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As the very first section of your introduction chapter, this section needs to provide a high-level overview of your dissertation or thesis. Typically, you’ll include the following:
Importantly, this section needs to be concise (it’s just an opener), so don’t ramble on here. Keep it short and sweet.
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After you’ve covered the basics in the opening section, the next section should provide a broad overview of the topic area that you’ll be researching, as well as the current contextual factors. In other words, in this section, you need to provide the relevant background information to give the reader a foundational understanding of your research area.
This section could, for example, present a brief history of the topic, recent developments in the area, key pieces of research in the area, etc. Importantly, you cannot assume that your reader is an expert in your topic area, so it’s important to write this background section in a very accessible and digestible way (indeed, the same is true for all chapter).
If there are any specific concepts, complex terminology, or other words specific to your industry, this is the section where you should explain them so that so that the reader can understand the rest of your document. Make no assumptions – write for the intelligent layman.
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Now that you’ve set the backdrop for the research topic in the background section, it’s time to narrow the focus and highlight the specific research problem you’ll focus on in your dissertation or thesis.
To present your research problem, you’ll need to make it clear what exactly is missing in the current literature and why this is a problem. You can split this section up into two sections:
Part 1 - State the problem