Ross Woods. Rev. 2020
To track progress reports from students writing theses and dissertations, institutions normally break them into stages: topic, proposal, literature review, methodology, data collection, analysis, implications, conclusion, and introduction. Depending on the methodology, students commonly do advanced edits of earlier sections while still writing rough notes of advanced sections. For example, the student might have polished the chapter on methodology while still writing the first draft of the analysis.
Both supervisors and students can monitor progress by assigning stages of development for each section, making an array or table. The table below is a simplification, because research papers usually go through more than three drafts.
| Date of Rough draft |
Date of Developed draft |
Date of Final draft |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Topic | |||
| Proposal | |||
| Literature review | |||
| Methodology | |||
| Data collection | |||
| Analysis | |||
| Implications | |||
| Conclusion | |||
| Introduction |