The preliminary problem statement should contain
- 1-2 pages of text plus
- about 1 page of references to academic literature published in “good” journals on theory and methods to be used in the thesis plus
- 1 page showing the expected structure of the thesis with a tentative number of pages allocated to chapters and sections.
The text must describe
- The problem you are going to work with and its relevance
- why is this interesting/important to the scientific community/a company/…
- an overall preliminary research question supplemented with a list of specific research questions to be answered in the thesis
- formulate the question that you need to answer in order to “solve” the problem
- what are the issues that you will need to look into to answer the research question – think about sequence in your work
- an account of the theories/researchers that will be important as theoretical background for the thesis
- a preliminary delimitation
- issues relevant for the main theme of the thesis that the student intents NOT to include in the thesis
- a short description of methodology and methods to be used
- how are you going to work with the problem in general
- what methodologic approach will be used to analyze data
- if data collection is part of the thesis, what will be your methods for collecting data?
The list of references must contain
- A number of references to literature that you can use as a starting point for your review of literature.
- References to literature on methodology and methods that you will use for planning your collection of empirical evidence/literature
The plan for supervision should contain a plan for your Master’s Thesis project. This includes milestones for your own work as well as dates for supervision and the goal for each session. Remember that a limited number of hours is set aside for supervision including preparation in the form of studying material from you in the form of proposals for data collection, reading material etc.