The work should demonstrate the student’s ability to produce clear and well-argued conclusions

based on the data collected, and to expose the limitations of data.

The audience for the work is the Board of Examiners. It should not be addressed to a client or
organisation. A consultancy project may need to be written up in a different way for the client.
The work should be addressed to a ‘general informed reader’ rather that to an expert in the
subject and its academic frame of reference.

2. Aims and Learning Outcomes

The aim of the dissertation unit is to enable students to research a topic or issue of professional
interest and relevance in their specialist study area through the use of appropriate research
strategies and to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the topic or issue.

On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:

1. Undertake a self-initiated and self-motivated investigation into a current issue within the
international field of study, related to the tourism and hospitality sectors;
2. Critically review appropriate techniques in problem identification, analysis and evaluation;
3. Critically apply a rigorous academic methodology and a critical, constructive and creative
primary research approach to the issue under consideration;
4. Critically evaluate the results of the conducted research and propose realistic
recommendations;
5. Communicate the results and conclusions of their investigation clearly to both specialists
and non-specialists.

3. Important Submission Deadlines

All parts of the dissertation work should be carried out in close contact with the supervisor, as
soon as she/he is allocated. Deadlines and milestones are presented in the table below.

3.1 Topic, supervisor and proposal

The following phased draft submission dates are to help you to make steady progress on your
work so that you can receive regular feedback. This work is only expected to be a draft version of
work in progress. It is not intended for final assessment but it will provide the basis for constructive
feedback. The submission dates and order of drafts can only be modified in agreement with your
supervisor to meet the specific needs of your dissertation.

If you do not submit drafts within an agreed time scale your supervisor is entitled to refuse to read
your work and give you feedback on this part of the dissertation.

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 May 08, 2017: Proposal submission – final (completed in the Business Research unit)
Submit your research proposal which should include: Introduction, Literature review, Aim &
Objectives, Rationale, Research Methodology, Timeframe and Limitations.

The final Research Proposal version should be submitted for grading to the Research Methods
lecturer.

Once submitted, focus on your research for the remainder of the programme

 May 22, 2017: Based on the topic of your choice, a Dissertation Supervisor will be
assigned.

 May 29, 2017: Dissertation Topic

You have discussed your topic with the Business Research Methods lecturer in the previous
semester. You now have to submit a Dissertation Topic form to register the topic at the
American Hotel Academy. This topic will now be discussed with the new allocated supervisor,
and could be amended to the supervisor’s requirements.

 June 2, 2017: Ethics Checklist submission. Please make sure both you and the supervisor
allocated to you, fill in and sign the form. Submit it to the Dissertation Coordinator. You will not be
able to proceed with the research process until this form is submitted.

 June 16, 2017: Literature Review Chapter submission

Submit a draft of this chapter to the person nominated to be your supervisor for review and
feedback, and to provide the basis for designing the data collection research instrument. You
may need to make further revisions based on this feedback before final submission.

 July 7, 2017: Data Collection Research Instrument

Submit draft of data collection research instrument e.g. questionnaire, interview questions,
focus group, script etc. to your supervisor for review and feedback. It can take several attempts
to produce the correct questions so make sure you leave plenty of time for this. Use the internet
to source a questionnaire that could be used to collect the primary data you require, and adjust
to suit your needs – remember to reference

 July 7, 2017: Methodology Chapter submission

Submit draft of this chapter to your supervisor for review and feedback. You may need to make
further revisions based on this feedback before final submission. For those students who

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 needed to make substantial changes to their questionnaire or interview questions, this is your
absolute last chance to have them checked with your supervisor.

 August 4, 2017: All evidence of data collection

All data collection should be completed by this deadline. All questionnaires should have been
returned and all interviews conducted.

 August 14, 2017: Results / Data Analysis / Interpretation Chapter

Submit draft of this chapter to your supervisor for review and feedback. You may need to make
further revisions based on this feedback before final submission.

NB. Supervisors are required to verify data collection and analysis as part of the
assessment process.

