Thesis Introduction Chapter: A Worked Example and Structure (Canada, 2026)

The introduction is the chapter most people write first, abandon, and rewrite last. That is the right order, but it wastes months if you do not know what the finished chapter is supposed to contain. This guide sets out the seven moves a Canadian thesis introduction makes, how many words each one is worth, and what each looks like written out. At the end, the two things that change if your programme uses a manuscript-based thesis rather than a monograph.

The worked passages below are shapes, not claims. They contain no real study, no real statistic and no finding attributed to a real author. [cite] marks a source you must supply; [figure] marks a number you must measure or find.

What the chapter is for

An introduction chapter answers four questions in a reader’s head, in this order: what is this about, why should I care, what exactly did you do, and how do I navigate what follows. An examiner reads it twice — once at the start, and once after the conclusion to check that you delivered what you promised. The second reading is the one that matters, which is why the chapter is finished last.

Length varies by field and degree. In most Canadian master’s theses the introduction runs 8 to 15 pages; in a doctoral thesis, 15 to 30. A major research paper compresses the same moves into 4 to 8. Those are norms, not rules — your department’s recent completed theses are the better guide, and they are usually in your university’s institutional repository.

The seven moves, with a word budget

The percentages are a diagnostic, not a target. If move two is eating half the chapter, you are writing your literature review in the wrong place. If move six is two sentences, your examiners will ask the significance question at the defence instead.

Move 1: opening and context, written out

Community pharmacists are the most frequently visited health professionals in Canada, and their scope of practice has widened substantially over the past decade to include assessment, prescribing for minor ailments and injection administration [cite]. That expansion has been implemented province by province, with different authorities granted at different times and under different conditions [cite]. The result is a national profession operating under a patchwork of mandates, in which a service that is routine in one province may be unavailable in the next.

Three sentences, no jargon, and the last one contains the seed of the whole thesis. A good opening move ends with a sentence a reader could repeat to a colleague. Avoid the two standard failures: the dictionary opening (“Health is defined as…”) and the throat-clearing opening (“In today’s rapidly changing world…”).

Move 2: background, and the line you must not cross

Move two tells the reader what is settled. It is not the literature review, and the single most common structural fault in a Canadian thesis introduction is that it is written as one. The test: move two cites sources to establish a position; the literature review chapter interrogates them. If you are comparing methodologies or criticising a study’s design, you have crossed the line.

Evaluations of expanded pharmacist scope have consistently found high patient satisfaction and good clinical concordance with physician assessment for a defined set of minor ailments [cite]. Uptake, however, varies widely: reported rates of service delivery differ by a factor of [figure] between the highest and lowest provinces in the period studied [cite]. Two explanations dominate the literature — remuneration models [cite] and pharmacy workflow constraints [cite] — and both are supported by survey evidence from pharmacists themselves.

Notice that this paragraph sets up a competition between two explanations without adjudicating it. That is exactly what move three needs.

Move 3: the problem statement

What neither explanation accounts for is variation within a single provincial remuneration regime, where workflow constraints and payment are held approximately constant. Preliminary administrative data suggest that within-province variation between individual pharmacies is of a similar magnitude to between-province variation [figure], which neither of the dominant explanations predicts. Until the sources of within-regime variation are identified, provincial policy levers aimed at remuneration will continue to be applied to a problem that is at least partly organisational, and patients in low-delivery pharmacies will keep being referred onward for services they are entitled to receive on the spot.

This is the same four-move structure set out in detail, with six worked specimens, in the problem statement examples guide. If move three is giving you trouble, write it there first and paste it here.

Move 4: purpose and research questions

One purpose sentence, then the questions. The purpose sentence names the design; the questions name the unknowns.

The purpose of this study is to identify pharmacy-level organisational factors associated with the delivery of minor-ailment assessment services within a single provincial remuneration regime, using a sequential explanatory design.

1. How does the rate of minor-ailment service delivery vary between community pharmacies within the study province?
2. Which pharmacy-level characteristics — staffing model, hours, corporate affiliation, dispensing volume — are associated with that variation?
3. How do pharmacists in high- and low-delivery pharmacies account for the difference in their own practice?

Three questions, each answerable, and each attached to a different part of the design: the first descriptive, the second inferential, the third qualitative. A reader can already see the thesis. The mechanics of turning a gap into questions of this kind are worked through in the research questions and hypotheses guide.

Move 5: the approach, in one paragraph

This is a preview, not the methodology chapter. Name the design, the population, the data source and the analysis in four or five sentences, and stop. The reader needs enough to believe the questions are answerable.

This study uses a two-phase sequential explanatory design. Phase one draws on [figure] months of provincial administrative claims for minor-ailment assessments, linked to a pharmacy-level registry, and models delivery rate against pharmacy characteristics. Phase two uses semi-structured interviews with pharmacists sampled purposively from the highest and lowest delivery quartiles identified in phase one. Quantitative results are analysed before interview recruitment begins, so that the interview schedule can be shaped by the patterns found. Ethics approval and data-access arrangements are described in Chapter 3.

