Dissertation has always been an essential part of almost all graduation, post graduation and doctoral programs in America. However, how fancy it may seem, writing a dissertation is no walk in the park. Moreover, researching relevant, unique and detailed information, following strict and complicated rules to the structure, cite and reference a dissertation, takes away from the sleep from almost every student’s eyes. However, most of all, students are often confused regarding the length of the dissertation papers. If you are pursuing an academic program in your college and university and wonder how long is a dissertation, this blog will be of great help to you. Here, you will learn the average length of every section of your dissertation and also get to know the general purpose of creating it.
What Is The Universal Rule Of The Length Of A Dissertation?
Globally, there is no specific rule on the length of a dissertation. But, it is on the academic institutions or the department of the school to decide the dissertation’s length. However, at the start of the academic program, your institution hands you the template to develop your academic papers. Obviously most of you forget it as you begin writing your research paper. Simply put, your program handbook iterates the length of your dissertation very clearly.
In the meantime, you must note that your handbook does not detail the word count that you must have for every chapters of your dissertation or for writing the research proposal. Moreover, every research is exclusive; each has its core concept, which uses distinctive words, relevant to the subject of study.
Nonetheless, after you have received your handbook you must research a few latest dissertations published in your university portal. It will give you an idea of the content used in a dissertation, how it looks like or the perspective you want to use to develop a paper. Most importantly, you must notice the number of pages you need to develop your dissertation.
Also read: Learn How To Write A Dissertation Outline In 10 Simple Steps
But before we get into the detail of how long a dissertation must be, let us clarify why should you write a dissertation?
Why You Should Write A Dissertation?
If you look from a teacher’s perspective, the obvious reason would be to test your knowledge on the subject you pursue your graduation, masters or doctoral research. However, if you change your point of view and look at it from a student’s point of view, you will find many reasons for putting all these hard work.
v Ignite creativity
Dissertations allow you to dive in the subject of your interest and solve a problem within the subject area. Your curiosity ignites as you begin the voyage to find solution and with the challenges you face while finding the solution.
v Prepare for your career
Preparing a dissertation gives you the confidence to decide whether or not you are on the right career path. While you complete your dissertation you get exposed to various skills that are invaluable to the professional world of the specific industry. You can analyze your skills and decide if you have made the right career choice.
v Turn into a better writer
While writing a dissertation you have to write on a given subject for days. In doing so, you become a better writer. Some students claim that writing a dissertation help researchers to listen to their editors, stop procrastination and enhance their grammatical and language skill.
Unfortunately, these skills will become useless, if you are novice to the length, contents, and types of dissertation.
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What Are The Common Types Of Dissertation?
Typically, all dissertations are a product qualitative, quantitative dissertation or narrative style of research. When you consider how long a dissertation is for your subject of research, try to consider your research methods that you must use to use to get an insight into the length of your writing.
How Long Is A Quantitative Dissertation?
You will notice quantitative research is a part of study in subjects like history, anthropology, theology and literature. A quantitative PhD research can be of 300 to 450 pages. However, graduation and master’s qualitative dissertation tend to be no longer than 210 pages.
The main reasons behind this enormous length are that they are developed by compiling primary and secondary information. Quantitative dissertations are theoretical studies based on your analysis and interpretation of an existing research.
Evaluation and interpretation of a literary work and its theories is a common example of a quantitative dissertation.
How Long Is A Dissertation Based On Qualitative Methods?
Qualitative research use statistical analysis for primary research. It is usually short, stretching to 100 pages for doctoral research and below 80 pages for graduation or post graduation research. They are usually used biology, chemistry, social science papers. It means that this research sticks to methods that follow a clear linear curve.
Typically, a qualitative research is based on practical studies. You may need to study various documents, images and reference books and scholastic journals to develop this paper. Hence, they are also used in writing dissertation for academic fields like economics, business, and psychology and health science.
A common example of qualitative research can be conducting a survey in a hospital to examine the impacts of entertaining activities on the residents.
What Is The Typical Length Of A Narrative Dissertation?
Narrative dissertation is very rarely used. It is based on the information collected from an experiment and presented as a story. A laboratory experiment with details from its preparation to the conduction of the research through its final analysis is one of the simplest illustrations of a narrative dissertation. A PhD narrative dissertation can be of 200 – 300 pages, while graduate or post-graduate dissertation of narrative style never goes above 150 pages.
Also Read: Amazing Criminology Dissertation Ideas for You to Get Started
How Long Is A Dissertation Proposal On Average?
Dissertation proposal is primarily a part of doctoral dissertations, presented to various corporate or government organizations for their funding to conduct the project. It is a synopsis of a dissertation that highlights the gap of the study and how you want to fill it. Find here, the average length of the essential components of a dissertation proposal.
- Abstract: 300-350 words
- Introduction – 1 page
- Problem statement – 1 page
- Research question – maximum 1 page
- Literature review – up to 7 pages
- Methodology – 3 pages
- Significance of study – 1 page
- Implication – 1 page
What Is The Average Length Of A Dissertation?
To understand the average length of a dissertation, you must understand what it contains as well. Let’s uncover the contents of a dissertation along with its average length.
Ø Abstract
It is the first part of the dissertation that helps you inform the reader about the outcome and impact of study. It should never exceed 200-300 words
Ø Introduction
An introduction allows your reader to know the dissertation background and significance of the dissertation title. Apart from that, in the introductory part, readers find the primary question and gaps and problems of your research. The length of this section must always be 10% of your entire dissertation length, approximately of 15 pages.
Ø Literature review
Here, you should talk in detail about the previous research findings, the foundation of your research work. Normally, this chapter should be covered in 30 – 40 pages.
Ø Methodology
The 4th part of a dissertation is a methodology. This section details the approach and method you use to perform research. To explain and justify your research methodologies you may need 10 pages on average.
Ø Results
It is an essential part of a dissertation that allow you to present the research findings such as surveys, tables, interviews, etc. relevant to the subject of study. It must be 5% of the total dissertation length or about 7 – 8 pages.
Ø Discussion
At this second last stage of the dissertation, you should construe the findings, implications and limitations of study. Most universities mandate including approximately 40% of your dissertation length on this section of your paper. In terms of page counts, you must allot 60 pages for this section.
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Ø Dissertation conclusion
Finally, like every other type of document, your dissertation conclusion summaries the entire research. For this section, you must never use more than 5-7% of the entire length of your dissertation. If you write a 150 page dissertation it must be of 7.5 -10.5 pages.
However, the entire dissertation is not exclusive to these chapters. A dissertation also has the following sections, though they are not included to calculate the length of your copy.
- Title page
- Table of contents
- Index [optional]
- Notes [optional]
- Bibliography
Conclusion
Hopefully, by now you would have gained an explicit idea of how long is a dissertation. However, if you have doubts regarding the length or you need help with writing, referencing, or choosing a topic for your dissertation, connect immediately with our experts.
