Title Page (not included in the word count)
Your Dissertation must include a title page including the title of the Dissertation, your name and student identification number, the date of submission, the course and field title.
Declaration of Originality (not included in the word count)
Your Dissertation must also include a statement of the originality of the work. It should read as follows: “This dissertation is the work of {your name} and has been completed solely in fulfilment of a dissertation for the MSc in Health and Social Care Management and Policy at London Metropolitan University.”
Acknowledgements (not included in the word count)
You should thank those who have helped you throughout the course of your research in your Acknowledgements section; this includes both personal and professional acknowledgements.
Contents Page (not included in the word count)
You should provide a Contents Page providing the page numbers of the main sections of your Dissertation. The Contents Page should be followed by a List of Abbreviations used in your paper, a List of Tables included within your Dissertation, a List of Figures included within your Dissertation and a List of Appendices.
Abstract
You should include an Abstract to provide a brief summary of your research. The Abstract should have a format that includes the Problem Statement (Introduction), Study Aim, Method, Results, Conclusion and should be 250-300 words (these should be given in more generalised manner – see examples in peer-reviewed journal articles).
Introduction, Background and Rationale of the Research
Your Introduction should provide clear and detailed management and policy background to your chosen health and social care research topic, highlighting the key issues that prompted your study (Dissertation). Focus on issues that are relevant to the management and policy context of the chosen research topic. These may include planning and designing, resourcing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a health and social care intervention. Your Introduction should include a rationale of why your chosen research is important. Research Background and Rationale should be deeply underpinned by the literature published to date on the research topic. At the end of this section you should introduce the purpose of your research, the research question(s), your aim, and objectives.
Methods
In this section, you should provide details of how you achieved your aims and objectives in answer of your research question(s). You should provide a level of detail that would enable others to replicate your work exactly. This could include, for example if completing a narrative review, a detailed search strategy including the search terms used, inclusion and exclusion criteria, to identify the existing evidence to answer your research question, and the tools used to critically appraise the identified evidence. Please note, this is just an example and not an exhaustive list of what to include in your chapter on methodology and methods.
Results
This chapter should present the findings from your research in answer of the research question(s). If completing a narrative review, this could include for example, a PRISMA flow diagram outlining the results of your search strategy, a data extraction table, and a critical analysis of the included evidence. If conducting a Thematic Analysis, then the results of this analysis would be included in this section also. Again, please note that this is just an example and not an exhaustive list of what to include in your results section.
Discussion
This section should discuss what the results mean, and why they matter in relation to your research question(s). You will explain how this fits in with what other researchers have found, current health and social care management practice, and policy, referring to your wider reading presented in your Introduction. You will draw conclusions from your findings and discuss recommendations for policy and practice, and identify the perspectives for future research.
References (not included in the word count)
Your reference section allows the reader of your work to trace the sources of information that you have used. It is very important to reference your work accurately using the London Metropolitan Harvard referencing format. The Harvard referencing guide can be found on the London Metropolitan library webpages.
Appendices (not included in the word count)
Any supporting information relevant to the research should be included in appendices. This is not strictly essential; the research report should include all of the information required to adequately answer your research question(s) and be understandable to the reader without having to refer to your appendices.
