Writing a research dissertation is one of the fundamental requirements for obtaining your final PhD degree or certification. At post-graduate university level course programmes, a dissertation is an important document that details an individual’s research on a particular topic or area of study. It consists of many components that have to be dealt with correctly to make it well-rounded and logical. Aside from following the obvious formatting rules, such a document requires some serious critical thinking from individuals. In fact, professors and course supervisors tend to encourage students to practice and polish their critical thinking skills through such research, something that comes in very handy especially when they venture on to their professional lives.

Due to its complex nature, students often tend to find it difficult to undertake or handle its different components. Work obligations, responsibilities or simply a lack of time renders them unable to dedicate their undivided time and attention to it, because of which they miss out on the chance of gaining high marks or grade. This is one reason why an increasing number of students, over the years, have started to avail assistance from dissertation writing services. The writing professionals working at the back end are not only well-versed and knowledgeable about the various disciplines but simultaneously possess knowledge about the key factors of writing a dissertation, crucial for making it successful.

Some essential guidelines and tricks should be followed if a student’s ultimate aim is to write an excellent dissertation.

1. Grasp an understanding of the topic

Once the topic for your dissertation is assigned, the first thing that should be done is to give time to understanding and grasping the topic as well as its requirements. Students often make the mistake of skimming through the topic or research question in haste due to which they fail to discuss and expand on all the crucial elements of the topic. To avoid such a situation from occurring, it becomes imperative for the student to understand the topic before beginning their work because not all topics are as straightforward as they initially seem.

2. Jot down the important points

The next step of the process should be to brainstorm and write down all the important points in the form of an outline or mind map. Creating an outline allows the student to better organise all their thoughts, ideas, opinions as well as the central points about the topic. In this way, when the actual writing process is begun all the important points that they wish to include are written down in a way that is easily accessible, allowing students to properly discuss each of the points without running the risk of missing out on important, defining points.

3. Consult all the primary and secondary resources for research purposes

A crucial step in writing a research dissertation is related to research. Research is extremely important in this regard as it gives students a chance to gather all the additional material and information by which they can prove their thesis statement to be true, in the main body of the dissertation. Students can effectively discuss or argue for their thesis statement by consulting all the topic-related primary and secondary resources such as books, scholarly journals, magazines, web pages etc. that would provide them with the relevant data such as facts figures, charts etc. by which they can give all the correct evidence. At PhD levels especially, conducting in-depth research shows the course supervisors that you are passionate about the study, within that field of research, and that you possess the potential to further the research in that area with useful findings.

4. Follow correct referencing and citation systems

The content of a dissertation has to be carefully formatted in the correct formatting system as prompted by the course in-charge. This includes following the guidelines to the exact word and also giving proper accreditations where necessary. Any information that is borrowed must be mentioned by giving its author the proper credits, be it in the MLA, APA, Harvard or any other style of citation.

Some other key guidelines for writing a PhD dissertation include proofreading and editing, avoiding plagiarism, following correct language guidelines etc. Keeping these in mind and following them would considerably increase a PhD student’s chances of having their dissertation accepted.