Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR): Guide: Thesis Manuscript Instructions

You may present your thesis in a thesis group meeting once the thesis process is complete or nearly complete in practice. For different types of theses, the meaning of nearly complete is different:

1. If the thesis consists of partial achievements, these partial achievements must all be completed.
2. If the thesis consists of research, the thesis may not be presented any earlier than the data analysis phase.
3. If the thesis consists of a development project, the presentation may take place when the development process has been completed (work-community workshops have been held and documented, conclusions mostly drawn).
4. If the thesis consists of a product, all required materials must be collected and ready for completing the work, and the essential features of the product itself must be ready.

The thesis manuscript is the first version of the future thesis report. The thesis progresses to preliminary inspection on the basis of the feedback from the thesis group meeting.

It must be possible to provide comments for the entire thesis on the basis of the manuscript. You should not offer, for example, only the introductory and background sections for review. Comments are particularly useful for the more challenging sections. The comments you receive help you improve your text before you submit it for preliminary inspection.

The thesis manuscript should contain a dedicated introduction explaining the current status of your thesis process, the problems you are currently facing, any issues on which you wish to invite debate, and any issues on which you wish feedback.

The manuscript you present in a seminar must have a cover page, table of contents and list of references. A thesis manuscript is not acceptable if its layout features are not almost completely correct (page numbers, footnotes, cover page, automatic table of contents, etc.).

Express the goals of your thesis clearly in the dedicated introduction, if it is not appropriate for you to explain them through the samples you offer of the texts of your thesis. These samples form the core of your thesis manuscript. They must consist of no less than the key chapters of the upcoming thesis in their near-ready form: process description, description of data acquisition and data analysis, and research result/product/ development outcome.

The thesis manuscript must include the tentative table of contents for the completed thesis. This tentative table of contents communicates your current plan. The visibility of the plan makes it possible to discuss the entire thesis as it is taking its final form.