Creating a Structure 41
are trying to achieve. Such reports often end up forming the basis of both the in-
troduction and the beginning of theses’ cores, as can be seen in the following table.
Example confirmation report Draft thesis
Thesis title Preliminary pages
Description of research project
Introduction to the problem Chapter 1 Introduction
Overview of relevant research Chapters 2 & 3 Background chapters
Questions raised by this overview Chapter 4 Research design
Proposed research procedure
Research methods Chapter 4 Research design
Data sources and data collection Chapter 4 Research design
Research timetable
Bibliography
Notice the similarities between the two columns. After the first year, candidates
should be able to write a draft introduction chapter, complete with problem state-
ment, aim, and thesis outline; draft background chapters; and a draft ‘research de-
sign’ chapter that sets out the contribution of the thesis. There is also an expectation
that candidates have read enough to produce a reasonable bibliography and that
they can say how they are going to complete their research—that is, have a timeline
for writing and submitting a thesis in the next 2 or 3 years. If you don’t get this far
in the first year of a PhD, my experience is that you will struggle to finish on time.
As an example, suppose you decide to do research on diet in wealthy countries.
Your supervisor, no doubt, will ask what the aim of your research is, but initially
you have trouble with this question, as you became interested in diet only because
you had noticed that a great deal of food is wasted at home and in shops, and had
wondered if this could be changed. However, as a way of proceeding, you settle on
the following tentative aim for your project: ‘To establish whether consumer incen-
tives can help to improve food utilization’. Starting to write will help you to clarify
this aim, and eventually help you define the limits of the study.
You are not yet ready to write a critical review of the literature on food wastage
at this early stage. But what you can do is review the appropriate background. There
are some things that you will need to be familiar with to achieve your aim, such as:
economics of food production; mechanisms for food storage and transport; relevant
legislation; and psychology of food purchase choices. When you have read the lit-
erature and written a piece on each of these you will be far better informed about
your project, and may have revised your aim. It should indicate how you might limit
your study. You will certainly be in a much better position to, say, devise surveys of
retailers, and examine the economics of better food storage. The writing will not be
wasted, as much of it can be used to help draft your final thesis.
Thinking your way into the project like this will help you to write a tentative
structure for the first part of your thesis. Of course, there will be a big blank in the
last two chapters, which may just read ‘Discussion’ and ‘Conclusions’, but you at
least have enough to draw up a tentative table of contents.