phd title examples

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation

Prize-Winning Thesis and Dissertation Examples

Published on September 9, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

It can be difficult to know where to start when writing your thesis or dissertation . One way to come up with some ideas or maybe even combat writer’s block is to check out previous work done by other students on a similar thesis or dissertation topic to yours.

This article collects a list of undergraduate, master’s, and PhD theses and dissertations that have won prizes for their high-quality research.

Table of contents

Award-winning undergraduate theses, award-winning master’s theses, award-winning ph.d. dissertations, other interesting articles.

University : University of Pennsylvania Faculty : History Author : Suchait Kahlon Award : 2021 Hilary Conroy Prize for Best Honors Thesis in World History Title : “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807”

University : Columbia University Faculty : History Author : Julien Saint Reiman Award : 2018 Charles A. Beard Senior Thesis Prize Title : “A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947

University: University College London Faculty: Geography Author: Anna Knowles-Smith Award:  2017 Royal Geographical Society Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Title:  Refugees and theatre: an exploration of the basis of self-representation

University: University of Washington Faculty:  Computer Science & Engineering Author: Nick J. Martindell Award: 2014 Best Senior Thesis Award Title:  DCDN: Distributed content delivery for the modern web

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

University:  University of Edinburgh Faculty:  Informatics Author:  Christopher Sipola Award:  2018 Social Responsibility & Sustainability Dissertation Prize Title:  Summarizing electricity usage with a neural network

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Education Author:  Matthew Brillinger Award:  2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Humanities Prize Title:  Educational Park Planning in Berkeley, California, 1965-1968

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty: Social Sciences Author:  Heather Martin Award:  2015 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  An Analysis of Sexual Assault Support Services for Women who have a Developmental Disability

University : University of Ottawa Faculty : Physics Author : Guillaume Thekkadath Award : 2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Sciences Prize Title : Joint measurements of complementary properties of quantum systems

University:  London School of Economics Faculty: International Development Author: Lajos Kossuth Award:  2016 Winner of the Prize for Best Overall Performance Title:  Shiny Happy People: A study of the effects income relative to a reference group exerts on life satisfaction

University : Stanford University Faculty : English Author : Nathan Wainstein Award : 2021 Alden Prize Title : “Unformed Art: Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel”

University : University of Massachusetts at Amherst Faculty : Molecular and Cellular Biology Author : Nils Pilotte Award : 2021 Byron Prize for Best Ph.D. Dissertation Title : “Improved Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Helminths”

University:  Utrecht University Faculty:  Linguistics Author:  Hans Rutger Bosker Award: 2014 AVT/Anéla Dissertation Prize Title:  The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech

University: California Institute of Technology Faculty: Physics Author: Michael P. Mendenhall Award: 2015 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics Title: Measurement of the neutron beta decay asymmetry using ultracold neutrons

University:  Stanford University Faculty: Management Science and Engineering Author:  Shayan O. Gharan Award:  Doctoral Dissertation Award 2013 Title:   New Rounding Techniques for the Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms

University: University of Minnesota Faculty: Chemical Engineering Author: Eric A. Vandre Award:  2014 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics Title: Onset of Dynamics Wetting Failure: The Mechanics of High-speed Fluid Displacement

University: Erasmus University Rotterdam Faculty: Marketing Author: Ezgi Akpinar Award: McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Award 2014 Title: Consumer Information Sharing: Understanding Psychological Drivers of Social Transmission

University: University of Washington Faculty: Computer Science & Engineering Author: Keith N. Snavely Award:  2009 Doctoral Dissertation Award Title: Scene Reconstruction and Visualization from Internet Photo Collections

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Social Work Author:  Susannah Taylor Award: 2018 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  Effacing and Obscuring Autonomy: the Effects of Structural Violence on the Transition to Adulthood of Street Involved Youth

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

• Survivorship bias
• Self-serving bias
• Availability heuristic
• Halo effect
• Hindsight bias
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, July 18). Prize-Winning Thesis and Dissertation Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved November 3, 2023, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/examples/

Is this article helpful?

Tegan George

Other students also liked, how to choose a dissertation topic | 8 steps to follow, checklist: writing a dissertation, thesis & dissertation database examples, what is your plagiarism score.

• The Program
• Degree Requirements
• Student Body Profile
• Faculty & Staff
• Alumni Placements
• Prospective Student Open House
• Application Requirements
• QMSS/SIPA Dual Degrees
• Columbia BA/MA
• Cost of Attendance
• Degree Planning
• Cross-Reg for QMSS Students
• Cross-Reg for NON-QMSS Students
• Research Assistantships
• Sample Thesis Titles
• Academic Resources
• Career Resources
• QASR Student Group
• Innovation Lab
• QMSS in the News
• Distinctions & Publications
• Alumni Profiles
• Student Placements
• QMSS RA Program (Columbia Researchers)
• Employer Resources
• Alumni Resources
• For Students

Completing a thesis is the capstone experience of the QMSS program. Students take this opportunity to apply the tools and methodologies developed through their coursework to questions of particular interest to them. The list of theses below demonstrates the broad array of substantive subject areas to which our graduates have applied their expertise.

The list is organized by the departmental affiliation of the faculty member who advised the thesis and the year in which it was completed. Though our program director has progressively advised more students we always encourage students to find additional advisors in our affiliate departments.

