COREBrief literature and set-upSequence of chaptersBreadth of coverageFigure 3.3

There are many advantages in the opening out model.
Readers come into contact with your original work much sooner than in the focus down approach. They typically get far more analysis of your results and abetter appreciation of how your results mesh with the immediately relevant previous research. Readers also encounter your views on other people’s work after (and not before) you have established your credentials as a serious researcher. As a result your criticisms and suggestions should come across as much more grounded and authoritative than in the focus down model.
For authors the opening out model also has many substantial advantages. If you can cut short the usual long lead-in and acclimatization period at the beginning of your thesis, and get on with the key research tasks as early as possible, then you will have more time to thoroughly understand your findings later on. Analysing and writing up research results, moving from very detailed, often disorganized materials or complex outcomes to properly structured and well-presented findings, takes a surprising amount of time and intellectual effort. It cannot easily be rushed. The opening out model gives you abetter chance to develop new interpretations and to let the implications of your results sink in.
Yet the opening out model is very little used in the social sciences or humanities. Many doctoral students confronted by it for the first time find it too demanding, too radically at odds with what their supervisors or advisers have told them is expected or the norm. In practice none of these objections actually rules out this approach. You should always choose a designed final structure for your thesis, rather than allowing the sequence of chapters to beset too much by the order in which you undertook tasks across your research period.
The compromise model
The third possible approach to sequencing is a compromise between the two models above, shown in Figure 3.4. This approach has been successfully applied in the humanities and social sciences. First you need to follow the advice above on keeping lead-in materials to a maximum of two chapters. That means AUTHORING AP H D

you should keep your original literature review down to just a single chapter, ideally one that is framed quite closely around your central research question from the start. Do not raise a lot of broader issues that you will never discuss again or where you have little or no value-added contribution to make. Instead try to focus on materials that readers need to know to appreciate your research contribution, and no more. Next try to keep any setup or background or methods materials down to just one further chapter, again following a strict judgement about what readers need to know and avoiding long descriptive digressions. You should consider carefully whether you need to include a separate chapter on methodology in the main sequence of your argument at all. It is often best to write a special Research Methods Appendix to come after the main set of chapters. It can be written as a reference material annex, which allows you to include very detailed information for examiners and fellow researchers, but without disrupting the development of your main argument.
Taking these steps should ensure that readers come into contact with your original research materials within (say) 50 or pages of the start of your thesis. They are given an appropriate amount of time to warm upon your themes and questions,
and they get a very synoptic treatment of any background or setup material that they really need to master. But readers no longer have to page through wads of filler material before
P LAN NI N GA NI NT E GRATED THESIS 1
Analysis
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