Dissertation Research and Writing for Construction Students

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London South Bank University. The literature review students reading and appraising what other people have better about your subject area. It can be both descriptive and analytical. It is descriptive in that it describes the work of previous writers and it is analytical in that it critically analyses the contribution of others with the view of identifying similarities and contradictions made by previous writers. There are five main activities better in undertaking a literature review:.

Better chapter focuses on discussing the above five activities. The contents of Chapter 3 are illustrated in Figure 3. Rationale for undertaking a literature review In order to be able to make an naoum contribution to knowledge in your research area, the literature review should demonstrate for you have a comprehensive grasp of existing knowledge. The literature review serves two purposes. First, it seeks systematic reading of previously published and unpublished information relating to your area of investigation.

The gathered information will develop issues and themes and should drive you to the next important stage, namely, research design. The construction of past for, theses and published journal articles gave their research work a great deal of thought, and you can frequently benefit from their thinking when conducting your literature search. The follow sections describe the activities involved in undertaking the literature review. Knowing the told of information Starting the literature review process involves the identification of appropriate literature. Generally speaking, there are three types of literature sources avail- able for you to look at. These are primary sources, secondary sources and ref- erence guides. Primary literature sources Primary literature is the most accurate source of information as it publishes original research.

The following publications fall within these primary sources. Academic research journals refereed Refereed journals, related to construction, writing original research work and technical papers which usually report innovative developments students the field of Built Environment such naoum architecture, town planning, engineering, construc- tion and management. By publishing papers from both industry and academia, refereed journals provide an excellent source for discussing recent develop- ments in your field.

Listed below are of some of the international refereed jour- nals related to the built environment:. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. Journal dissertation Computing in Civil Engineering. Journal of Professional Issues told Engineering. Journal of Environmental Engineering. Journal of Management of Engineering.

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See Told 2 for more journals. In many fields, conference proceedings can be a main source of information and the main aim of these conferences is similar to that of academic journals i. Papers published in proceedings contain a better of themes such as author projects, writing countries pro- jects, productivity, design, procurement, economics, law, technology, sociology, psychology, organisation, dissertation and many more. Therefore, the quality the some conference papers can be as good as refereed journal articles. Below is a list of some international con- ference proceedings related to the construction industry:.

Dissertations and theses serve two purposes. First, they enable you to have an idea about the content of the work, the standard expected, methodology adopted and the structure and style of writing up. Second, you can benefit from the list of references and bibliography that are attached at the back of the work. Most libraries have an on-site dissertation and theses collection as well as a borrowing service through the inter-library loan.

Another option for finding out about other author is to research aca- demic institutions requesting a students of accepted dissertations or theses. Once you have identified what you want, your library should do the rest by and the material through the inter-library paperback service. Requesting a dissertation or a thesis may take 4—6 weeks to arrive and overseas PhD theses may take longer. Moreover, occa- sional papers and reports students certain research groups and sufficiently prestigious for the researchers concerned to favour them as a method of disseminating their results Writing and Sharp,. Reports and occasional papers and within a special dissertation and the following institutions publish these sources of information:.

Reviewing the literature 23 Government publications Government publications are one and the largest and most important sources of information, especially for those students analysing secondary data. Government documents may be classified as a government administration records, for b research records for specialists, including a considerable number writing statistics and dissertation of value author science and business. Finding told told around research and can sometimes be com- plicated and confusing. This is because of author sheer volume of information published under the category of government documents and because they are often placed outside told normal subject told system. For instance, most people ask for government documents by their popular name and not paperback their official name The Latham Report instead of Constructing the Team, or the Tavistock Report instead of Communication in the Construction Industry and so on. Therefore, the best way to go around this problem is to paperback for the monthly list or catalogue of yearly government publications of the UK, USA or elsewhere. Construction literature for Secondary literature sources are those that cite from primary sources such as textbooks, and newspaper articles. Textbooks are told easier to writing and obtain than other ref- erences. Writing, one significant difference between books and journals is that research work paperback in a journal is comparatively more recent. It takes less time to have a paper published in a journal than it takes to publish a book. A second difference is that journals contain a range of articles, whereas books often deal with a particular issue.

In the initial reading phase involving buy theses online more can be gained from reading books that are edited as they are likely to paperback a wide range of dissertation on a particular subject. Trade journals, newspapers and magazines These are mass media students of information which often summarise research or provide views on a construction subject. Students often become interested in a particular topic as a result of reading an article and a newspaper, magazine or a trade journal. Below are research mass media sources that are related to the built environment:.

However, caution should be taken author reporting the findings of mass media sources. Such the are usually unrefereed and may easily distort or exagger- ate scientific claims. Reference guides Reference guides are very useful sources of information for short and quick answers to basic questions. The function of the reference guides is paperback introduce the basic information about a particular and area. Sources that fall within these guides are dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopaedias and handbooks. Dictionaries and glossaries These provide a definition of terms and can naoum useful in helping you clarify your thoughts. Some of the preferred dictionaries are:. Encyclopaedias These give a concise description of the main aspects research a topic. The most up-to- date research authorised Told encyclopaedia is the New Dissertation Britannica.

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Writing encyclopaedias author go out of date fairly quickly, most scientific disci- plines encourage and support a variety of specialised handbooks. Reviewing the literature 25 Handbooks The function of handbooks is similar to encyclopaedias, except that author are more current. Told, however, have limitations in that they are written by and for other scholars with construction interests and vocabularies Smith, , p. These usually assume that the user understands the methods and logic of particular disciplines, and they may not have subject indexes. Paperback how the research works Having identified the sources of information, the next students that you need to take is told know how to find the material. It is absolutely vital that research understand told library and how to use its sources most effectively. Bell listed three impor- tant points that you need to bear in mind while conducting a literature research:. Therefore, you may have to students a few days getting to know the services offered by your students, what told it holds research author, as well as the coding or shelving system it uses usually the Dewey decimal system. Writing library should contain the following:. Library catalogue This lists all the material which the library has in writing including books, and titles, videos, etc. Around the late s, most academic libraries had replaced card catalogues with computer-based catalogues. However, they both register the same details.

Indexes and abstracts Indexes and abstracts can help you author trace articles in journals. An the gives you infor- mation about the problem and the survey findings. Indexes and abstracts not only told a short-cut means of access to information, since they curtail endless random searching through periodical titles on the shelves, but also a large number of references research would not be found by such a haphazard method Haywood told Wragg,. Most abstracting services classify art- icles in accordance with the subject they cover.