Whether it is performed by undergraduate and master's level dissertation students, or seasoned academics. These research limitations range from flaws in the research design, which can be quite serious, to more common problems, such as the challenge of justifying how and why your findings answer the research questions and/or hypotheses that were set. This article explains some of the broader rules to think about when writing the research limitations section of your dissertation. In particular, your research limitations section should be: a well structured b properly weighted c honest and d pragmatic. There is no one best way to structure this research limitations section of your dissertation.

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However, like the dissertation abstract, structure is important because you typically only have around 200 to 500 words to explain and justify all the potential weaknesses and/or limitations in your dissertation. In producing a research limitations section that is well structured, we recommend a structure based on three moves i.e. reflecting and forward looking move: the announcing move immediately allows you to identify the limitations of your dissertation and explain how important each of these limitations is. The reflecting move provides greater depth, helping to explain the nature of the limitations and justify the choices that you made during the research process.

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Finally, the forward looking move enables you to suggest how such limitations could be overcome in future. The collective aim of these three moves is to help you walk the reader through your research limitations section in a succinct and structured way. This will make it clear to the reader that you a recognise the limitations of your own research, b understand why such factors are limitations, and c can point to ways of combating these limitations if future research was carried out. To understand more about each of these moves and how to clearly structure the research limitations section of your dissertation, read the section: how to structure the research limitations section of your dissertation. You should consider dedicating around 10 20% of the total word count of the research limitations section to the announcing move.

60 70% to the reflecting move and 10 20% to the final, forward looking move. Certainly, it is important to acknowledge the potential limitations of your dissertation in the announcing move. However, the focus of the research limitations section should be on explaining the nature of your limitations, the degree to which these were a problem, as well as justifying the reasons why you conducted the research the way you did. Since this section of the dissertation is generally only 200 500 words, the section should focus on those limitations that you feel had the greatest impact on your findings, as well as your ability to effectively answer your research questions and/or hypotheses. You are not writing a 20 word critical review of the limitations of your dissertation. Acknowledging the limitations of your research is not a way of highlighting to the reader where and why they should reduce the marks you receive for your dissertation.

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Instead, the research limitations section provides the right balance to the final chapter of your dissertation often chapter five: discussion/conclusions . It makes it clear to the reader that you recognise the limitations of your own research, that you understand why such factors are limitations, and can point to ways of combating these limitations if future research was carried out. Communicating such an understanding to the reader demonstrates the command that you have over your research, which should help in improving the marks you receive for your dissertation. Added to this, the person reading your dissertation can easily identify potential weaknesses, even if you have not spelt these out. This comes with years of experience in teaching and research, which many academics have.

For the researcher that prefers to adopt a quantitative research design see the section on research designs for more information about research designs , a probability sampling technique is viewed as the ideal because it enables the researcher to make generalisations i.e. statistical inferences from the sample to the population being studied see the articles on sampling: the basics and probability sampling to learn more about sampling and probability sampling techniques. However, as all of the articles on types of probability sampling technique illustrate e.g. Stratified random sampling , using a probability sampling technique can be very difficult. In fact, there are many reasons why it may be impossible or near on impossible to use a probability sampling technique. In such cases, researchers are forced to use non probability sampling techniques. However, this does not mean that any study that uses a quantitative research design, but fails to use a probability sampling technique, is of low quality or flawed.

It simply means that some things that are limitations in theory are not necessarily weaknesses in practice. It means that you need to adopt a pragmatic approach to your research, whilst acknowledging potential limitations. If you know the limitations in your dissertation, you may find the next section, how to structure the research limitations section of your dissertation. There is no one best way to structure the research limitations section of your dissertation.

The announcing move immediately allows you to identify the limitations of your dissertation and explain how important each of these limitations is. The reflecting move provides greater depth, helping to explain the nature of the limitations and justify the choices that you made during the research process. Finally, the forward looking move enables you to suggest how such limitations could be overcome in future. The collective aim of these three moves is to help you walk the reader through your research limitations section in a succinct and structured way. This will make it clear to the reader that you recognise the limitations of your own research, that you understand why such factors are limitations, and can point to ways of combating these limitations if future research was carried out. This article explains what should be included in each of these three moves: identifying limitations, and explaining how important they are there are many possible limitations that your research may have faced. However, is not necessary for you to discuss all of these limitations in your research limitations section.

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After all, you are not writing a 20 word critical review of the limitations of your dissertation, just a 200 500 word critique that is only one section long i.e. The research limitations section within your conclusions chapter. We would recommend that you identify only those limitations that had the greatest potential impact on: a the quality of your findings and b your ability to effectively answer your research questions and/or hypotheses. We use the word potential impact because we often do not know the degree to which different factors limited our findings or our ability to effectively answer our research questions and/or hypotheses. For example, we know that when adopting a quantitative research design, a failure to use a probability sampling technique significantly limits our ability to make broader generalisations from our results i.e. Our ability to make statistical inferences from our sample to the population being studied.

However, the degree to which this reduces the quality of our findings is a matter of debate. Also, whilst the lack of a probability sampling technique when using a quantitative research design is a very obvious example of a research limitation, other limitations are far less clear. Therefore, the key point is to focus on those limitations that you feel had the greatest impact on your findings, as well as your ability to effectively answer your research questions and/or hypotheses. Overall, the announcing move should be around 10 20% of the total word count of the research limitations section. Explaining the nature of the limitations and justifying the choices you made having identified the most important limitations to your dissertation in the announcing move. The reflecting move focuses on explaining the nature of these limitations and justifying the choices that you made during the research process.

This part should be around 60 70% of the total word count of the research limitations section. It is important to remember at this stage that all research suffers from limitations, whether it is performed by undergraduate and master's level dissertation students, or seasoned academics. Acknowledging such limitations should not be viewed as a weakness, highlighting to the person marking your work the reasons why you should receive a lower grade. Instead, the reader is more likely to accept that you recognise the limitations of your own research if you write a high quality reflecting move. This is because explaining the limitations of your research and justifying the choices you made during the dissertation process demonstrates the command that you had over your research. We talk about explaining the nature of the limitations in your dissertation because such limitations are highly research specific.