Hi all I have two specific questions on the thesis and needed some advice please.

1) How to do you refer to the "thesis", I have been using "project" to refer to the research, i.e. "two different methods were used in this project". However, should we avoid using the word "thesis", i.e. "this will be explain within chapter 5 of the thesis".

2) I know that we should explain the limitations of our methodology in the "methodology" section, however some of the limitations of the methodology were only discovered during when the results were obtained, therefore I am not sure if the explaination of these particular limitations should be placed in the results section instead.

I would really appreciate your input

Thanks

hey roton,

regarding the usage of terms to refer to the research, there are many ways to do this. it can vary from "thesis" to "project" to "research" as in "two different approaches were used in this research". most supervisors are not really that critical about it since those terms are all, quite interchangeable.

bout the methodology thingy, although the limitation was discovered after the implementation of the methodology, it should be mentioned within the methodology chapter and not in the result part. each chapter has its own role and the content should be consistent with this.

still, some researchers have the tendency to revisit the limitation, earlier mentioned within the methodology to discuss the outliers or erroneous data that may have occurred in the result.

hope it helps.

Thanks pikirkool, that realy helps

Often the word 'thesis' can just be left out - to use your example, "this will be discussed in Chapter 5" is just as good. I agree that referring to the thesis. within that thesis, can seem odd.

You could discuss the limitations briefly in the methodology chapter, but refer to a more in-depth assessment later on. Many people use the final, discussion chapter to present an analysis of the limitations of the research (including, of course, the methodology). This has the advantage of the reader/examiner being familiar with both the results and the methodology when they read this section; also, this assessment of the methodological limitations will share a chapter with the discussion of the positive results and important contribution to your field so will leave a good impression :))

Thanks Pootle, yes this was my thinking also, I just wanted to check that the idea of this was not unreasonable.