I'm taking a break from writing up to put my PHD appendices together and I'm a bit uncertain. With all of the information sheets, protocols and the data analysis sections, my appendix is going to bigger than the actual PhD. Surely that's wrong? I could be acting dumb, but I'd have thought all this stuff has to go in?

I'm not surprised that the appendix is bigger than the thesis - for my MSc dissertation there was so much SPSS that I downloaded it to a cd and provided that otherwise there would have been nearly a thousand pages in the appendix. Why don't you take a look at some theses in the library and see what they are like?

I used a CD as well because I had built massive databases in my PhD, 2 million characters worth. I explained the format of the databases and how I queried them in a conventional page-by-page Appendix 1. Then Appendix 2 was an electronic Appendix on the enclosed CD. My examiners never looked at the CD as far as I know, but it was there for them if they wanted to. And I was also advised that including the database helped to make my thesis look a bit more substantial.

Thanks, Bilbo and Jepson. I've taken a look at quite a few other thesis and the appendices in those are really quite short - just ethical approval letters, info sheets and the like. I'm thinking that I might just do that and then have all the raw data and analyses, for the different stages of my research on a CD.

my supervisor put the whole of his methodology in an appendix in order to meet the word count - on the other hand one of the others here had a 2 volume thesis, but I think it was when there was no word linit. I've put part of the discussion of my methodology in an appendix, in order to keep the word count within reason, super wanted an elaboration, but I had no words left for that section. there is also a lot more to go inthe appendix and I think it could easily reach the same word count as the rest of it.