Appendix A: Detailed Description of the Sections in the Final Thesis

The Title Page

• The full title of the thesis (it is important that the title accurately portrays the investigation performed)
• The full name of the author
• That the degree is awarded by the School of Graduate Studies, St. George’s University
• The month and year of approval of the Thesis
• The award for which the degree is submitted in partial fulfillment of its requirements
• The names of the Supervisory Committee Members
   

Supervisory Committee Signatory Page

This page should identify the Chair,  all members of the Supervisory Committee, and their degrees. Each Supervisory Committee member should sign and date sufficient original copies (normally 5: see section 6.1).
 

Frontispiece

The frontispiece is optional but should include a photograph that the author can use to depict a salient aspect of their study.
 

Table of Contents

The table of contents shall include all sections of the thesis as defined in 2.3 above.  Each section of the thesis should be numbered appropriately.  In its simplest form, the thesis can be 1.0 Introduction, 2.0 Materials and Methods, 3.0 Results, etc.  When a thesis is written with many distinct chapters that may align to publications, each chapter may be numbered sequentially, i.e., Chapter 1, Chapter 2, with each chapter divided into Introduction, Materials and Methods, etc. The table of contents should show the page number for each section on the right-hand side of its title. 
 

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the person(s) who helped in the project and its presentation. Any funding support should be acknowledged. 
 

Use of Generative AI for the Production of this Thesis

The use of AI should be declared in the thesis. The statement must declare the specific use of AI in the production of the thesis.  A sample statement is shown in Appendix F: SGS Generative AI Policy below. 
 

List of Tables and Figures

Separate pages containing a list of all tables and figures should be included. The titles of tables and figures should correspond exactly to the titles that appear in the text. Example:

List of Acronyms or Abbreviations

 A list of all acronyms or abbreviations used in the thesis shall be provided.
 

List of Submitted/Accepted/Published Manuscripts and Conference Presentations 

If any publications or conference presentations have been made as a result of the work that comprises the thesis, these should be listed in this section of the thesis.  Full citation details for the publications should be provided. Details of when and where conference presentations were made should be provided.   

If the candidate’s Supervisory Committee requires a submitted manuscript as part of the thesis requirement, then the actual manuscript will be inserted in the thesis and will reflect the formatting, word length, etc. of the relevant journal. 
 

Abstract

There shall be a one-page abstract of no more than 300 words.  The abstract should provide a synopsis of the study conducted and include a brief introduction, materials and methods that define the hypothesis and objectives of the study, the results obtained and their statistical significance, a discussion, and any future studies proposed as a result of this work.
 

Thesis Text

Quotations

Quotations should be set off from the text in single spacing and indented four spaces from the left-hand margin. Single spacing is permitted within long quotations, footnotes, bibliographic items, and appendix items, but double spacing should be used between each entry.
 

Headers and Footers

These are not permitted in theses. 
 

Tables and Figures 

All tables and figures should be numbered consecutively throughout the thesis using Arabic numerals. All tables and figures should be listed by number, title, and page number in the List of Tables and List of Figures pages in the thesis following the Table of Contents (Section 3.2). A table or figure should appear in the text as close as possible following the point where it is first discussed (usually no further than the page following). The legend for tables should be bolded and above the table. The legend for figures should be bolded and below the figure. Figures may be printed in color. All text should be in black ink.
 

Introduction

The Introduction should enable the reader to conceptualize the focus of the study in relation to what is already known from published work. It should provide a comprehensive review of the literature related to the study and convey how the present investigation aims to advance knowledge in the selected field.  The Introduction should state the study's overall aim and objectives, a brief description of the study’s target population, and clearly state the research question(s) and hypotheses investigated. 
 

Materials and Methods

The materials and methods describe how the research question was answered.  The section should be detailed enough for other researchers to repeat the investigation. This section describes the research protocol and provides a diagram, table, or flowchart to explain the research methods used. It should state how the sample was drawn, the sample size, power of the study, and the inferential basis created by the sampling method. It should delineate how the sample is representative of the target population, how treatment and control groups are comparable, how initial conditions were accounted for, and the minimum effect size that would be important. Accurate descriptions of the equipment and procedures used and conditions under which the study was conducted should be detailed in this section.  A brief description of the study site, study population, sampling, methods of investigation, etc., should be given. The section should describe clearly any modification to standard research methods, previously validated survey instruments, testing equipment, and give reasons for the modifications.

All drugs and chemicals used, including generic name(s), dosage(s), and route(s) of administration should be precisely stated. Names and addresses of drug and test equipment manufacturers should be stated in parentheses. 

