Dissertation Writing in Practice: Turning Ideas into Text

4. Drawing to a Close

The final chapter of your dissertation draws together everything you have said earlier and completes the picture for your readers. At one level it should prove relatively easy to write as you will have finished all your research and will be totally familiar with your findings: by the time you come to write the conclusion you will be the expert in the particular area you chose to investigate. At another level, however, it may prove a challenge as you will need to link everything you have said earlier with the ideas you present in your conclusion, ensuring that you address all the issues and/or questions you raised in your introduction. This chapter begins by looking at what steps you need to take to produce a conclusion that is communicatively successful. WRITING A CONCLUSION: MAIN STEPS To a large extent, the content and organisation of your final chapter will be determined by the purpose of your study and what has come before in your dissertation. However, the overall purpose of any conclusion is the same: to show how the researcher has attempted to fill the gap in knowledge that was identified at the outset of the research and to clarify to what extent the study has been successful. If we return to the analogy of the building renovation that we introduced in Chapter 1, we can see how a dissertation’s conclusion can be viewed in the same way as the end of a renovation process. We noted earlier that the Drawing to a Close 96 DISSERTATION WRITING IN PRACTICE introduction to your dissertation can be seen as an explanation of the changes you intend to make to improve a building that is in need of renovation. Before you explain the changes, you need first of all to describe your building at the outset of your project and point out its deficiencies. The main body of the dissertation consists of a detailed description of the renovations carried out. When the renovations are completed, you need to consult the list of problems that you initially noted to ensure that you have dealt with them all, in so far as you were able to. In the same way, in the conclusion to your dissertation you need to remind the readers of the initial state of the building by revisiting its deficiencies and then to summarise the information on the renovations you have carried out so that the readers can see the building in its finished state. To be entirely honest, you will also point out along the way any problems that you were not able to solve or mistakes that you made. But the story does not end there. Being an ambitious builder, you will also be planning an extension to your building, or even a new building that will be better than the finished one! And you will certainly want to tell your readers of your ideas for this future work. We can see from the above that there are four aspects to consider when looking at the completed renovation: 1. look back at the original state of the building and explain the renovations carried out; 2. stress how many of the problems have been dealt with and how the building has improved; 3. acknowledge any problems still remaining or mistakes made; 4. plan for the future. If we consider these four aspects from the point of view of the conclusion to your dissertation, we can look at them as four basic steps that need to be taken in your writing. (Compare these with the four steps you take in introducing your dissertation.) We call these steps the ‘4S’ model; this is one of the most common models for a conclusion. 97 DRAWING TO A CLOSE The following conclusion from a journal article on real estate research shows how the writers conclude their paper by following through these four steps. EXAMPLE 4.1. This study investigates whether houses located on rear-entry alleyways should sell for less than otherwise identical properties with traditional front-entry driveways. [1] The regression results suggest that the alleyway subdivision design discounts sale prices by 5% all else held equal. [2] Why? Because alleyways can attract criminal activities and greatly reduce the size of the homeowner’s backyard. [3] As well, they are often poorly maintained, unsightly, cluttered with debris and inconvenient, so many residents park their vehicles on the street, thereby creating traffic...