Business/Finance

• Should Personalization Be Optional in Paid Streaming Platforms?: Investigating User Data as an Indirect Compensation for Paid Streaming Platforms (2022)
• The Influence of Live Streaming Ecommerce on Customer Engagement on the Social Media Platforms (2022)
• An overview of the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Small Businesses in the U.S (2022)
• Exploring Key Predictors of Subsequent IPO Performance in the United States between 2016 -2021 (2022)
• The relationship between executive incentives and corporate performance under the background of mixed reform—Based on the empirical analysis of A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2018 (2022)
• How Sovereign Credit Rating Changes Impact Private Investment (2022)
• Chinese Mutual Fund Manager Style Analysis Based on Natural Language Processing (2022)
• The Influence of COVID-19 on Cryptocurrency Price (2022)
• Does Weather matter on E-commerce? Weather and E-commerce consumer behavior of Americans in four U.S. cities (2021)
• ModellingCFPB Consumer Complaint Topics Using Unsupervised Learning (2021)
• Vote For The Environment: Quantitative characteristics of shareholder resolution votes on environmental issues (2021)
• Social Capital’s Role in Accessing PPP Funds & the Evolving Nature of Online Lenders in the Small Business Ecosystem (2021)
• Predicting stock returns with Twitter: A test of semi-strong form EMH (2017)
• Who Receives Climate Finance and Why? A Quantitative Analysis of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Funds Allocation during 2003-2013 (2014)
• The American Dream—Deferred (2013)
• Job Satisfaction and Employee Turnover Intention: What does Organizational Culture Have To Do With It? (2013)
• What Factors Are Associated With Poor Households Engaging in Entrepreneurship? (2013)
• Uncertainty in measuring Sustainable Development: An application for the Sustainability-adjusted HDI (2012)
• Homeownership and Child Welfare in Unstable Times (2012)
• On the Evaluation of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs (2012)
• Financial Crisis and Bank Failure Prediction: Learning Lessons from the Great Recession (2011)
• Starbucks and its Peers: Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Financial Performance (2011)
• Statistical Arbitrage Strategies and Profit Potential in Commodity Futures Markets (2011)
• An Approach to Lending with Heterogeneous Borrowers (2010)
• Changes in Perceived Risk and Liquidity Shocks and Its Impact on Risk Premiums (2010)
• Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Investors' Behavioral Analysis: A Theoretical and Empirical Explanation from the Stock Markets in the U.S. & China (2010)
• Investing in Microfinance: A Portfolio Optimization Approach (2010)
• Empirical Analysis of Value Investing Strategy in Times of Subprime Mortgage Crisis 2007-08 (2009)
• Two Engines of Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank: Different Approaches. Different Results? (2008)
• Searching for the "Sweet Spot": The Optimal Mix of Executive Compensation to Maximize Firm Performance (2005)
• Differentials in Firm-Level Productivity and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Japanese Firm Data in 1998-2001 (2004) 
• Where's the Brand Equity?: Further Investigations Into the Role of Brand Equity in Experiential, Luxury, and Other Products (2003)
• An Account of Worth through Corporate Communication (2002)
• Deciphering Federal Reserve Bank Statements Using Natural Language Processing (2022)
• Gender Wage Gaps (2022)
• The Relationship between the Overall Sentiment on Twitter and Stock Market Performance during COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 (2022)
• The U.S. Stock Market’s Influence on China Stock Market between 2014 and the first half of 2019 (2022)
• Social Protection and the SDGs: A Data-Driven Bayesian Network Analysis (2022)
• Overeducation: The Effects of the Great Recession on the Labor Market (2021)
• Investor Sentiment and Stock Returns: Evidence from China's A-Share Market (2021)
• Difference-in-Differences Analysis (2017)
• Rapid Transition: A Comparison of Subway Usage and Rent Data to Predict Gentrification in New York City (2017)
• Female Labor Force Participation Rate and Economic Development: Time-Series Evidence in China (2016)
• Linkage Between Stock and Commodity Markets' Volitility in Both the U.S. and China (2016)
• Will Urbanization be the Next Economic Growth Engine for China? (2014)
• Solar Electricity's Impact on Germany's Wholesale Electricity Market (2014)
• How Does Quantitative Easing Policy Impact Emerging Markets: Evidence from the Effects on Long-Term Yields Structure of Hong Kong and Singapore (2014)
• The Effect of Income Taxes in Mexico: Evidence and Implications for Permanent Taxpayers (2014)
• Jumping on the Bandwagon: Conformity and Herd Behavior (2014)
• Effects of War After War: A Quantitative Comparison of the Economic Performance of Jewish World War II Veterans to Non-Jewish World War II Veterans (2013)
• Basel III Agreement: Will Higher & More Strictly Defined Capital Standards Impede on the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises? (2013)
• Unemployment and Economic Growth in Peru: 2001-2012 (2013)
• The Informal Market for Foreign Direct Investment: The Attractive Power of Country-Specific Characteristics (2012)
• Evaluating the impact of the Workfare Income Supplement Scheme on Singapore's Labour Market (2012)
• Innovation and Fiscal Decentralization in Transitional Economies (2012)
• International Trade and Economic Growth: Evidence from Singapore (2012)
• Economic Openness and Welfare Spending in Latin America (2012)
• Assessing the Costs of Fractional Reserve Banking: A Theoretical Exposition and Examination of Post-Meiji Japan (2012)
• Pricing Emerging Market Corporate Bonds: An Approach Using the CDS-Bond Basis Spread (2012)
• The Geographical Distribution of Mixed-Income Housing in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Developments (2012)
• An Economic Theory of Voting: Can we Explain, through Digital Inequalities, Why People Vote Less? (2011)
• Super-Pornstar Economics: Investigating the Wage Premium for Pornstar-Escorts (2011) 
• The Dynamic Linkages among International Stock Markets: The Case of BRICs and the U.S. (2011)
• Revisiting the Financing Gap: An Empirical Test from 1965 to 2007 (2010)
• Antitrust Law and the Promotion of Democracy and Economic Growth (2010)
• An Analysis of Keynesian Economics (2010)
• Who Will Pay to Reduce Global Warming?  A Multivariate Analysis of Concern, Efficacy, and Action (2010)
• Wage Difference Between White, Non-White, Local, and International Professional Players in the NBA (2010)
• Is Microlending Sustainable? Discerning the Relationship Between Microfinancial Participation, Measures of Acute Morbidity, and Expectations of the Characteristics of Village Organizations (2009)
• Application of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory to Consumers' Choices about Environmentally Responsible Decisions (2009)
• Trade Openness and Poverty Reduction: What is the Evidence? (2009)
• Crude Oil Prices: Mean Reversion in the Spot? Futures Know the Future? (2008)
• Evaluating the Impact of Supply-side Factors on Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: The Case of Nicaragua (2008)
• Females: Less Likely to Be Entrepreneurs? A Multi-level Analysis of the Effect of Gender on Entrepreneurial Activity (2008)
• Banking the Mexican Immigrant Population: Analysis of Profiling Variables (2008)
• A Comparison of Microfranchising to Independent Microenterprises in Ghana (2008)
• From Autarky to Free Trade: Will China Overtake the U.S. as the Major Trading Power in the Global Economy? (2006)
• Cluster Patterns of Age and Racial/Ethnic Groups Within Privately Developed Section 8 HUD Rent Subsidy Properties in New York City (2004)
• The Impact of Decimalization on Market Volatility and Liquidity (2004)
• Strategic Delegation with Unobservable Incentive Contracts: An Experiment (2002)
• Exchange Rate Market Pressure and The Quality of Governance (2001)

