I suggest that all ABD’s write their introductions last (or close to it). A good way to think about it is this: After you’ve written all your substantive chapters, then I would read the whole dissertation and figure out what information you’d need to include before the first chapter to provide the reader enough background to understand the rest of your dissertation in context. Assume that the reader has a moderate amount of knowledge about your topic, but needs a bit of framing/information to get the best value from reading your dissertation. Your introduction would include information that would help the reader understand the major issues underlying your dissertation research, and whatever she/he needs to know to understand the context within which your dissertation is written. My dissertation was on the personality correlates of marital satisfaction- so my introduction dealt with the general underpinings of marital satisfaction- what it was, who was studying it, why we should care- before moving into the more focused literature review about specifically what I was studying in my dissertation. The introduction is usually not too long about 1/2 to 3/4ths as long as your regular chapters. Another good suggestion is to read other dissertations in your topic and see how they handled the introduction. If you read 2-3 other dissertations, you’ll have a great sense of what to include in your specific case.
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