Proposal, abstract and dissertation report: note their differences

In doing dissertation works, you are required to draft a dissertation proposal, and subsequently, to submit a final dissertation report with an abstract. From the textbooks on research methods or from the Internet, you should be able to find guidelines on how to draft these documents. Nevertheless, some students still submit complete dissertation reports as their dissertation proposals; or in their dissertation proposals, they also provide information on "findings and analysis" as well as "conclusions". Such students' acts indicate dishonesty in dissertation works. These students also tend to be unwilling and unable to change the contents of "their" proposals or dissertation reports.

The main point is: as compared with a dissertation report, a dissertation proposal should not have information on "findings and analysis" nor "conclusions", as the dissertation project has not even started when a dissertation proposal has just been submitted to the dissertation supervisor for review, see the following diagram:

Typical dissertation report structure

Title-----------------------------------------> appear in proposal (prelim)
1. Introduction ----------------------------> appear in proposal (prelim)
2. Literature review-----------------------> appear in proposal (prelim)
3. Research methods----------------------> appear in propoal (prelim)
4. Findings and analysis
5. Conclusions and recommendations
References---------------------------------> appear in proposal (prelim)
Appendix

The main tasks involved in writing up a proposal are noted in the following diagram:

As to the dissertation report abstracts, some students just copy their dissertation proposals as their dissertation abstracts. Again, this is unacceptable, because dissertation proposals are in future tense while dissertation abstracts are in present perfect (re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_perfect) or past tense. Dissertation abstracts also highlight dissertation findings and achievements which are not provided in the dissertation proposals, because the actual research works have not started when the dissertation proposals are submitted to the dissertation supervisors for review.

I think these mistakes from students should not be made in the first place if these students are serious and honest when doing their dissertation works.

References

1. On dissertation abstracts: http://www.ukdissertation.co.uk/dissertation_abstract.htm
2. On dissertation proposals: http://chris.golde.org/filecabinet/disspropose.html