Public Health

• Analysing the Performance of Supervised ML models in Breast Cancer Diagnosis  (2022)
• Portability of Polygenic Scores for QuantitativeTraits using Continuous Genetic Distance in the UK Biobank (2021)
• A Report on the Correlation between COVID-19 pandemic and Unemployment Rate through Visualization (2021)
• Spatial Summary of Outdoor Dining and COVID-19 Rates in NYC (2021)
• The COVID-19 Infodemic: Narratives from the US & India (2021)
• Exploring the Experiences of People Living with HIV in the United States: Modelling Muscle Ache/Pain and Medicaid Expansion (2017)
• An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: An Algorithm Using Non-Health Indicators to Predict Health Risks of an Individual (2017)
• Does Racial Concordance in Clinical Encounters improve Providers’ Accessibility and Patients’ Satisfaction with Providers? (2016)
• Proportionality of Death Sentences in Alabama (2014)
• Zombies, Brains, and Tweets: The Neural and Emotional Correlates of Social Media (2013)
• Asexuality as a Spectrum: A National Probability Sample Comparison to the Sexual Community in the UK (2013)
• Parent-reported and Child Self-reported Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorder and their Relationships to Independent Living Skills in a Clinical Sample of Perinatally HIV-infected and Perinatally HIV-exposed but Uninfected Adolescents: An Exploratory Analysis (2013)
• The Sperm Shopper: How Consumer Segments and Evolutionary Pyschology Shape Choice of Sperm Donor (2012)
• Social Context and Impoverished Youths' General Health Outcomes: Community Disorder and Violence Predicting Self-Rated Health and Body Mass Index (2012)
• Location Theory and the Supply of Primary Care Physicians in Rural America (2012)
• Perception of Neighborhood Safety and Overweight/Obesity Status among Non-Metropolitan Adolescents in the U.S. (2011)
• Factors Affecting the Extent of Depression Treatment (2011)
• Beyond Gender Binary in Survey Design (2010)
• Junk Food and BMI: A Look at Schools Banning Candy, Snacks, and Soft Drinks and the Effect on Fifth Graders' BMI (2009) 
• Delivering Maternal Health: An Examination of Maternal Mortality on a National Scale (2008)
• Public Health and the Conrad Visa Waiver Program (2007)
• Alzheimer's Disease, Migration, and Social Environment: A Study of Caribbean Hispanics (2005)
• The Influence of Physician Attributes on Cesarean Likelihood (2004)
• Natural or Human-Made Disaster: Dimensions of Impact Measurement (2003)
• Healthy Life Choices Project: Efficacy of Nutritional Intervention with  Normal Foods  and Cognitive/Behavioral Skill Building on HIV/AIDS Associated Diarrhea and Quality of Life (2002)

