5 Top Guidelines for Writing Appendix in Your Dissertation

An appendix is a section at the end of a dissertation that contains supplementary information. An appendix might contain figures, tables, raw data, and different additional information that supports the arguments of your dissertation but don't belong in the main body. It can be either a long appendix or split into many smaller appendices. According to experts of dissertation writing services, each appendix should have its own title and identification letters, and the numbering for any tables or figures in them should be reset at the beginning of every new appendix.

Purpose Of An Appendix:
When writing the main body of your dissertation, it is important to keep it short and concise in order to convey your arguments effectively. Given the amount of research you would have done, you'll probably have a lot of additional information that you would love to share with your audience. This is where appendices come in. Any information that doesn’t support your main arguments or isn’t directly relevant to the topic of your dissertation should be placed in an appendix. This will assist you to organize your paper, as the only information that adds weight to your arguments will be included; it will also help improve your flow by minimizing unnecessary interruptions.

What To Include In A Dissertation Appendix:
A dissertation appendix will be used for the following supplementary information:

Research Results:
There are various ways in which research results can be presented, like in tables or diagrams. Although all of your results will be useful to some extent, you won’t be able to include all in the main body of your dissertation. Consequently, only those that are crucial to answering your research question should be included. Your other less significant findings should be placed in your appendix, including raw data, proof of control measures, and other supplemental material.

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Details Of Questionnaires And Interviews:
You can choose to include the details of any surveys and interviews you have conducted. This can include:

• An interview transcript,
• A copy of any survey questions,
• Questionnaire results.

Although the results of your surveys, questionnaires or interviews should be presented and discussed in your main text, it's useful to include their full form in the appendix of a dissertation to give credibility to your study.

Tables, Figures and Illustrations:
If your dissertation contains a large number of tables, figures and illustrative material, it may be useful to insert the less important ones in your appendix. For instance, if you have four related data sets, you could present all the data and trend lines (made identifiable by different colors) on one chart with a further breakdown for each data set in your appendix.

Letters and Correspondence:
If you have letters or correspondence, either between yourself and other researchers or places where you wanted permission to reuse copyrighted material, they should be enclosed here. This will help ensure that your dissertation doesn’t become suspected of plagiarism.

List Of Abbreviations:
Most researchers can provide a list of abbreviations at the beginning of their dissertation, but if not, it would be wise to add them as an appendix. This is because not all of your readers can have the same background as you and therefore may have difficulty understanding the abbreviations and technical terms you use.

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How to Format a Dissertation Appendix:
In regards to format, you'll include one lengthy appendix or structure it into many smaller appendices. Although the choice is yours, it's usually higher to opt for many different appendices as it allows you to organize your supplementary information into different categories based on what they are. The following guidelines should be observed when preparing your dissertation appendices section:

• Each appendix should start on a new page and be given a unique title and identifying letter, such as “appendix A – raw data”. This allows you to more easily refer to appendix headings in the text of your main body should you need to.
• Each appendix should have its own page numbering system, comprising the appendix identification letter and the corresponding page number. The appendix identification letter should be reset for each appendix, but the page number should remain continuous. For instance, if ‘appendix A’ has three pages and ‘appendix B’ two pages, the page numbers should be A-1, A-2, A-3, B-4, B-5.
• The numbering of tables and figures should be reset at the beginning of each new appendix. For instance, if ‘appendix A’ contains two tables and ‘appendix B’ one table, the table number within appendix B should be ‘table 1’ and not ‘table 3’.
• If you have multiple appendices instead of a single longer one, insert a ‘list of appendices’ in the same way as your contents page.
• Use the same formatting (font size, font type, spacing, margins, etc.) as the rest of your report.