The full defence of these choices belongs in the methodology chapter, and the approvals in that last sentence are governed by your research ethics board under TCPS 2.

Move 6: significance and scope, the move most people underwrite

Significance is not “this study will contribute to the literature”. It is a specific claim about who will be able to do something differently. Scope is its twin: the boundaries you chose, stated as choices.

For provincial policy, the study distinguishes between variation that responds to payment and variation that responds to organisation, which are addressed by different instruments. For pharmacy operators, it identifies staffing and workflow configurations associated with higher delivery within the same fee structure. For the research literature, it tests whether the remuneration explanation retains explanatory power once regime is held constant.

The study is delimited to a single province, so between-regime comparison is out of scope, and to minor-ailment assessment rather than the full expanded scope of practice. Pharmacies in hospital and long-term-care settings are excluded because their service model differs. These boundaries are deliberate; their consequences for generalisability are taken up in Chapter 6.

Three named audiences, three different things each can do. Then the boundaries, each with a reason. That second paragraph is what stops an examiner from asking why you did not study the whole country.

Move 7: the outline

One or two sentences per chapter, in order, in the present tense. Say what each chapter does, not what it is about.

Chapter 2 reviews the evidence on expanded pharmacist scope and on organisational determinants of service delivery in community settings, and identifies the theoretical framework the study adopts. Chapter 3 sets out the design, data sources, variables and analytic strategy for both phases, together with ethics and data-access arrangements. Chapter 4 reports the quantitative results. Chapter 5 reports the interview findings and integrates them with the quantitative phase. Chapter 6 discusses the implications, states the limitations and sets out what follows for policy and for further research.

Two things that change in a manuscript-based thesis

Several Canadian universities permit a manuscript-based thesis, in which the middle chapters are papers. McGill’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies is explicit that a thesis is either a traditional monograph or manuscript-based and “cannot be a mixture of the two”, and it requires a bridging text of one to three pages between manuscripts.

That changes your introduction in two ways. First, move seven describes papers rather than chapters, and has to state the relationship between them — what the second paper does that the first could not. Second, move two has to carry more weight, because each manuscript will contain its own compressed background and the introduction is the only place the reader gets the connective account. If your programme allows both forms, decide before you write the introduction, not after. The conventions also vary sharply by field, as the computer science thesis structure guide shows.

Five mistakes examiners flag

1. The literature review has migrated into move two. Fix by cutting every sentence that evaluates a study rather than reporting a settled position.
2. The research questions do not match the gap. Read move three and move four side by side. If a question does not address the stated unknown, one of the two is wrong.
3. Scope is missing entirely. An introduction with no stated boundaries invites every boundary question at the defence. Most of those questions appear in the thesis defence questions guide.
4. The outline is a table of contents in sentences. “Chapter 4 is about the results” tells a reader nothing. Say what the chapter establishes.
5. The chapter was never rewritten. The introduction promises; the conclusion delivers. If you have not reread the introduction after finishing the discussion chapter, the two are almost certainly out of alignment.

A practical order of writing

Draft moves three and four first, because they are the thesis. Draft move seven next, as a plan, and keep updating it. Write moves one, two, five and six once the study is designed. Then rewrite the whole chapter after the conclusion exists. Four passes sounds like a lot; in practice each one is shorter than the last, and the alternative is a chapter that describes a study you did not end up doing.

If the blank page is the obstacle, Tesify drafts from your own notes and sources so you have a full chapter to cut rather than an outline to stare at. Start your thesis with Tesify — 100% written by you.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a thesis introduction chapter be?

Typically 8 to 15 pages for a Canadian master’s thesis and 15 to 30 for a doctoral thesis; 4 to 8 for a major research paper. Check recent completed theses from your own department before trusting any general number.

Should I write the introduction first or last?

Both. Draft it early so the study has a spine, then rewrite it after the conclusion so the promises and the deliveries match.

What is the difference between the introduction and the literature review?

The introduction establishes a position using sources; the literature review interrogates the sources themselves. If you are comparing designs or criticising a study’s sample, you are in the review.

Do I put the research questions in the introduction or the methodology?

The introduction, at the end of move four. The methodology chapter explains how you will answer them, and usually restates them once.

How many research questions should I have?

Two to four in most master’s theses. More than four usually means several of them are sub-questions and should be nested.

Does the introduction need its own citations?

Yes. Move two in particular is unusable without them. Move three’s gap sentence is normally the one uncited sentence in the chapter.

Where does the theoretical framework go?

Most often at the start of the literature review, with a one-sentence signal in the introduction’s outline. Some programmes want it in the introduction — check your template.

Can I reuse my proposal’s introduction?

As a starting draft, yes. Expect to rewrite moves five and six entirely, because what you proposed and what you did are rarely identical.

What tense should the outline be in?

Present tense: “Chapter 4 reports…”. Future tense reads as a proposal rather than a finished thesis.

Is the introduction different in an MRP?

Shorter, and moves five and six are usually compressed into one section each. The seven moves still all appear.