Political Science

• Encouraging Voter Registration Among Minority Voters:  A Field Experiment Using Radio Advertisements (2022)
• Public Opinion Transition in China: Evidence from Weibo (2022)
• Gender and Co-sponsorship in U.S. Congress (2017)
• Accessing Social Influences of Congressmen with Keyword Network (2016)
• How presidential election in 2016 affects the stock market – A Twitter sentiment analysis perspective (2016)
• Assessing Assessors: A Study on Anti-Corruption Strategies in New York City’s Property Tax System (2016)
• Demographic Trends in Virginia 2013
• The determinants of Party and Coalition Identification in Chile: The effect of long and short-term factors (2013)
• Radical Moderation: Factors Affecting Support for Islamic Extremism (2012)
• Accommodationists versus Hardliners in Slovakia: Correlates of Public Opinion on Selected Foreign Policy Topics 2004 - 2010 (2012)
• Measurement and Belief: Determinants of Federal Funding for Public Diplomacy Programs (2010)
• Consumerism and Political Connectedness in Socialist Czechoslovakia (2010) - History
• Civilizations and Social Tolerance: A Multi-Level Analysis of 58 Countries (2008)
• How Does the 1965 Immigration Act Matter? (2006)
• 7200 Revolutions per Minute: An Economic Analysis of the Struggle between the Recording Industry and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Networks (2005)
• Classifying Myers-Briggs Personality Type based on Text (2021)
• Hiding Behind the Computer Screen: Imposter Phenomenon in the Tech Industry (2022)
• Relation between dark tourism on-site experience and visitors’ satisfaction (2022)
• Evaluating the Impact of Self-perceptions of Creativity and DemographicFactors on Arts Participation: Evidence from the United States (2021)
• Running head: QUEER HAPPINESS AND SUPPORTExamining Happiness in LGBTQ+ People and its Relationshipwith Worsened Parental Relationships After Coming Out (2021)
• The Impact of Donating Behavior on the Level of Happiness (2021)
• Birds of a Feather, or Do Opposites Attract? THE IMPACT OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON CONSTRAINT AND HOMOPHILY WITHIN SOCIAL NETWORKS (2017)
• Predicting Social Value Orientation from Personal Information and Survey Metadata (2017)
• All the Feels: Sentiment Analysis Between Emoji and Text (2017)
• Social Media Interface and the Next Generation Cognitive Mapping in New York City (2016)
• Is Prospective Memory Ability Flexible?  Manipulating Value to Increase Goal Significance (2011)
• Will a Nation Be Happier with a More Even Income Distribution? (2007)
• Behavioral Extensions to the Topology of Fear: A Gedankenexperimen (2007)
• Psychological Control and Preschoolers' Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors in China (2003)
• Prevalence and success of diversity-and-inclusion projects on education crowdfunding platform  (2022)
• Does gentrification cause the displacement of urban black populations?  (2022)
• Feedback and Gender in the Workplace: Should You Expect Equal Evaluation from Men and Women?  (2021)
• What are the determinants for art practitioners to choose self-employment? (2022)
• An empirical research for studying the influence of star popularity on the box office of movies (2022)
• Couple Dissolution Between Couples Who Meet Offline Versus Couples Who Meet Offline (2021)
• Masculine Men Who Wear Makeup: Exploring the Evolving Masculinity (2021)
• Do Individual Or Environmental Factors Play a Greater Role in Shaping the Intentions of Female High School Students to Enrol in STEM (2021) Programmes in University?:Evidence from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (2021)
• COVID-19 Information Narrative Beliefs Across Social Media Platforms (2021)
• Spatial Wage Penalty for Young Mothers: Exploring the Discrepancy of Education Return between Metro and Non-metro Areas (2016)
• Inequality Matters: A new Empirical Framework for Studying the Impact of Rising Socioeconomic Inequality on the Poor (2016)
• Immigration, Income, and Occupation: Peruvian Immigrants in the Chilean Labor Market (2014)
• Preferring France's 35-Hour Workweek: The Effects of Media on Work-Life Balance Preference Formation (2014)
• The Effect of College Education on Individual Social Trust in the United States– An Examination of the Causal Mechanisms (2013)
• Socio-economic Inequality and Socio-emotional Relationship Quality: Cause and effect? (2013)
• Examination of the Relationship between mother's employment status and one's family gender role attitudes (2012)
• A Study of Materialism Level among Mid-Atlantic residents (2012)
• Relation Recombination - A Sociological Patent Analysis (2012)
• The Relationship between Religious Attitudes and Concern for the Environment (2012)
• Marrying Down: The Gender Gap in Post-Secondary Completion & Education Hypogamy between 1960 and 2010 (2012)
• 2.0 Social Networks Have an Impact on our Real Lives (2011)
• Evidence of Ethnic Solidarity in Marriage Patterns of Hmong and Sino-Vietnamese in United States (2011)
• What Explains the Racial Disparity in Employment Discrimination Case Outcomes? (2010)
• Reading Race: The Changing Views of Human Difference in American History Textbooks, 1870-1930 (2010)
• Satisfaction with Life (2010)
• Entering the "Real World": An Empirical Investigation of College Graduates' Satisfaction with Life (2010)
• The Relationship between the Establishment of Marine Protected Areas and Biomass Productivity of Municipal Fisheries in the Philippines (2010)
• Performance Surveys, Citizen Respondents, and Satisfaction of Public Services: An Analysis of NYC Feedback Citywide Customer Survey (2009)
• Analysis of Job Retention Programs of the Center for Employment Opportunities of the Formerly Incarcerated (2009)
• The Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital: The Role of Grandparents' Education in Grandchildren's Cognitive Abilities (2009)
• Are Homicide Trends Fads? Diffusion Analysis of the Urban-rural Spillover Effects on Homicide Incidents from 1960-1990 in the South Atlantic States (2008) 
• Rejection Sensitivity and the Contagious Effect of Mood Regulation in Romantic Couples (2008)
• Women and the Homeostasis of the Inmate Population
• An Examination of the Relationship between Government Funding Allocation and Services Provided by Nonprofit Organizations in Brooklyn and the Bronx, 1997-2000 (2007)
• The Concurrent Validity of Maternal Self-report: The  Impact of Social Desirability on Substance Use and Prenatal Care (2006)
• The Effect of Housing Programs on the Economic Outcomes: Utilizing Observation Study Results from Minnesota Family Investment Program (2005)
• The Influences of Physician Attributes on Cesarean Likelihood (2004)
• Effects of Unemployment, Female Labor Force Participation, and Divorce on Suicide in Turkey: A Durkheimian Evaluation in a non-Western Milieu (2004)
• An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem (2002)
• The Relationship between Welfare Participation and Social Support (2002)
• Sound and Silence: A Structural Analysis of Conversation Topics (2002)
• A Reexamination of the Police and Crime Relationship: The New Role Community Policing Plays in Crime Prevention (2001)
• DNA Evidence in Court: Jurors, Statistical Training, and Pre-instruction in the Procedural Law (2001)
• The Role of Race in Education: An Analysis of Children in Brazil (2001)

