Skip to main content

Writing your student dissertation: Some tips on how to do it well

It’s the time of year when academics – including myself - are marking MSc and MPH dissertations. Once again, I see many errors in how students write their dissertations. What are these errors and how can students avoid them to make their dissertations more readable?

  1. Spend time planning the outline of your dissertation with chapter headings and subsection headings for each chapter. Decide what key tables, figures and graphs you need to include to reinforce what is in the main text of your dissertation.
  2. Many students assume that longer words are “more scientific” and therefore preferable than shorter words. For example, using terms like perspiration rather than sweat or haemorrhage rather than bleed. Imagine if Churchill had written his speeches in this “more scientific” way. 
  3. Use shorter sentences when possible. Longer sentences are more difficult to read and can lead to the examiner missing the key points you are trying to make. The same applies to paragraphs – don’t make them too long and look for natural breaks when you can start a new paragraph.
  4. Use active voice rather than passive voice in your text. For example, “I reviewed the literature” rather than the “literature was reviewed by me”. Active voice is easier to read and makes it clear to your examiner that you were the one who carried out all this work.
  5. Remove superfluous words. For example, “based on” is better than “on the basis of” and “even though” is better than “despite the fact that”. Getting rid of superfluous words gives more space get across the work you have done and makes it easier to stay within the allotted word count.
  6. Avoid using cliches and colloquial expressions. These are not often used in scientific writing and may be difficult for some examiners and readers to understand, particularly if they are not native English speakers. They can always be replaced by other terms that are clearer. 
  7. Spelling, punctuation and grammar. When you are writing  your dissertation is not the time to be learning how to get these correct. If you need help, most universities will offer some tuition. Do these courses early in your course and also get yourself a guide on good grammar.
  8. Spend some time trying to improve your scientific writing. Many journals offer the opportunity to reply online to their articles. You can use this facility to improve your critical thinking and ability to collate your arguments. Working in a writing group can also help.
  9. Spend time reading examples of good scientific writing. Seeing how others have achieved this task can help you in your own writing. For example, read “From Creation to Chaos: Classic Writings in Science” by Bernard Dixon for some excellent examples.
  10. Check your spelling, punctuation and grammar before you finally submit your dissertation to your examiners. It’s surprising how many errors remain the text of a dissertation that could have been pick up by running the spell and grammar check options in word processing software.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the difference between primordial prevention and primary prevention?

Primordial prevention and primary prevention are both crucial strategies for promoting health, but they operate at different levels. Primordial prevention aims to address the root causes of health problems and improve the wider determinants of health. It focuses on preventing the emergence of risk factors in the first place by tackling the underlying social, economic, and environmental determinants of health. This involves broad, population-wide interventions such as: Policies that promote healthy food choices: Think about initiatives like taxing sugary drinks to discourage unhealthy consumption, or providing subsidies for fruits and vegetables to make them more accessible. Urban planning that prioritises well-being: This could include creating walkable neighborhoods with safe cycling routes, ensuring access to green spaces for recreation and relaxation, and designing communities that foster social connections. Social programs that address inequality: Initiatives aimed at reducing pov...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK Covid-19 Inquiry - The Importance of a Strong Primary Healthcare System

In my witness statement for Module 10 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, I discuss the pandemic's impact through from the perspectives of  primary care and public health, drawing on my extensive experience as a senior academic at Imperial College London and as a practising GP and NHS Public Health Specialist.  I emphasise that the pandemic disproportionately affected people who were clinically vulnerable, the disabled, ethnic minority communities and those living in deprived areas. The pandemic highlighted how structural inequalities, multigenerational housing, and employment in high-risk frontline roles exacerbated health disparities.  My statement also critiques the weakening of public health infrastructure - particularly for the control of infectious diseases - and the lack of integrated health data systems to identify at-risk groups such as the clinically vulnerable. I also advocated for a more robust preventive healthcare model that prioritises community-based primary care ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Relevance Over Recall: Rethinking How AI Uses Clinical Data

Our article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine argues that safe and effective AI in healthcare must incorporate mechanisms that emulate human judgement - down-weighting old, inaccurate or superseded information and prioritising what is recent, clinically relevant and reaffirmed - so that AI supports, rather than disrupts, high-quality patient care.  Clinicians constantly revise, reinterpret and filter past information so that only what is relevant, accurate and timely shapes present-day management decisions; medical records function as dynamic “working tools” rather than fixed archives. By contrast, many AI systems lack this capacity for selective forgetting and often treat all historical data as equally meaningful.  This can lead to outdated or low-confidence diagnoses being repeatedly resurfaced, persistent labels influencing clinical expectations, and irrelevant, long-resolved events cluttering summaries and decision-support outputs. Such indiscriminate recall...
Post a Comment
Read more