How to structure a thesis, chapter by chapter.

01The parts of a thesis

Every university and every discipline has its own rules, so always check your program’s guidelines. Even so, most theses share these parts:

• Abstract. In a few lines, the problem, the method and the main findings.
• Introduction. The problem, the research question, the objectives and why the topic matters.
• Theoretical framework or literature review. What is already known about the topic and which concepts you will use to study it.
• Methodology. How you did the research: the approach, the sources or data, and how you analyzed them.
• Results or body chapters. What you found. In the humanities, this part is often organized into thematic chapters.
• Discussion. What your findings mean in light of what was already known.
• Conclusions. The answer to your question, the limits of the work and directions for further research.
• References and appendices. The sources cited and supporting material.

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical framework
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions

02How to build the outline in 5 steps

1. Formulate your research question

   The whole outline depends on it. A specific question, such as “how does formative assessment influence the motivation of secondary school students?”, organizes a thesis much better than a broad topic such as “assessment”.

2. Write one sentence per chapter

   Before choosing titles, write which question each chapter answers. If two chapters answer the same thing, one is redundant; if part of your question has no chapter, one is missing.

3. Go from general to specific

   First the context and concepts, then the method and finally your findings. In every chapter, readers should already have everything they need to understand the next one.

4. Balance the chapters

   They do not need to be the same length, but a four-page chapter next to a sixty-page one usually means the first should be merged into another or the second should be split.

5. Treat it as a living document

   The first outline is provisional. Review it with your supervisor and adjust it as you go: it is normal for it to change as you write.

If you can’t say in one sentence which question a chapter answers, that chapter doesn’t yet know why it exists.

03Example of a thesis outline

Master’s thesis in education. Question: how does formative assessment influence the motivation of secondary school students?

Chapter	What it answers
Introduction	Why the topic matters, what the question is and what the work aims to achieve.
1. Theoretical framework	What formative assessment and motivation mean, and what previous studies say about how they relate.
2. Methodology	How it was studied: surveys of 120 students, interviews with eight teachers and the analysis procedure.
3. Results	What the survey and interview data showed.
4. Discussion	What those results mean in light of what was already known, and what they add.
Conclusions	The answer to the question, the limits of the study and directions for future research.

04Common mistakes

• Starting to write without an outline. Pages pile up that later do not fit into any chapter.
• A theoretical framework that is never used. If the concepts from chapter 1 do not reappear when you analyze the results, that chapter is decorative.
• Chapters that only summarize authors. The thesis is your argument; sources support it, but they do not replace it.
• Conclusions that do not answer the question. Reread your research question before writing them: they should answer it directly.