This section should also provide an overview of the ethical clearance(s) obtained for conducting the study. All ethical approvals (Institutional Review Board, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) and any other approvals (for example, Research Oversight Committee approval, Survey Committee approval, etc.) should also be detailed and copies provided in the appendices.       
 

Results

In this section, the findings of the study should be provided in a logical sequence.  There is no need to discuss or interpret the data. Tables, figures, and illustrations are especially useful in presenting data, but avoid repeating data in text that has already been shown in figures and tables.  Include a caption that summarizes the results as displayed in the figure or table.

The statistical analysis should be presented in the Results section. Justification for the statistical methods used, along with the name and version of the statistical program, should be provided. The Results section should state the decision reached about the study’s hypothesis based on the results of the statistical tests.
 

Discussion

Data presented in the Results section should be interpreted, analyzed, and evaluated, and linked to the study's hypothesis and objectives. The Discussion section should explain why the results are useful or contribute to the body of knowledge in the relevant field and relate the findings to previous studies. Emphasis should be placed on the new and important outcomes of the work and the conclusions derived from the research. The study's limitations should be clearly identified, along with the impact on generalizability of the results.
 

Conclusions and Recommendations

The conclusion and recommendations section should include a brief summary of the main findings and conclusions, emphasizing the practical relevance of the results, followed by recommendations for future research.

For inclusion of audio-visual materials for illustration: 

• Illustrative materials such as images, audio, and video recordings may be submitted with the thesis. They must be included with the submitted thesis and placed in a pocket on a USB storage device and referred to as an appendix. Extra-large or bulky material may be presented as an appendix.
   

References Cited in the Bibliography

At the end of the work, there should be a full list of all books, articles, and other sources used. The aim of these citations is to allow readers to follow up on sources that are of interest to them. 

References must be presented using one of the 5 standard formats: Vancouver, Harvard, Chicago, American Psychological Association (APA), or Modern Language Association (MLA).  References may be collated using a reference manager and output system, such as EndNote or similar bibliographic referencing systems.  All references listed within the thesis must appear in the bibliography section. References not cited in the text, tables, or figures should not be listed in the bibliography section. References are normally alphabetically listed.

When the author has produced many papers, then the author is listed by author priority (single, two, three, four authors, etc.). If authorship remains the same over many years, then the papers are quoted with the earliest paper quoted first. At least 80% of all references cited must be from peer-reviewed journals. Annual Reports should be cited with ‘Anon’ in the position of the author’s name. 

Internet citations should be given as a regular journal reference with the URL (for example www.cdc.report ) in blue following the reference and listed in alphabetical order.

References Cited in the Text

• When citing only a single author, citation should be: Smith (1990) or (Smith, 1990).
• When citing a joint (two authors) publication, citation should be: Smith and Jones (1993) or (Smith and Jones, 1993).
• When citing a publication of more than two authors, citation should be: Smith et al. (1993) or (Smith et al., 1993).
• If the student cites more than one publication by one author in the same year, citation should be placed in lower case letters to separate the two (or more) listings e.g., Smith (1990a) or (Smith, 1990a) and Smith (1990b) or (Smith, 1990b).  The reference section should also be labeled as such.
• If more than two publications are cited for the same statement, then alphabetical priority is normally used, e.g., Smith (1990); Smith et al. (1992); West (1932) or (Smith, 1990; Smith et al., 1992; West 1992).
• Unpublished documents should be cited as: Smith. 1990 (unpublished manuscript) and listed in the reference section as below:
  • e.g., Lelijveld, J.L.M. 1971  Sero-epidemiology studies of malaria in Grenada. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy Thesis. University of Nijmegen. The Netherlands.
• Personal communication should be cited as: Smith. 1993 (personal communication)
• Documents without named authors should be cited as: Anon (1990) or (Anon, 1990)
• For texts, these should be referenced with the author’s name followed by (i) year of publication; (ii) book title, underlined or in italics; and (iii) publisher. Note: Decide on whether to use Underline or Italics.  Never use both within the bibliography.
  • e.g., Clyde. D.F. 1967 Malaria in Grenada Oxford University Press. London.
     

Quotations

It is vital to indicate when someone else’s view is being cited, either by paraphrase or by direct quotation. If the words of an author are quoted directly, this must be shown by putting the words in quotation marks, and after them the name of the author and the year of the publication.
 

Plagiarism and Copyright

Students and instructors/supervisors alike should be aware of the SGU plagiarism and copyright policies and adhere to them. The SGU Plagiarism Policy is reproduced as Appendix C and the SGS guideline on plagiarism is provided in Appendix D.