Submit evidence of all the data you have collected. Show returned questionnaires, interview
notes/ tapes etc. to your supervisor. All raw primary data has to be kept as evidence for a
period of 2 years

Submit evidence of data analysis – discuss with the supervisor the methods and requirements
for data analysis

 August 25, 2017 Introduction and Conclusions, Interpretations and Reflections

Chapters

Submit draft of these chapters to your supervisor for review and feedback. You may need to
make further revisions based on this feedback before final submission.

Supervisors will only read one draft of your chapters. They will give you feedback on the quality
of your work and suggest improvements if necessary, however, they will not proof read for you
or read the amendments again.

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4. Formatting the Dissertation
4.1 Style and conventions of academic writing
In addition to the academic content your work will be judged on the coherence of the
argument you present and the standard and style of academic writing.

Follow the general conventions of academic writing.

 Do not write in the first person singular ( I ). Maintain a consistent formal academic style
of writing throughout, namely, third person neutral. For example… The researcher
distributed a questionnaire…The literature argues… It was established that….

 Source and reference all texts using the MANCHESTER MET referencing style. Pay
attention to correct use of italics, commas and full stops in the reference list. (see
appendix 6) Please compile and create the reference list as you progress with the reading
process throughout the research process – it is not possible to create this only at the end
of the writing up process.
Keep a handy guide of the Harvard Referencing method close at hand while you work, to
ensure that you limit the corrections that will need to be made later.

 Direct quotations should be inside double inverted commas “ …..” When using a direct
quotation you must give the page number in your reference citation, e.g. Use single
inverted commas to ‘emphasise’ a word or phrase. All words that are cut and pasted need
to be acknowledged to the author by “ “. Paraphrasing uses only the surname, date
method.

 Each chapter should have an introduction to give a brief indication of the purpose and
structure of the chapter, so it explains very briefly what a reader will find in that chapter.
 Chapters should be broken down into sections and sub sections with appropriate
headings.

 The sequencing within the document is important – if the aims are A,B,C,D, then the
literature will follow as A,B,C,D – so will the research findings and analysis as A,B,C,D.
 Sections should be numbered in sequence according to the chapter e.g. in the literature
review chapter the sections and sub sections could be:
2.1 Introduction
2.2 ………..

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 Further subsections may also be numbered e.g. 2.2.1……. 2.2.2….. Alternatively, these
need not be numbered if there are too many subsections. You could just use a heading
in lower case but in bold. Make sure the reader can easily understand the structure and
flow of the chapter.

 Do not number each paragraph.

 Each chapter should end with a short summary of the main points and link forward to the
next chapter. This summary could be in bullet point format. So it summarises the
completed section, and introduces the reader to the next section of the dissertation.

 All tables should be numbered in sequence and start with the number of the chapter
e.g. Table 3.1 Table 3.2 ( for tables in chapter 3 Methodology ) Table 4.1 Table 4.2
(tables in chapter 4 Results) NOT Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 ....Table 14 ....Table 27
etc.,
 Tables are labelled at the top of the table, and graphs / diagrams /figures are labelled
underneath the graph / diagram / figure.

 All tables must have a title which reflects the content. Do not use the actual wording of
the question as a title. Titles should be below the table and should be underlined. For
example, Table 4.6: Relationship between gender and number of hours worked.
 Any other pictorial representations such as graphs, bar and pie charts etc., are figures
and must be numbered, titled and underlined similar to tables e.g. Figure 3.1 Figure.3.2
Figure 4.2 Figure 4.5: Hours worked in an average week. Do not use titles such as….A
graph to show…… or A bar chart to show….

 In the text of the chapter, draw the reader’s attention to the tables or figures e.g. ……(see
Table 4.3 below) or Figure 4.2 above illustrates the ………….
 Do not just cut and paste your SPSS or Excel data output into your chapter and use that
as a table. Table 4.1. Below is unacceptable and the data needs to be reformatted into
a correct Word table e.g. Table 4.2 below.

