How Many References for A Dissertation Are Necessary?

If you go to Shibuya street in Tokyo, Japan on a busy Monday, and decide to scream out loud; ‘THE WORLD IS GOING TO END’, will the people believe you? Forget about believing, will they even bother to stop and listen to you?

Now Imagine If you did the same, but proved your claim through tons of references with previous research studies, will they believe you now? Yes, they will probably bother to at least stop and take your claim seriously.

That’s exactly why references are necessary whenever a research is conducted.

The Importance of References

References are sources of previous research works done by reliable scholars, which you add in your dissertation because it helps to:

importance-references

All of these points mentioned above, adds value and gives reliability to your research. It is the most basic, essential and vital part of any academic work that a student presents. It helps the reader to understand better what idea you as a researcher, are trying to convey, through the backing of other relevant sources.

Let’s be honest, no one really wants to read a research paper, without any backing up of proper citation, evidences or proofs.

That’s not it, reference even helps the reader to go and cross check the citations themselves for further details, regarding your research. This opens up the whole subject matter in-depth and gives a new perspective of understanding your research.

Interestingly enough, the dissertation writers UK, US, Australia and other parts of the world, provide assistance to students, making sure their references are relevant.

But How Many References Are Necessary?

There is not really an exact number for how many references should be there in a dissertation, but the answers varies and highly depends upon certain factors. These factors include

  1. The Degree level of your Dissertation

    The degree level of your dissertation can be divided into 3 categories, which are Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D.

    • Bachelors: A Bachelors level dissertation contains words from 10,000 to 12,000. For this type of word count, 45 to 50 references will most likely be needed at least and the maximum, 100 reference will also be a respectable benchmark to add references.
    • Masters: A Master level dissertation contains words, starting from 15,000 with a maximum of 25,000-word count. For this, a 50 to 95 or even 100 references will most likely be a good benchmark.
    • Ph.D.: A Ph.D. level dissertation contains words till 50,000 or can possibly exceed even more. For this, at least 150 references will likely be needed, till 200 or even more references can be added. That will be a good benchmark.
  1. The Topic Idea of Your Dissertation

    The amount of references also depends on the idea and the topic of your dissertation. The topics which you research on, can be very new, which has very little information available or even no information available what so ever. If less information available, then it will be necessary to add whatever information that you can grab, relevant to your research topic.

    If in any case, there is no such information available which is relevant to your dissertation, then the academics and your university can simply reject your topic idea or your whole dissertation. The reason being, a student at this stage is not reliable enough to make independent research without any references.

    Due to that, students are inclined to use dissertation service London from professional native researchers, for proper references in such cases.

    On the contrary, if your dissertation topic and idea is based on something common, then you will be able to find a lot of references and research papers relevant to your topic for addition. You can add those references accordingly.

  1. The Requirements of Your Academic

    Some universities or institutes have different requirements regarding their dissertation policies. There are many universities which allows only 25 references in a Masters dissertation and accepts it while others won’t without 50 references at least. It also depends on the nature of the dissertation and the methodologies like qualitative and quantitative information. These factors of methodologies can also limit the source of references.

    Also, it can depend on the researcher’s supervisor, as they can also impose certain limitations or advancements for the dissertation references.

Make Your Dissertation Strong

If you would like to make your dissertation much stronger, then it is said that more the citation and references you give, the more it becomes reliable. The reason being, giving more citations means that your research is backed by many other scholars who are indirectly agreeing with your research statement.

However, to much of a good thing, can also be a bad thing. Adding unnecessary and excessive references in areas of dissertation which does not need references, will not look professional. It might seem like the references are forcefully added or are just there for show.

Ideal Dissertation

A good dissertation needs to have relevant citations and references that makes sense in every sentence. The dissertation should be to the point, that demonstrate and answers the research questions, which is where relevant citations are needed to back the research up.

Moreover, university level students, in order to make their dissertation stand out, go for Cheap Dissertation Writing Service UK, US and even Asian based, to make their dissertation ideal.

Wouldn’t you like it Yourself?

Wouldn’t you like to win an argument by using tons of references? We all do that don’t we? It gets much easier to convince others through references. The same works with the dissertation.

The Bottom Line

There is no such fixed limit to add references in your dissertation. It depends on factors of your degree level, your topic idea and the limitations that might be set from your academic or university. Apart from that, it even depends on the nature of your research, where if you are conducting qualitative research, then excessive reference are not really required but only few.

Sara

About Dr. Sara Nathan

I am Dr. Sara Nathan and I have done a Ph.D. in aviation management. I have experience of 10 years in mentoring UK’s Students. Over this decade. I enjoy being able to help researchers all around the world as imparting valuable information has always been my passion. Writing & Reading are my passions. For detail about me and to read my other blog you can visit my profile:

My Profile