Statistics/Computer Science

• Predicting Spotify's songs' popularity  (2022)
• Hiding Behind the Computer Screen: Imposter Phenomenon in the Tech Industry  (2021)
• An Unsupervised Learning Approach to Address Crime in Mexico, 2012 – 2016 (2017)
• Imputation of a variable completely unobserved in one wave of a panel: father’s earnings in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (2016)

An Analysis of Pairwise Preference (2016)

• Measuring Political Risk and Market Returns (2014)
• Which Yelp Reviews will be Voted Useful?- Predicting the Number of Useful Votes Yelp Reviews will get using Machine Learning Algorithms (2014)
• Polities and Size: Legitimizing or Limiting? (2013)
• The Role of Domain Knowledge in Environmental Concern and Willingness-to-Pay for Environmental Protection: Results from a U.S. Survey of Public Opinion (2013)
• The Power to Judge: Social Power Influences Moral Judgments of Simple and Complex Transgressions (2013)
• A Time Series Analysis of Crime Rates and Concern for Crime in the United States: 1973-2010 (2012)
• TV Gets Social: Evaluating Social Media Data to Explain Variability among Nielsen TV Ratings (2012)
• Unit Root or Mean Reversion in Stock Index: Evidence from Nigeria (2010)
• Homogeneity in Political Discussion Networks and its Factors (2007)
• Why Shift Policy? (2006)
• Point Detection for Poisson Disorder - Application in Earthquake Occurrence in Northern California, 1910 - 1999 (2004)
• Stock Volatility and Economic Activity: A Causal Analysis (2004)
• Strategic Information Transmission in Lobbying (2003)
• Economic Theory and Happiness in Mexico: An Extension (2001)
• Sales Forecasting Methods: A Consumer Products Company's Perspective (2001)
• Soccer Teams Need to Win at Home: The Fans that Increase those Chances (2001)
• The impact of school management on student performance  (2022)
• An investigation of the relationship between educational attainment and COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy in the US  (2022)
• Does Accountability Help or HinderSchools?: The Mississippi School Accountability Model and its Effect on School Performance (2021)
• The Relationship between Education and Health (2021)
• Quantifying Variation in American School Safety with Explainable Machine Learning:An Application of Machine Learning Feature Importances for the Social Sciences (2021)
• Age, Gender, and Comorbidities Affect Prevalence of Dyscalculia and Dyslexia, A Large-Scale Study of Specific Learning Disabilities Among Chinese Children (2021)
• Validation of Fitbit for use in Objective Measurement of Physical Activity and Sleep in Children and Adults (2014)
• Do Experienced Principals Fare Better? Estimates of Principal Value-Added (2014)
• Beyond the Test Score Gap: Non-Cognitive Skills, High School Graduation, and Post-Secondary Employment (2012)
• The Impact of the Level of Native Language Proficiency on the Literacy Achievement of English Language Leisures (2012)
• The Effect of School Building Design on Student Achievement (2011)
• Measuring Universal Primary Education Using Household Survey Data: The Case of the Millennium Villages Project (2011)
• An Additional Burden for Urban Schools: Teacher Transfer Policies and School Performance (2011)
• Evaluating Dual Enrollment Programs: Do Location and Instructor Matter? (2010)
• A Multi-level Growth-curve Analysis of the Association between Student Body Composition and English Literacy Development among Language Minority Students in New York City Public Schools (2010)
• Methods Supporting Policies in Education Reform (2010)
• Have Inclusionary Policies in Higher Education Really Helped?:  Looking at College Accessibility and the College-wage Premium, 1962-2007 (2010)
• NCLB and Curriculum Standards: What Really Impacts Teachers' Decisions to Leave the Profession? (2010)
• Exploring the Relationship between Video Games and Academic Achievement via Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Analyses (2009)
• Racial Disparities in Collegiate Cognitive Gains: A Multi-level Analysis of Institutional Influences on Learning and its Equitable Distribution (2009)
• Hoping for Higher Ed: The Differential Effects of Parental Expectations of Education Attainment (2009)
• The Impact of Family Communication on Risk Behavior among Boston Public High School Students (2009)
• Path Towards an Attainable Future: The Effect of College Access Programs on High School Dropout (2009)
• Traditional vs. Non-traditional College Students and Future Job Satisfaction: A Statistical Approach (2008) 
• A Multi-level Analysis of Student Assignment to Out-of-field and Uncertified High School Math Teachers: Implications for Educational Equity and Access (2008)
• The Impact of Obesity on Education (2005)
• The Gender Gap in Standardized Math Tests: Do the Gender Gaps in Math Self-concept and Other Affective Variables Contribute to the Gender Gap in Scores? (2004)
• An Alternative Approach to Selection Bias in School Choice: Using Propensity Score Matching to Examine School Sector and Teacher Quality Impact on Educational Outcomes (2003)

Join the QMSS Prospective Mailing List!