Table 4.1 What age are you? (NB. Unacceptable title and style for which will lose marks)

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid 20 or under 9 18.0 18.0 18.0
21-30 19 38.0 38.0 56.0
31-40 8 16.0 16.0 72.0

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 41-50 5 10.0 10.0 82.0
51-60 5 10.0 10.0 92.0
61-70 1 2.0 2.0 94.0
71+ 3 6.0 6.0 100.0
Total 50 100.0 100.0

Table 4.2: Age of respondents (NB. More appropriate style)

Age range No. %

20 or under 9 18.0
31-40 19 38.0
41-50 8 16.0
51-60 5 10.0
61-70 5 10.0
71+ 1 2.0

50 100.0
Base: all respondents

 Figures and tables of results should be presented in the body of your dissertation and will
NOT be included in the word count. Raw data and spreadsheets used to generate tables
and charts could be included in appendices. Content presented in appendices will not be
counted in the final word count.

 When using numbers in the text, numbers one to ten are written as words, after ten you
can use the numerical number e.g. Of the 20 managers interviewed, only seven …….

 When writing about percentages you can either use the term percent or the % symbol.
Be consistent. Do not use both.

 Do not start a sentence with a numerical number e.g. 36% of volunteers said……. Use
words instead, no matter how large the number is e.g. Thirty six percent of volunteers
said that they typically watched sport on TV once or twice a week, and 45% on a more
frequent basis. Alternatively, rephrase the sentence so that the number is not at the
beginning.

 Use appendices sparingly and wisely. In the text make sure you draw the reader’s
attention to the appendices e.g. ……….. (See Appendix 1).
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4.2 Presentation & Formatting
The following pages/sections should be included (in addition to the main body of text):

1. Title page / Cover Page: including student number, supervisors name and date of
submission
2. Assessment Form: filled in with MANCHESTER MET student number, word count,
submission date and title

3. Abstract: This is not the same as the Introduction, but a 200-300 words presentation
of the dissertation. This is a brief, one page summary of all of your dissertation. It is
designed to tell the reader at a glance what it is about and what it contains. It should
highlight: what you were trying to achieve – aim and objectives, research questions;
the main significant points from the literature; your methodology; what you found –
your results; and what you conclude from your results and about the topic as a whole.

4. Table of Contents: including page numbers for chapters/sub-chapters. This should

be detailed enough for the reader to understand what is contained within the
dissertation and provides a guide to the structure of the document. Appendices, tables
and figures should be included in the contents page

5. Reference list: The authors must be in alphabetical order and not separated into
books and journals. You must use the MANCHESTER MET referencing style (see
Online Campus)

6. Page numbering: Page 1 starts on the introduction page, at the bottom right of the
page. The contents page, plagiarism declaration and abstract pages are numbered in
roman numbering, e.g. I, II, III, IV and pages 1,2,3,4 starts on the Introduction page.

7. Appendices: These must be numbered and labelled and presented in the order in
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 which they are referred to in the dissertation. Evidence of data collection and analysis
should be shown as an appendix.

Word length:
A maximum of 16,000 words (+/- 10%.) You will have 10% deducted from your final mark for
every 1,000 words or part thereof that you go under or over this 10% tolerance.

Word count starts at the beginning of Chapter 1 and ends at the end of Chapter 5.

The following are NOT included in the word count:-

 Abstract, Declaration, Contents page
 Full bibliographic references in the reference list
 Tables *
 Computer printouts.
 Photographs.
 Design boards.
 Appendices

* A table is designed to present information in summary or representational format. A large

amount of text, e.g. interview transcript, with a box around it is not a table and will be counted in
the word length. If you are unsure of what constitutes a table ask the dissertation co-ordinator
for advice. All tables should be numbered and titled.
Direct quotes and references cited in the text e.g. (Cooper, 2007) are counted.

Typing and Printing:

 White A4 paper, printed on one side only.
 Standard type font e.g. Times New Roman or Ariel
 Chapter headings in size 16 font in bold capital letters; section headings in 14 font bold
underlined either upper or lower case; subheadings in 12 font bold lower case
 Double spaced or 1.5 lines type with full justification.
 References and appendices single spacing.
 Block paragraph format as per this handbook leaving a space between paragraphs. Do
not indent the first word of the paragraph as in hand written format.
 Top and bottom margin 2.54 cm, side margins 3.17cm.
 Start each chapter, the reference list and appendices on a new page.
 All tables, figures and diagrams should be titled and numbered.