Thesis attachments

To avoid making your thesis too long, you can use attachments or appendices at the end of your thesis. In these, you include important information that does not belong in the body text. Think of interview transcripts, surveys or tables with SPSS results. Where exactly do you put the appendices to your thesis? What are examples of attachments you can think of?

You probably know about attachments used in e-mails. In your thesis, you use attachments in the same way. There is some information you don't put in the e-mail itself as it would make the e-mail too long and unorderly. Thus, you add it as an attachment. The same goes for appendices to your thesis. 

In the appendix, you put information that is too detailed for the main text but still important for your research. This way, you can make your point in the thesis text itself briefly but powerfully, and include this important information separately for the reader. In the text itself, you refer to the appendices so that the interested reader can find the detailed information there.

You can put all kinds of information in the appendices. Examples of attachments are:

• Additional results. Include only the most important results in the main text. These directly support your story. Additional information that is less relevant to the research question should be included in the appendices to your thesis. Think of extra tables or figures.

• Interview transcripts. In the main text, you should only include brief quotes from interviews here and there. You can put the full interview transcripts in the appendices of your thesis.

• The survey that was conducted. Interested readers will be curious to know exactly which survey questions you asked respondents. It would be too much to put the complete survey in your method chapter. Therefore, you can put it in the appendices instead, and refer to it in the method chapter. Of course, you explain in the method chapter how you arrived at certain questions, who completed the survey, etc.

• Survey answers. Sometimes you also want to be able to refer to the exact answers of respondents. Appendices are also a good place for completed surveys.

• Forms, letters, etc. Did you contact an expert via written text (e-mail, letter, etc.)? Then you can also put that text in the appendices, but only if it matters for the research. The same goes for forms, original texts, etc. that you discuss in your thesis.

• Mind maps or elaborated models that you used mainly for your own understanding and that did not play a leading role in your research.

The reader wants to be able to find the right attachment quickly. It is therefore important to refer to the attachment in the body of the text in the right places. When doing so, also mention which attachment it is (Appendix 1, 2, 3, etc.). Then your reader will know where to find it.

Make sure you refer to each attachment at least once in the running text. Otherwise, nobody will know that you have included it. You can do this in brackets or in the sentence itself. For example, this looks like this:

• The interview with Jan Peters (see Appendix 3.1) shows that...

• Table 1 (see Appendix 2) shows that...

• The full survey is included in Appendix 4.

It is customary to put the appendices after the bibliography, starting on a new page. Check with your thesis supervisor what your study programme's requirements are for the location of the appendices.

Are you working on the appendices to your thesis? Then keep the following points in mind:

• Make a separate appendix for each section. Number the different appendices and include a clear title. 

• Name the appendices in your table of contents so the reader can easily find them.

• Does an attachment consist of several parts? If so, number the parts separately. For example, did you conduct four interviews? Then you can give each interview its own number within the same appendix (Appendix 3.1, 3.2, etc.).

• Usually, you write Attachment/Appendix with a capital letter when referring to one particular attachment. This is not a requirement, but it is common. In any case, be consistent. Either use a capital letter or a lowercase letter and do this consistently throughout your document.

• Put each new attachment on a new page. For parts of appendices (Appendix 4.1, 4.2, etc.) this is not always necessary. Only if you have somewhat longer attachment parts, it is smart to put them on separate pages.

• Check your appendices for language errors. Appendices are also included in your thesis supervisor's assessment. Unsure of your language and spelling? Then have your thesis checked by one of our editors. This way you can be sure that both your thesis and your appendices are free of errors.

Appendices are one of the many sections in your thesis. Do you want to know exactly which parts belong in your thesis and what should be in each part? Read our article on thesis structure. It will give you something to refer to for guidance when writing your thesis.