Forming Your Thesis Statement: What Makes a Good Thesis?

• The thesis demonstrates authority in the candidate’s field and shows evidence of command of knowledge in relevant fields.
• It shows that the candidate has a thorough grasp of the appropriate methodological techniques and an awareness of their limitations.
• It makes a distinct contribution to knowledge.
• Its contribution to knowledge rests on originality of approach and/or interpretation of the findings and, in some cases, the discovery of new facts.
• It demonstrates an ability to communicate research findings effectively in the professional arena and in an international context.
• It is a careful, rigorous and sustained piece of work demonstrating that a research ‘apprenticeship’ is complete and the holder is admitted to the community of scholars in the discipline.

At first glance these guidelines may appear to refer to the thesis, but they are really about the candidate. The first point makes this explicit: ‘The thesis demonstrates authority in the candidate’s field’. And consider the last point. The examiner has to consider whether the thesis ‘is a careful, rigorous and sustained piece of work’—but see how it goes on—‘demonstrating that a research “apprenticeship” is complete and the holder is admitted to the community of scholars in the discipline’.

[Y]our primary purpose in writing a thesis is to pass an examination. These examiners are not reading your work out of mere interest: from the above criteria, we see that examiners read your thesis to assess whether or not you have demonstrated your fitness to be admitted to a community of scholars. Because a written thesis is an examination paper, not simply a report of research findings, you need to understand what examiners are looking for when they read your work.

Extracted from Evans, D., author. (2014). How to write a better thesis (Third edition. ed.). Cham :: Springer. (Online)