Thesis and Final Dissertation: The Different Steps

If you are a master's or bachelor's student, you won’t escape writing a thesis or final dissertation. This exercise often requires conducting a market study. But when should you do it? Overwhelmed and stressed, students often miss steps and get tangled up. Through this article, we help you follow a logical and efficient plan to complete your work without rushing or messing up.

The different steps of a thesis or dissertation :

Identifying a research topic and an objective

To begin with, your first mission is to identify a research topic and an objective, such as solving a company's problem, developing a concept, or contributing to theory. The key is to choose a motivating topic! We strongly recommend picking a subject that genuinely interests you, as this will determine whether your hours of work will be a horrible ordeal, a burden, or simply a constraint... Think about it as early as possible—ideally from the start of the academic year. The sooner you start, the better.

Defining your research question

Once the topic is identified, you can move on to defining the research problem. There has to be a problem, otherwise, no research would be necessary. To do this, you need to gather information: go into the field, ask professionals about the issues they encounter, review the literature, etc. Make sure there are enough scientific sources available on your chosen subject! Ask yourself: "Are there aspects of your topic that catch your attention?", "Are there reflections you’d like to explore or update?", "Is there a new perspective you want to approach?" This exploratory step is essential as it allows you to construct the problem and ultimately define your research question.

Building an analytical model

This third phase answers the following questions: "What type of data will I collect?", "How will I collect my data?", and "How will I analyze my data?" In your thesis, you can use existing theoretical data found in libraries or online, for example. But you can also choose to generate your own data. The empirical part of your work consists of research conducted by you and complements the theoretical part.

Collecting and analyzing data

Time for action! Collect your data and present them. In the empirical section of your thesis, this often means conducting your own quantitative or qualitative study. Then, your analytical skills will be put to the test. A thorough interpretation and analysis of the collected data will be required to confirm or reject the hypotheses answering your research question.

Concluding

The conclusion includes several parts. You will be able to take a step back and discuss the results you obtained. Highlight the main ideas that should be retained from your work. Also, talk about the implications of your research, the limitations you encountered, what you could have done differently, or a part of your thesis you could have explored further. In short, this is the stage where you critically assess and synthesize your entire work.