How To Be Brief When Writing A Dissertation Introduction

A Ph.D. is the pinnacle of an academic career. This degree, which takes years of work, research and learning to achieve, is not received by everyone but the few. This degree takes years of work to get too but once you become a candidate for one, you are faced with another challenge: the dissertation. Dissertations are long papers, almost novels in length sometimes, which hold all of what you have learned in your field and set the stage for the rest of your career life. These papers are extremely important and must be well written and formatted. One of the things that help your paper turn out better is a brief introduction instead of dragging it on for too many pages boring the reader. Below are a few tips to help you keep your introduction brief so your paper can be all you want it to be.

How to be brief with your introduction

Your introduction consists of many different parts, by identifying these parts and writing each in a brief but educated manner you can put them together to create a brief but well-written introduction. The different parts are as follows.

• The first part is the introductory paragraph which should be one or two paragraphs to identify the general field of interest and should end with a sentence to identify what the study will accomplish.
• The background of the problem is to identify research in this area and any conflicts, loss of knowledge and other such things. This part leads to the statement of the problem, where you identify for the readers where there is a gap of knowledge that your study can fill. This part should be two to four pages long, most of it being the background of the problem with a few paragraphs of the statement of the problem.
• The next few paragraphs are to help identify the purpose of this study you do, meaning, population whether random or non-random, quantitative and qualitative values and other such things. This leads to the significance of it, which means how it would affect human life, what would it impact most, things of that nature. This section should be four to six paragraphs.
• The next section would be the research questions, what you are asking in your study. These questions can be identified and explained in four to five paragraphs. Following this is the identification of the hypothesis. This should take no more than two paragraphs.
• The next section is a summary of your research design that will be explained in detail later. This section shows how you are going to go about the research, the tools used and things of that nature. This section should be about one to three pages long. After this is a section where you identify the framework for your study, meaning a theory upon which your research is based. For example, if you are doing a paper on a new species and how it evolved from another, you would go back to Charles Darwin’s theory.
• The next area is the limits, meaning what limits does the dissertation have as posed by the researcher. You can also discuss the scope, which means what areas it affects and how far reaching is the study. This section should be 1-3 pages in length.
• Last but not least you have your definition of terms and your summary. This is the easiest and simplest step of your introduction. You can write this part in one to two pages completing your introduction.

By writing the different parts of the introduction within these basic paragraph and page frames, you can ensure your introduction is brief but filled with all the information needed to be considered a great introduction.