posted about 5 years ago

Hi, I am currently 6 months into my first year and hoping to draft a rough literature review over the next few months. I know that each thesis is different, but I was just wondering approximately what length they should/could be in an 80,000 word social science thesis.

Obviously it will need re-drafting in my final year – it would just be handy with my planning if I had an idea of the sort of length I’m aiming for.

posted
29-Mar-11, 11:43

edited about 7 seconds later

posted about 5 years ago

erm, I’;m just writing mine (in my 4th year!) – give me til the end of the week and I’;ll let you know. I’;m aiming for about 10-12k though.

It would be interesting to see what others have!

posted
29-Mar-11, 15:31

posted about 5 years ago

Thanks for the reassurance guys, I was getting worried. Thing is I also have a fair chunk of lit review (of grounded theory) in my methodology :$. Am actually going to suggest to supv next Monday that I drop two words from my thesis title which would then mean that I could cut about 6,000 words at one fell swoop from my lit review. It would be akin to losing a kidney but I am now mid analysis and don’;t feel that I am addressing this area anyhow. If this happens I will slot those 6,000 words into my ’;just in case’; document which is currently running to about 20,000 words.

Note to self for Monday: come up with convincing argument to drop key concept from thesis, ie bamboozle supv with strength of my thinking – yea right 🙁

posted
29-Mar-11, 15:46

edited about 18 seconds later

posted about 5 years ago

I’;ve just dropped a load of stuff from mine Ady – I think its how it reads is most important, rahter than proving you’;ve ticked all the boxes.

The stuff I’;m dropping (probably riskily) are the theories that aren’;t really related to what I’;m doing, just more generally in the field. My external looks like he will be an expert in that field, so I originally want panicking thinking I should include them, now I can’;t be bothered :p and when I really thought about adding it in I thought it looked a bit ’;shoe-horned’; and therefore will detract from the overall read (well that’;s what I’;m telling myself!)

posted
29-Mar-11, 15:56

edited about 3 seconds later

posted about 5 years ago

Optimal length of chapters can be sometimes discerned by dividing word count by number of chapters–so that you know in an 80,000 word thesis for example, with six chapters, you would have approximately 13,000 words per chapter.

That can be used as a rough guide–and rough guide only of course. Remember that editing can bring word count down by one-third. As well, for many people the lit review is both the first and last thing that they write. You may find by the time you are wrapping up your research that some of the first literature review is no longer relevant, other parts out of date, other parts need to be added in.

I tried to keep draft chapters in check to around 10-15,000 words as I went, knowing I would and could edit it downwards in writing up.

Different people have different views of course, but my own personal view is/was it is always easier to cut words than to add–so it was no problem when I had to cut words.

As said, a briskly applied editing system takes your word count down by a third or so!

posted
29-Mar-11, 16:15

posted about 5 years ago

I was told throughout the process that whatever I wrote in the 1st 2 years wouldn’;t be included in my final thesis – although it would help. I’;m not sure if that was really useful advice and I wish I had written ’;finished’; chapters sooner. However, what I did do was write about 45000 words of literature – about 5-7k words on each major topic.

I am now in the process of slimming that down. The reviews I did are amazing though – I am literally cutting and pasting sections and then making them read properly, rather than trawl through journals 🙂