Latest tweet.

• @QMSS at Columbia 4/4 Gold medalists (1st %ile or >): Kechengjie Zhu, Computer Science Nicholas Milinkovich, QMSS Vijay S Kalmath, Computer Science Apr. 29, 2022
• @QMSS at Columbia 3/4 Silver medalists (5th %ile or >): Anh-Vu NGUYEN, DSI Pruthvi Reddy Panati, QMSS Alan Luo, Computer Science Apr. 29, 2022
• Address: 420 W 118th St, Suite 807 New York, NY 10027
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: +1 212-853-3910
• Monday - Friday: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm

© 2012-2016, Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences at Columbia University. All rights reserved.

• Formatting Your Dissertation
• Introduction

Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

• Application for Degree
• Credit for Completed Graduate Work
• Ad Hoc Degree Programs
• Acknowledging the Work of Others
• Advanced Planning
• Dissertation Submission Checklist
• Publishing Options
• Submitting Your Dissertation
• English Language Proficiency
• PhD Program Requirements
• Secondary Fields
• Year of Graduate Study (G-Year)
• Master's Degrees
• Grade and Examination Requirements
• Conduct and Safety
• Financial Aid
• Registration

On this page:

Language of the Dissertation

Page and text requirements, body of text, tables, figures, and captions, dissertation acceptance certificate, copyright statement.

• Table of Contents

Front and Back Matter

Supplemental material, dissertations comprising previously published works, top ten formatting errors, further questions.

• Related Contacts and Forms

When preparing the dissertation for submission, students must follow strict formatting requirements. Any deviation from these requirements may lead to rejection of the dissertation and delay in the conferral of the degree.

The language of the dissertation is ordinarily English, although some departments whose subject matter involves foreign languages may accept a dissertation written in a language other than English.

Most dissertations are 100 to 300 pages in length. All dissertations should be divided into appropriate sections, and long dissertations may need chapters, main divisions, and subdivisions.

• 8½ x 11 inches, unless a musical score is included
• At least 1 inch for all margins
• Body of text: double spacing
• Block quotations, footnotes, and bibliographies: single spacing within each entry but double spacing between each entry
• Table of contents, list of tables, list of figures or illustrations, and lengthy tables: single spacing may be used

Fonts and Point Size

Use 10-12 point size. Fonts must be embedded in the PDF file to ensure all characters display correctly. 

Recommended Fonts

If you are unsure whether your chosen font will display correctly, use one of the following fonts: 

If fonts are not embedded, non-English characters may not appear as intended. Fonts embedded improperly will be published to DASH as-is. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that fonts are embedded properly prior to submission. 

Instructions for Embedding Fonts

To embed your fonts in recent versions of Word, follow these instructions from Microsoft:

• Click the File tab and then click Options .
• In the left column, select the Save tab.
• Clear the Do not embed common system fonts check box.

For reference, below are some instructions from ProQuest UMI for embedding fonts in older file formats:

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2010:

• In the File pull-down menu click on Options .
• Choose Save on the left sidebar.
• Check the box next to Embed fonts in the file.
• Click the OK button.
• Save the document.

Note that when saving as a PDF, make sure to go to “more options” and save as “PDF/A compliant”

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2007:

• Click the circular Office button in the upper left corner of Microsoft Word.
• A new window will display. In the bottom right corner select Word Options . 
• Choose Save from the left sidebar.

Using Microsoft Word on a Mac:

Microsoft Word 2008 on a Mac OS X computer will automatically embed your fonts while converting your document to a PDF file.

If you are converting to PDF using Acrobat Professional (instructions courtesy of the Graduate Thesis Office at Iowa State University):  

• Open your document in Microsoft Word. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF tab at the top. Select "Change Conversion Settings." 
• Click on Advanced Settings. 
• Click on the Fonts folder on the left side of the new window. In the lower box on the right, delete any fonts that appear in the "Never Embed" box. Then click "OK." 
• If prompted to save these new settings, save them as "Embed all fonts." 
• Now the Change Conversion Settings window should show "embed all fonts" in the Conversion Settings drop-down list and it should be selected. Click "OK" again. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF link at the top again. This time select Convert to Adobe PDF. Depending on the size of your document and the speed of your computer, this process can take 1-15 minutes. 
• After your document is converted, select the "File" tab at the top of the page. Then select "Document Properties." 
• Click on the "Fonts" tab. Carefully check all of your fonts. They should all show "(Embedded Subset)" after the font name. 
•  If you see "(Embedded Subset)" after all fonts, you have succeeded.

The font used in the body of the text must also be used in headers, page numbers, and footnotes. Exceptions are made only for tables and figures created with different software and inserted into the document.

Tables and figures must be placed as close as possible to their first mention in the text. They may be placed on a page with no text above or below, or they may be placed directly into the text. If a table or a figure is alone on a page (with no narrative), it should be centered within the margins on the page. Tables may take up more than one page as long as they obey all rules about margins. Tables and figures referred to in the text may not be placed at the end of the chapter or at the end of the dissertation.

• Given the standards of the discipline, dissertations in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning often place illustrations at the end of the dissertation.

Figure and table numbering must be continuous throughout the dissertation or by chapter (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.). Two figures or tables cannot be designated with the same number. If you have repeating images that you need to cite more than once, label them with their number and A, B, etc. 

Headings should be placed at the top of tables. While no specific rules for the format of table headings and figure captions are required, a consistent format must be used throughout the dissertation (contact your department for style manuals appropriate to the field).

