PhD Discussion Forum

Hi, I am currently 6 months into my first year and hoping to draft a rough literature review over the next few months. I know that each thesis is different, but I was just wondering approximately what length they should/could be in an 80,000 word social science thesis.

Obviously it will need re-drafting in my final year - it would just be handy with my planning if I had an idea of the sort of length I'm aiming for.

Thanks

Mine is 12,000

Ady, Don't worry as I've still to expand on mine and anticipate it being around 22,000 +

The one thing I am confident about is the quantity of my literature review is necessary so that everything is covered but I'm breaking it down into two chapters and haven't even started the other!

actually yes, I've written an 8,000 methods chapter and you could perhaps say that about 5000 of that is another lit review, just focusing on theoretical approaches rather than the actual findings if that makes sense.

Mine is in two chapters as well.
One (conceptual framework) around 7000 words, and one (main literature review on my subject) around 8000 words.
I'm in the social sciences as well, and my max is 80,000 words

Thanks for the reassurance guys, I was getting worried. Thing is I also have a fair chunk of lit review (of grounded theory) in my methodology :$. Am actually going to suggest to supv next Monday that I drop two words from my thesis title which would then mean that I could cut about 6,000 words at one fell swoop from my lit review. It would be akin to losing a kidney but I am now mid analysis and don't feel that I am addressing this area anyhow. If this happens I will slot those 6,000 words into my 'just in case' document which is currently running to about 20,000 words!!

Note to self for Monday: come up with convincing argument to drop key concept from thesis, ie bamboozle supv with strength of my thinking - yea right :-(

Optimal length of chapters can be sometimes discerned by dividing word count by number of chapters--so that you know in an 80,000 word thesis for example, with six chapters, you would have approximately 13,000 words per chapter.

That can be used as a rough guide--and rough guide only of course. Remember that editing can bring word count down by one-third. As well, for many people the lit review is both the first and last thing that they write. You may find by the time you are wrapping up your research that some of the first literature review is no longer relevant, other parts out of date, other parts need to be added in.

I tried to keep draft chapters in check to around 10-15,000 words as I went, knowing I would and could edit it downwards in writing up.

Different people have different views of course, but my own personal view is/was it is always easier to cut words than to add--so it was no problem when I had to cut words. As said, a briskly applied editing system takes your word count down by a third or so!

Oh my days!

I 've been writing this lit review for almost six months now and it feels for ever! I have worked really hard on that, keeping detailed notes of all the papers and books I read, and I managed to put everything down. I have something like 12.000 words and it almost makes sense, needs so much work still until it is coherent.
My supervisor had a quick look, he said it seems fine. How can something look nice until you read it? Anyway, since he said it looks fine, instead of feeling more motivated to work on that, I feel bored and exhausted, and I spent the last 4 days procrastinating and day dreaming... I need somebody to slap me with a dead fish please, so I get done with this, get some feedback maybe and see if it makes any sense at all. Maybe I am writing rubbish rubbish rubbish.