| Principles of Preparing a Bachelor or Master Thesis |
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Criteria |
Content |
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Preparation |
It is a good idea to take intermediate or advanced level courses, taught by one of the supervisors you wish to study. You should be thoroughly familiar with the methods taught in the first level course(s). |
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Supervision of theses |
Responsible Thesis supervisor is Prof. Dr. Christian Lippert. In addition a scientific assistant
might support you to a limited degree especially with respect to technical issues.
General procedure: 1. Introductive discussion of the thesis topic you are interested in with the responsible thesis supervisor. Please contact the thesis supervisor when you have come to a (obligatory) decision regarding the thesis topic 2. Setting up an outline and a working plan (on 2 pages approximately) and discussion of these with the supervisor. For empirical studies methodological support in collecting, processing and analysing data will be provided by the supervisor 3. The supervisor can correct exemplarily a short extract of your thesis (4-5 pages) before you hand in the completed work 4. Submission of thesis, grading and defense. |
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Format and language |
Grammar, wording, punctuation and consistent formatting are evaluation criteria. |
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Logical composition |
The text should follow a logical line of thought and there should be a clear relationship between individual chapters or sections. Sections of text should have a clear and logical numbering system, and should be in proportion to one another. |
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Depth and Length |
As a general guideline, a Bachelor thesis should be about 30 pages of text, plus figures, and a Master thesis about 80 pages, not including figures. |
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Citations |
Wherever information is taken or quoted from another source, this should be identified with a citation. Direct quotes must be quoted using quotation marks and indicating name of author and page number of the quote. You are free to choose your own citation format (footnotes or author and year), so long as it is appropriate to a scientific work and is consistently applied throughout the thesis. The most important criterion is that the literature can be found using the information provided. Sources should primarily consist of books and scientific journals. Information found on the internet without a stated author should not be cited. |
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Labelling |
Tables and figures must be clearly labelled with titles and legends which allow them to be easily understood without any additional text. Calculations or abbreviations must be explained in a footnote or endnote. Any outside sources must always be stated. |
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Evaluation |
A good thesis will treat it's topic and will clearly describe the methodological approach used. Format and language, logical composition, depth and length, citation method and labelling will all be noted in the thesis evaluation. If we identify a case of plagiarism in your work, it will be graded with F (=fail). |
The guidelines listed here are only a summary. A more detailed text is Tips and Tricks for Preparing a Scientific Thesis by Dabbert
(2008), which is produced by the Department of Farm Management, University of Hohenheim, and can be found here
(tipps_tricks_en.pdf) for download.
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