After proposal approval

When your committee approves the proposal and signs the permission to register form, and you have registered for the thesis hours, you may then conduct the research activity related to the thesis and complete the final document.

Thesis guidelines

Although all of these components constitute a thesis, you can be creative in how you title and organize your thesis—depending on the advice of your committee chair.

Title

The title should capture the primary purpose of your thesis; a search of keywords should lead a researcher to your work.

Abstract

An abstract is an overview that is about 300 words in length.

Introduction

In the introduction, you will:

introduce your topic
provide a brief overview of literature you will draw on
the methods you use
clearly articulate your research question

Literature review

Here you articulate the substantive areas of relevance to your topic—such as social psychology, social movement theory, or theories of the state, etc.

You may find yourself wanting to focus on a particular area of literature within a subfield; thus, instead of social psychology, you may address symbolic interaction or labeling theory. Students are generally advised to focus on about three substantive areas of relevance.

Methods

Describe your methodological approach:

• How do you intend to answer your research question?
• What kind of data will answer your research question?
• What is your research design?
• How will you obtain your data?

Indicate your level of analysis, your hypothesis or expectations, your sample or participants, etc.

Data analysis

The data analysis depends on the methods section.  Your method (e.g., survey research, in-depth interviews, participant observation, or a content analysis) will determine how you will analyze your data.

Conclusion

Conclusions generally summarize your findings, but also note the limitations of your research.  All research has limitations by definition of the focus.  However, in addition to these, we generally discover approaches we wish we had taken in the course of doing our research.

It is important to convey these to the community of sociologists so they may anticipate these issues in their research.  Furthermore, given your findings, suggest directions for future research and/or directions for social policy or social change.

Appendix

Generally, appendices are used to share the instruments that you used in your research.  Depending on your methods, this can include forms related to the Institutional Review Board, such as human subjects consent forms or your interview guides. Additionally, it may include your:

• survey
• forms
• statistics
• templates relevant to your research

Bibliography

Be sure to consult the American Sociological Association or the American Psychological Association formats. This will include all the substantive and methodological literature that you cite in your thesis, including:

• journal articles
• books
• web pages with the dates you retrieved them

Thesis format

Review the forms on the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies website for thesis formatting.