Thesis structure guidelines for HGO490 and HGO4080

_{^{0) Summary and AI statement (incl. in total word count, max 2 + 1/2 pages)}}

• The summary is your chance to communicate to the reader the purpose of your study and its main findings. It can also contain a brief description of your methodology. 
• Following your summary you should also supply a brief AI statement where you detail your use of AI tools. Avoid vague descriptions. Be as specific as possible about particular tasks and procedures, and assume ownership of the end product.

The thesis proper should consist of:

1) Introduction (roughly 10%) 

• Setting the scene. Lay out the overall topic and purpose of the thesis. 
• Providing some background to your study (if this is not part of your literature review)
• Research questions. Justify the significance of the question(s). Add sub-questions if relevant, and operationalise them. 
• Reader’s guide. What is coming next in the thesis. 

2) Literature review / Theory (roughly 25-30%) 

• Review existing research. Identify what previous studies say about your topic, how scholars have approached it, and what debates, gaps, or disagreements exist. This can sometimes also function as a background section situating your study. 
• Present your theoretical toolbox. Explain the key concepts and theories you draw on, why they are relevant, and how they help you think analytically about your research questions.
• Analytical adaptation. Adapt theories and explanations from the research literature to your specific case. Show how insights from other studies and theoretical categories apply to your empirical material, and how you might need to adapt and operationalise them to make them work for you. This analytical framework will guide the structure of your analysis.
• At the end of this section, it should be clear how you think about your research problem, and how you will make the literature useful in your thesis.

3) Methodology (roughly 10%)

• Explain the choices you have made in the research design phase and why you have made them. Does your research method answer the questions you’ve asked?
• Document the empirical material used and how the data were collected, processed, and analysed (e.g. surveys, interviews, maps, archival material, quantitative datasets, etc.). Reflect on your research practice. What went right, what could be improved? Discuss your positionality and ethics. What did you learn from the process?

4) Results and analysis (roughly 30-50%)

• In this section you develop and work through the questions that you asked in the literature review by closely analysing your data and other sources.
• It is usually best to combine your results and a critical analysis of these results rather than holding them in separate sections.
• Your questions and your analytical framework should structure this section rather than the methods.
• You may want more than one sub-section here, or even write two separate, yet related, chapters. This depends on the questions you are asking and the results you have.
• Exactly how you combine presenting selected output from your analysis (quotes, paraphrases, tables, maps, charts, etc) and your own analytical reflections, is up to you. Analysis is a skill. Look for inspiration in the research literature, from your supervisor and peers, and in other MA theses on NVA – The Norwegian Research Information Repository.
• It is generally best to derive some kind of narrative storyline that organises your text rather than presenting the analysis of each interview or survey question sequentially. In other words, your data should add up to something more, not simply provide insights into the individual bits of data collected.
• Make sure that you summarise and distil your insights in a way that enables the reader to see the bigger picture, and start connecting your analysis to your analytical framework and your research questions at strategic points throughout the text (titles, segues, preliminary concluding sections).

5) Conclusion (roughly 5-10%)

• What did we learn from doing this project? A conclusion is not a summary of your analysis, but a further reflection where you draw on your analysis to state what you have learned empirically and theoretically.
• There is also room for normative reflections, political context, or policy recommendations to specific actors. This will depend on the study and its ambitions, and is not required.
• Situate your study in light of your conclusion. Try to link back to those larger debates that you invoked in the literature review, what can you say about those debates now? What further research does this work suggest?

6) Reference list

• Use a consistent style, e.g. APA 7th, for both in-text citations and reference list.

7) Appendices

• Include appendices when relevant.
• Relevant appendices could include references to data registers, coding scripts or code books, information letters, consent forms and interview guides.
• Do not include appendices that are not relevant for the academic evaluation of the thesis.
• Appendices should always be referenced in the main text of your document.