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Problem Statement and Plan for Supervision

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.

Last Updated 28.02.2024