Captions should appear at the bottom of any figures. If the figure takes up the entire page, the caption should be placed alone on the preceding page, centered vertically and horizontally within the margins.

Each page receives a separate page number. When a figure or table title is on a preceding page, the second and subsequent pages of the figure or table should say, for example, “Figure 5 (Continued).” In such an instance, the list of figures or tables will list the page number containing the title. The word “figure” should be written in full (not abbreviated), and the “F” should be capitalized (e.g., Figure 5). In instances where the caption continues on a second page, the “(Continued)” notation should appear on the second and any subsequent page. The figure/table and the caption are viewed as one entity and the numbering should show correlation between all pages. Each page must include a header.

Landscape orientation figures and tables must be positioned correctly and bound at the top so that the top of the figure or table will be at the left margin. Figure and table headings/captions are placed with the same orientation as the figure or table when on the same page. When on a separate page, headings/captions are always placed in portrait orientation, regardless of the orientation of the figure or table. Page numbers are always placed as if the figure were vertical on the page.

If a graphic artist does the figures, Harvard Griffin GSAS will accept lettering done by the artist only within the figure. Figures done with software are acceptable if the figures are clear and legible. Legends and titles done by the same process as the figures will be accepted if they too are clear, legible, and run at least 10 or 12 characters per inch. Otherwise, legends and captions should be printed with the same font used in the text.

Original illustrations, photographs, and fine arts prints may be scanned and included, centered between the margins on a page with no text above or below.

Use of Third-Party Content

In addition to the student's own writing, dissertations often contain third-party content or in-copyright content owned by parties other than you, the student who authored the dissertation. The Office for Scholarly Communication recommends consulting the information below about fair use, which allows individuals to use in-copyright content, on a limited basis and for specific purposes, without seeking permission from copyright holders.

Because your dissertation will be made available for online distribution through DASH , Harvard's open-access repository, it is important that any third-party content in it may be made available in this way.

Fair Use and Copyright 

What is fair use?

Fair use is a provision in copyright law that allows the use of a certain amount of copyrighted material without seeking permission. Fair use is format- and media-agnostic. This means fair use may apply to images (including photographs, illustrations, and paintings), quoting at length from literature, videos, and music regardless of the format. 

How do I determine whether my use of an image or other third-party content in my dissertation is fair use?  

There are four factors you will need to consider when making a fair use claim.

1) For what purpose is your work going to be used?

• Nonprofit, educational, scholarly, or research use favors fair use. Commercial, non-educational uses, often do not favor fair use.
• A transformative use (repurposing or recontextualizing the in-copyright material) favors fair use. Examining, analyzing, and explicating the material in a meaningful way, so as to enhance a reader's understanding, strengthens your fair use argument. In other words, can you make the point in the thesis without using, for instance, an in-copyright image? Is that image necessary to your dissertation? If not, perhaps, for copyright reasons, you should not include the image.  

2) What is the nature of the work to be used?

• Published, fact-based content favors fair use and includes scholarly analysis in published academic venues. 
• Creative works, including artistic images, are afforded more protection under copyright, and depending on your use in light of the other factors, may be less likely to favor fair use; however, this does not preclude considerations of fair use for creative content altogether.

3) How much of the work is going to be used?  

• Small, or less significant, amounts favor fair use. A good rule of thumb is to use only as much of the in-copyright content as necessary to serve your purpose. Can you use a thumbnail rather than a full-resolution image? Can you use a black-and-white photo instead of color? Can you quote select passages instead of including several pages of the content? These simple changes bolster your fair use of the material.

4) What potential effect on the market for that work may your use have?

• If there is a market for licensing this exact use or type of educational material, then this weighs against fair use. If however, there would likely be no effect on the potential commercial market, or if it is not possible to obtain permission to use the work, then this favors fair use. 

For further assistance with fair use, consult the Office for Scholarly Communication's guide, Fair Use: Made for the Harvard Community and the Office of the General Counsel's Copyright and Fair Use: A Guide for the Harvard Community .

What are my options if I don’t have a strong fair use claim? 

Consider the following options if you find you cannot reasonably make a fair use claim for the content you wish to incorporate:

• Seek permission from the copyright holder. 
• Use openly licensed content as an alternative to the original third-party content you intended to use. Openly-licensed content grants permission up-front for reuse of in-copyright content, provided your use meets the terms of the open license.
• Use content in the public domain, as this content is not in-copyright and is therefore free of all copyright restrictions. Whereas third-party content is owned by parties other than you, no one owns content in the public domain; everyone, therefore, has the right to use it.

For use of images in your dissertation, please consult this guide to Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media , which is a great resource for finding images without copyright restrictions. 

Who can help me with questions about copyright and fair use?

Contact your Copyright First Responder . Please note, Copyright First Responders assist with questions concerning copyright and fair use, but do not assist with the process of obtaining permission from copyright holders.

Pages should be assigned a number except for the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate . Preliminary pages (abstract, table of contents, list of tables, graphs, illustrations, and preface) should use small Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). All pages must contain text or images.  

Count the title page as page i and the copyright page as page ii, but do not print page numbers on either page .

For the body of text, use Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) starting with page 1 on the first page of text. Page numbers must be centered throughout the manuscript at the top or bottom. Every numbered page must be consecutively ordered, including tables, graphs, illustrations, and bibliography/index (if included); letter suffixes (such as 10a, 10b, etc.) are not allowed. It is customary not to have a page number on the page containing a chapter heading.

• Check pagination carefully. Account for all pages.

A copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC) should appear as the first page. This page should not be counted or numbered. The DAC will appear in the online version of the published dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

The dissertation begins with the title page; the title should be as concise as possible and should provide an accurate description of the dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

• Do not print a page number on the title page. It is understood to be page  i  for counting purposes only.

A copyright notice should appear on a separate page immediately following the title page and include the copyright symbol ©, the year of first publication of the work, and the name of the author:

© [ year ] [ Author’s Name ] All rights reserved.

Alternatively, students may choose to license their work openly under a  Creative Commons  license. The author remains the copyright holder while at the same time granting up-front permission to others to read, share, and (depending on the license) adapt the work, so long as proper attribution is given. (By default, under copyright law, the author reserves all rights; under a Creative Commons license, the author reserves some rights.)

• Do  not  print a page number on the copyright page. It is understood to be page  ii  for counting purposes only.

An abstract, numbered as page  iii , should immediately follow the copyright page and should state the problem, describe the methods and procedures used, and give the main results or conclusions of the research. The abstract will appear in the online and bound versions of the dissertation and will be published by ProQuest. There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 

• double-spaced
• left-justified
• indented on the first line of each paragraph
• The author’s name, right justified
• The words “Dissertation Advisor:” followed by the advisor’s name, left-justified (a maximum of two advisors is allowed)
• Title of the dissertation, centered, several lines below author and advisor

Dissertations divided into sections must contain a table of contents that lists, at minimum, the major headings in the following order:

• Front Matter
• Body of Text
• Back Matter

Front matter includes (if applicable):

• acknowledgements of help or encouragement from individuals or institutions
• a dedication
• a list of illustrations or tables
• a glossary of terms
• one or more epigraphs.

Back matter includes (if applicable):

• bibliography
• supplemental materials, including figures and tables
• an index (in rare instances).

Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the end of the dissertation in an appendix, not within or at the end of a chapter. If additional digital information (including audio, video, image, or datasets) will accompany the main body of the dissertation, it should be uploaded as a supplemental file through ProQuest ETD . Supplemental material will be available in DASH and ProQuest and preserved digitally in the Harvard University Archives.

As a matter of copyright, dissertations comprising the student's previously published works must be authorized for distribution from DASH. The guidelines in this section pertain to any previously published material that requires permission from publishers or other rightsholders before it may be distributed from DASH. Please note:

• Authors whose publishing agreements grant the publisher exclusive rights to display, distribute, and create derivative works will need to seek the publisher's permission for nonexclusive use of the underlying works before the dissertation may be distributed from DASH.
• Authors whose publishing agreements indicate the authors have retained the relevant nonexclusive rights to the original materials for display, distribution, and the creation of derivative works may distribute the dissertation as a whole from DASH without need for further permissions.

It is recommended that authors consult their publishing agreements directly to determine whether and to what extent they may have transferred exclusive rights under copyright. The Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) is available to help the author determine whether she has retained the necessary rights or requires permission. Please note, however, the Office of Scholarly Communication is not able to assist with the permissions process itself.

• Missing Dissertation Acceptance Certificate.  The first page of the PDF dissertation file should be a scanned copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC). This page should not be counted or numbered as a part of the dissertation pagination.
• Conflicts Between the DAC and the Title Page.  The DAC and the dissertation title page must match exactly, meaning that the author name and the title on the title page must match that on the DAC. If you use your full middle name or just an initial on one document, it must be the same on the other document.  
• Abstract Formatting Errors. The advisor name should be left-justified, and the author's name should be right-justified. Up to two advisor names are allowed. The Abstract should be double spaced and include the page title “Abstract,” as well as the page number “iii.” There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 
•  The front matter should be numbered using Roman numerals (iii, iv, v, …). The title page and the copyright page should be counted but not numbered. The first printed page number should appear on the Abstract page (iii). 
• The body of the dissertation should be numbered using Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, …). The first page of the body of the text should begin with page 1. Pagination may not continue from the front matter. 
• All page numbers should be centered either at the top or the bottom of the page.
• Figures and tables Figures and tables must be placed within the text, as close to their first mention as possible. Figures and tables that span more than one page must be labeled on each page. Any second and subsequent page of the figure/table must include the “(Continued)” notation. This applies to figure captions as well as images. Each page of a figure/table must be accounted for and appropriately labeled. All figures/tables must have a unique number. They may not repeat within the dissertation.
• Any figures/tables placed in a horizontal orientation must be placed with the top of the figure/ table on the left-hand side. The top of the figure/table should be aligned with the spine of the dissertation when it is bound. 
• Page numbers must be placed in the same location on all pages of the dissertation, centered, at the bottom or top of the page. Page numbers may not appear under the table/ figure.
• Supplemental Figures and Tables. Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the back of the dissertation in an appendix. They should not be placed at the back of the chapter. 
• Permission Letters Copyright. permission letters must be uploaded as a supplemental file, titled ‘do_not_publish_permission_letters,” within the dissertation submission tool.
•  DAC Attachment. The signed Dissertation Acceptance Certificate must additionally be uploaded as a document in the "Administrative Documents" section when submitting in Proquest ETD . Dissertation submission is not complete until all documents have been received and accepted.
• Overall Formatting. The entire document should be checked after all revisions, and before submitting online, to spot any inconsistencies or PDF conversion glitches.
• You can view dissertations successfully published from your department in DASH . This is a great place to check for specific formatting and area-specific conventions.
• Contact the  Office of Student Affairs  with further questions.

CONTACT INFO

Student affairs, explore events.