All You Need To Know About The Dissertation Prospectus Format

A dissertation prospectus is basically a statement that is put forth to your faculty committee for acceptance of your dissertation to receive your doctorate degree. It isn’t the same as an abstract but an abstract can be included in order to make your prospectus clearer. This is kind of a plan of what you are thinking about doing or what you would like to do. The committee is assuming you have spent the last ten years of your life preparing for what you are going to propose in this writing. They are hoping you will be presenting fresh new, enlightening information based on past research from other people. Here is the typical format of a dissertation prospectus:

  • It is usually around 3500-4000 words and the reason you are writing this is to get approval from your doctoral committee to continue with your dissertation.
  • You must present your thesis statement or what you will be discussing throughout your thesis. This has to be clearly understood and mentioned throughout this writing.
  • The committee will want to know why you think this topic is worth researching and spending your time doing. What contributions will this make to society?
  • You must prove to the committee that your work will not just be restating what has already been established but it will treat things differently and it must be stated how
  • There should be as detailed an outline of your work as possible. There is an understanding that your final work will differ but you must have some working knowledge of how you will be proceeding
  • The committee wants to know where you will be getting your preliminary research from. They definitely want to know your primary sources and how you will use these sources to bring fresh ideas to the topic. Possibly there is new information or data that changes the results from past works.
  • You may need to introduce some preliminary background on your topic so the committee can more clearly understand how you will expand upon it.
  • There should also be some type of timetable with the outline so the committee knows you have the plan worked out and a manageable time table to get it completed.

This article is basically telling the committee what questions you will be answering that may not have been addressed before and how you are going to go about doing that. For more information on this subject you can go to this website to get what you need.

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