PhD Dissertation Outline: How to Develop It Successfully

The process of PhD dissertation writing is very challenging for many reasons. One of them is the necessity to work with a huge volume of information and organize numerous ideas within a dissertation.

PhD dissertation outline is an effective way to simplify the process of organizing dissertation materials. This article is about peculiarities of PhD dissertation outline writing.

A PhD dissertation outline should reflect:

• Which chapters a dissertation will have
• What the content of each dissertation will be
• How dissertation chapters are logically connected

As a rule, a PhD dissertation has 5 chapters. The sample PhD dissertation outline below is developed on the basis of this 5-chapter dissertation structure:

PhD Dissertation Outline: INTRODUCTION

• Background of a problem studied
• The essence of a problem
• Purpose of a dissertation research
• Research questions
• Significance of study
• Terms
• Limitations

PhD Dissertation Outline: LITERATURE REVIEW

You can organize this chapter in two ways:

• By chronology
• By concepts

Reflect the following issues:

• What the subject of a study provided in the source is
• What contribution a source makes to the study of a subject
• What pluses/minuses of a study you can outline
• What is significant for your dissertation

PhD Dissertation Outline: METHODOLOGY

• What general approach to study is
• What methods will be used
• Why chosen methods are optimal for your research
• How data is collected
• How data is processed

PhD Dissertation Outline: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

• Description of your actions
• Presentation of collected data
• Data analysis
• Discussion

PhD Dissertation Outline: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Summary of the previous chapters
• Conclusions on your research 
• Recommendations for future study