BLDE University


Basic Rules For Creating A Good Social Science Dissertation


Writing a dissertation in social science follows a pretty straightforward organization and format. You should probably still check with your advisor to ensure you find out about any special requirements outside of the standard, but you can generally follow these basic rules to ensure you create good social science dissertation:

  • Title Page
  • The purpose of creating a great title page is that it provides a researcher with all the citation information should he or she decide to use this resource in the future as well as simply give the reader a clear idea of what the work is on.


  • Abstract
  • The abstract can be thought of as a sort of summary of the entire work. It’s generally only a few hundred words long and should be written clearly and concisely so that anyone looking at the document can quickly scan the content and decide whether it will be of any use to him or her.


  • Acknowledgements
  • The acknowledgements section is the place where you should provide thanks, if any, to any person(s) or organization(s) that have been instrumental in your work getting completed. Keep this to no more than a few sentences on a separate page.


  • Table of Contents
  • With longer academic documents like this it’s important that you include a table of contents to help your reader navigate through the different sections of the dissertation. Fortunately, this kind of assignment already comes with built in sections, so you should have an easy time structuring the TOC.


  • Introduction
  • Usually, it’s good to write this section last as it’s only then that you will have a clear idea of what your document is about. This section should have two main roles: to introduce the content of the entire work and 2) to expand on what you said in the abstract.


  • Literature Review
  • Dissertations in the social sciences will mostly deal with other previously published works or studies. The purpose of the literature review is too put your work into the context of this material, demonstrating that you have conducted a significant amount of research and have found exactly where your work fits within the discipline.


  • Discussions
  • This section is critical review of your research study and its relation to the larger context of the discipline. You should always come back to your original rationale and state any limitations to your research should you not have achieved what you sought to do originally.


  • Conclusion
  • This last section of the main text is much shorter than the discussion is summarizes and synthesizes the information you have presented. Mention all the main discussion points that have come out and what it could mean to the discipline.