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Effective Library Research for Business Dissertations: 1. Introducing Dissertation Research

Online support to assist with planning and conducting your library dissertation research

Click the small arrow on the right to view this short presentation.

What is different about Dissertation Research?

The research process for your dissertation requires a different approach to other taught modules.

Rather than being guided to relevant sources by your lecturer, you are responsible for finding, selecting, evaluating and managing all your research sources.

You will be using many more sources than you will have consulted for smaller pieces of work, and perhaps different types of information than you have used previously. You will therefore need to think carefully about your approach to your information gathering.

The effective "use of research informed literature" is one of the main criteria that your dissertation will be marked on. 

Taking a thoughtful approach to your literature searching is therefore important if you want to achieve your target grade.

Plan Ahead

Don't just jump in and start searching!

Allow yourself some planning time .

Spend some time at the start of the process, thinking  about your research topic and considering the best way to manage your library research.

Investing some time in planning at the start of the research process, can make it easier to find the information that you need and will contribute to the success of your final dissertation/project.

Where to start

It can seem a little overwhelming at first and you may not be sure how to start planning your research activity.

It can help to break things down into steps to guide you

It is useful to think of these under four headings

Identify

Find 

Evaluate

Reference 

You'll find out more about these steps as you work through the tutorial. 

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