Friday, 4 May 2012

Difference between Dissertation and Thesis

Students are often confused with the differences between dissertation and thesis.  Some academics believe there is no watertight compartment segregating these two, others have different opinions. A majority of universities across the globe do differentiate between a thesis and dissertation, as two different levels of educational research, whereas some universities treat the terms as interchangeable.

Analyzed from a broader point of view,  some distinct differences between Dissertation and Thesis would be observed.

    Dissertation consumes more time to get completed because it is more detailed and lengthy while thesis is completed in a short span of time since it is concise.
    Thesis work is primarily based on the secondary research whereas dissertations are based upon the original research.
    Thesis is written by students to earn scholarships. Moreover, dissertations are usually written for academic purposes.
•    In dissertation, students have to list down the major findings concerning with their topic whereas thesis demands students to conduct a hypothesis based on their research work.
    Arguments play the major role in a thesis. But students need to focus on their background research for dissertation.
    A thesis is more like an academic research paper while dissertations are usually written in form of a book.
•    Students conclude their viewpoint based on research work in thesis while major findings aid students to infer their conclusion in dissertation.
    In a thesis researcher needs to conduct a hypothesis based on the research work while a researcher needs to infer conclusion in a dissertation through the new discoveries about the subject matter.
    Data collection in thesis on the hypothetical analysis of contents must be new to a particular subject. In contrast to thesis, dissertation is comprised of theory and argumentation based on original research.

Normally, after completion and submission of thesis, master degree is awarded and after successfully submission of dissertation, students would be awarded with doctoral degree. However, in dissertation in India, students of master level are not required to prepare thesis work. At doctoral level, they need to write dissertation work. In United States, the pattern is just reverse to India.  Students are awarded master degree after successful submission of dissertation work and awarded doctoral degree after successful submission of their thesis work. 

 Dissertation India suggests that the students before writing should intricately know and understand the two different works properly for achieving success in their academic careers.