Your Originality Statement

How to use this

Four short steps, working on your own.

Tick any contribution types that genuinely fit your research.
Answer the prompt that appears for each one you tick.
Draft your statement from your strongest one or two answers.
Stress-test it against the two most common ways these claims go wrong.

Step 1 & 2

Which kind of contribution is yours?

Tick what genuinely fits — it's fine, and normal, if some don't apply at all.

Need an example? See how one project could draw on several

A PhD studying how nurses experience moral distress during short-staffing could plausibly claim: theoretical significance (showing the existing model of moral distress behaves differently under chronic versus acute pressure), heuristic value (opening a new question — is moral distress and moral fatigue the same thing at different intensities, or genuinely different?), practical significance (pointing hospital managers toward a specific rostering change), methodological significance (a creative way of capturing distress in the moment rather than relying on retrospective interviews), or moral significance (giving voice to an experience routinely dismissed as "just part of the job"). One study, on one fairly contained topic — but almost certainly not all five with equal strength. You're looking for your strongest one or two.

Theoretical Extends, applies, or challenges existing theory — matters to other researchers in your field.

What existing theory, concept, or framework does my work extend, apply somewhere new, or push back against?

Heuristic Sparks curiosity, opens new questions more than it closes anything down.

What new question does my work open up that wasn't being asked before?

Practical Useful in the real world — to participants, practitioners, or organisations.

Who could use what I've found, and what might they do differently as a result?

Methodological A contribution to how research itself gets done.

Is there anything about how I did this research that others could borrow or adapt?

Moral Gives voice to overlooked experience, builds critical awareness.

Whose experience does my research give voice to, and what does it help people see or question?

Does your contribution look different from these five?

These are useful starting points, not the full list — if your strongest sense of what's original about your work doesn't quite fit any of them, describe it in your own words here instead.

Step 3

Draft your statement

Use your strongest one or two answers above. Push for something specific to your project, not a generic claim any qualitative study could make.

"My research is original because..."

Two to three sentences. Which type(s) of significance is this drawing on?

Step 4

Stress-test it

The two most common ways an originality claim goes wrong — check your statement against both.

I've avoided claiming "no one has looked at this before" An examiner will almost always know something adjacent — be specific about what's different instead.

I've stated my contribution plainly, before qualifying or hedging it It's fine to be honest about limits — just say the contribution first, not instead.