Writing an introduction for your thesis

What do you put in the introduction to your thesis?

An introduction often includes the following elements:

1. Cause
2. Delimitation of the subject
3. Theoretical and practical relevance
4. Organization description
5. Problem, purpose and research questions
6. Reading Guide

Below we briefly describe each part of what you describe here:

Cause

A clear reason explains what you want to investigate and emphasizes which relevant aspects play a role. A higher professional thesis often deals with a 'problem' within a company or organization, while a university thesis pays more attention to a 'research gap' in the scientific literature.

Tip! If you don't have a topic yet, you can find inspiration by returning to topics you previously wrote about during your studies, by consulting with your teacher, or by following the news (social trends) and recent (academic) articles. read.

Delimitation of the subject

After stating the reason, describe the specific topic of your thesis. It is essential to immediately provide a clear definition (scope) of your topic. A common pitfall is trying to research too much, which makes your research too broad and you get bogged down later.

Organization description

If you are writing an HBO thesis, it is important to provide sufficient background information about the organization for which you will conduct the research. What type of organization, how long has the organization existed, how many employees work there, what does the organization do and to whom does it supply its products or services? You then give your reader the right context.

Problem, purpose and research questions

When formulating the objective of your research, it is important to base it on your problem analysis. It is important to substantiate the problem from both the internal and external context. Many courses expect you to carry out a thorough problem analysis in order to arrive at a clearly defined problem statement. This requires preliminary research, conversations with your client and collection of relevant information through desk research. Then describe the core problem and identify what knowledge is missing within the organization to solve the problem. The goal relates to what insight you want to provide based on your research. For example, if your problem analysis shows that the organization has insufficient insight into the expectations of its target group, then that is the missing knowledge area. Your research would then be aimed at gaining insight into the wishes and needs of the target group.

Based on the purpose of your research, you can then formulate the research question and sub-questions. Depending on the guidelines of your course, these can be included in a separate chapter after the context analysis, or in the introduction. It is important to follow the specific guidelines of your program when drafting and posting the research question and sub-questions. Organizational description (if applicable)

Relevance

A good thesis is relevant, which means that the research contributes to the field and possibly even beyond. It is essential that the topic of your thesis is relevant, otherwise there is no point in conducting the research. A thesis topic can have both social and scientific relevance. It is also important that the research is relevant to your study program and to the client.

Reading Guide

Add a reading guide. In the reading guide you describe the structure of your thesis and what the reader can expect in each chapter.

Tip!: Start with preliminary research!

Especially in this initial phase, it is important to first collect as much information as possible through a preliminary investigation. Therefore, only start writing after you have collected enough information.

For higher professional education students, this preliminary research means that you enter into conversations with people within the organization. You investigate the problem and try to discover the underlying reasons for the problem. You do this from the internal and external context (inside out and outside in). You can often find a lot of information with the help of desk research and you can also use the 6W questions as a tool. Also try to read some literature. The more information you have, the better you can write the introduction to your thesis.

For university students, this means that you can only write your reason once you have read a lot of (scientific) literature on your subject. By reading a lot you understand the subject better and you can also define your subject well.

Tip: Make sure you use the correct terms

Concepts such as problem definition, main question, central research question and objective are often confused. It is therefore important to check which terms your program uses. Consult the graduation manual of your program and the associated assessment criteria. It is also useful to study previously approved theses via the knowledge base of your course, such as the HBO Knowledge Base, where more than 60,000 publications are available from lecturers, teacher-researchers and fellow students. This gives you a good idea of ​​which concepts are common within your study context.