in this dead-end, don’t panic, be systematic! Can you answer your question with a different feasible methodology? If yes, try that. If not, you may want to go back and revise your research question so that can be studied well given your constraints. Don’t see this as a compromise - sometimes small adjustments to your question are sufficient here, and the most important thing to keep in mind is whether you are filling a research gap or not. To prepare yourself for this stage, browse datasets for your topic as soon as possible to see if answering your question empirically is feasible or not. 

Results and Conclusion: What did you contribute? What else can be done?

You’ve analysed your data, run your regressions, argued your theories and so on. You finally have results to present. Now, interpret your results carefully. How exactly do they answer your question? What do your results mean for your topic of interest? And don’t forget to be rigorous: if there are limitations in your data or methodology, or if you’ve made assumptions to get to your results, state them clearly.

Even better, contemplate on future research in your topic: how could other researchers build upon your findings? 

Writing up your dissertation

Almost at the finish line now. Leave at least a couple of weeks to write, edit and proofread your dissertation, and feel free to use a friend for the latter! When writing, make sure your tone is academic. Avoid anything too emotional or conversational - keep it straightforward and concise, but never boring! This is a difficult balance to strike. You need to convince the reader that your topic matters and your dissertation has improved their understanding of it, but without speaking journalistically. For this, read other example dissertations and use writing resources offered by your department. These will give you examples of good academic writing. 

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Copyright: © Mat Wright