ucl msc dissertation guidelines

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Further help

Your dissertation or research project will almost certainly require a search for literature on your topic, whether to identify selected research, to undertake a literature review or inform a full systematic review. Literature searches require planning, careful thought about what it is you wish to find out and a robust strategy to ensure you find relevant material.

On this page:

Planning your search.

• Search techniques and developing your search strategy

Literature reviews

Systematic reviews.

Time spent carefully planning your search can save valuable time later on and lead to more relevant results and a more robust search strategy. You should consider the following:

• Analysing your topic and understanding your research question: Carry out a scoping search to help understand your topic and to help define your question more clearly.
• What are the key concepts in your search?
• What terms might be used to describe those concepts? Consider synonyms and alternative spellings.
• If your question relates to health or clinical medicine, you might like to use PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcomes) to analyse your question:
• Combine your concept terms together using the correct operators , such as AND and OR.

See our Library Skills Essentials guide for support materials and guidance for planning your search, including understanding and defining your topic, and defining search terms.

Search techniques and developing a search strategy

Make sure you are confident about using essential search techniques,  including combining search terms, phrase searching and truncation. These will help you find relevant results on your topic. See our guide to search techniques:

• Search techniques

When carrying out a literature search to inform a dissertation or extended piece of research, you will need to think carefully about your search strategy. Have a look at our tutorials and videos to help you develop your literature searching skills:

• Search skills for research: tutorials and videos

When you carry out a literature search you may need to search multiple resources (see  Sources and Resources ). Your search strategy will need to be adjusted depending on the resource you are using. For some resources, a simple search will be sufficient, whereas for more complex resources with more content, you may need to develop a sophisticated search strategy, ensuring you use the correct search techniques for that resource. See our guides to selected individual resources for further guidance.

• Search guides to individual resources: bibliographic databases
• What is a literature review?
• Why are literature reviews important?

We also provide support for developing advanced search strategies to ensure comprehensive literature retrieval, including searching for systematic reviews. See our guide to Searching for Systematic Reviews.

• Systematic reviews This guide provides information on systematic review processes and support available from UCL Library Services.

See our library skills training sessions or contact your librarian .

For general enquiries, see Getting Help and contacting us .  

Get help and advice with literature searching

• You can email your librarian direct to ask for advice on your search.
• You can also book a virtual appointment with your librarian for more in depth enquiries.
• Email your librarian to request an appointment or fill out our  individual consultation request form .
• Find your librarian
• Find your site library Another way to find your local team.

Literature searching training sessions

• View our full calendar and make a booking

Search Explore

Check out our Explore guide to find out more about how to use Explore for your research.

• Explore guide
• << Previous: FAQs
• Next: Sources and resources >>
• Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 6:08 PM
• URL: https://library-guides.ucl.ac.uk/dissertations

🎉  Welcome Week is almost here... Welcome 2024   🎉

Make a social impact with your research and study skills!

Are you looking to use your research and study skills to make a positive impact on the community do you want to do more with your time at ucl, meet cris - the community research initiative for students.

We are the Community Research Initiative for Students and we’re here to help you use your research and study skills to make a positive social impact. Acting as a bridge between research and the voluntary and community sector, we empower students to engage with different forms of knowledge and research practices than you might be taught in the classroom.

Why do we do this?

Well, we firmly believe that research needs to be done differently and involve different voices and perspectives – not just the university community. The voluntary & community sector is grounded in social issues, often the same as researchers, but with a totally different perspective and expertise so imagine bringing the perspectives and skills together?!

Our mission is to show you a new way to use your research and study skills that will make your time at UCL more meaningful, societally useful, and enjoyable!

Students tell us working with CRIS makes their time at uni more exciting and gives them a real sense of belonging at UCL and here in London. Students also have said that they learn valuable skills in cross sector working, consultancy, project management, and creative problem solving that have benefited them in their future career endeavours.

How can I get involved?

Our initiative has tons of ways for you to get involved. Whether you're an undergraduate or you're working on your PhD, we have opportunities for you to

Put your academic skills to work  outside of the classroom  by conducting research for charities, community groups and non-profits on a voluntary basis. During your studies, you will have developed a myriad of research skills: critical thinking, reading widely and consolidating new information, managing data, presenting information, problem-solving.

Together with our charity partners, we've created volunteering opportunities where you can  hone these research skills through engaging with real world problems . While you can gain cross-sector experience, the charities receive valuable research and evaluation to back up their important work. It's a win-win!

Click here to out all of our research volunteering opportuntities to get started.

A core feature of the Community Research Initiative is the opportunity to carry out a collaborative dissertation project.

Through this collaboration, you will partner with voluntary & community organisations or community groups . You will plan and carry out a research project that will benefit the organisation and serve as your dissertation project! 

We have several ways for you to find a community partner that connects with you and your research goals. You can choose from existing ideas, submitted by our community partners, through our   Community Noticeboard  or we can approach community partners on your behalf -- this is our  brokering service .

Click here to take the first step toward a community engaged dissertation project

Our research consultancy training programme and Pro Bono Research Service is one of our most popular ways for doctoral students to use and develop their skills in consultancy while creating a real impact on the voluntary sector in London! 

Our Pro Bono Research Service offers community or nonprofit organisations a chance to sit down with our knowledgeable doctoral students to co-create solutions for their research and evaluation needs.  Our doctoral students work to set a research brief and leave organisations with a succinct proposal that will be posted to our UCL Volunteer directory to be taken up by a UCL student volunteer! Consultants can also choose to take up evaluation projects with our partner organisations.

Click here to check out our upcoming trainings to get involved with the programme

Want to see our students showcasing their amazing work?

Our Community Research Initiative Showcase gives our students and organisations the space to share and celebrate their collaborative work from each year. If you are looking for inspiration, want to see what we're all about, or want to learn more about the local community research intiatives taking place in London check out our latest recap

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Thesis Template for University College London

UCL Thesis LaTeX Template © Ian Kirker, 2014

This is a template/skeleton for PhD/MPhil/MRes theses. It uses a rather split-up file structure because this tends to work well for large, complex documents. We suggest using one file per chapter, but you may wish to use more or fewer separate files than that. We've also separated out various bits of configuration into their own files, to keep everything neat.

Downloaded from https://github.com/UCL/ucl-latex-thesis-templates

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