Guide to Preparing a Dissertation

Surviving and thriving in an uncertain world

or What have I gotten myself into?

Get your thinking straight

Right off the bat, let’s dispel a few notions about your dissertation.

It is not the definitive work on your topic.

It is not going to resolve fundamental issues in your field

It is not the most important research or writing project you will take on

Apart from your committee and a few people close to you, no one is going to read your dissertation

Okay, so what is a dissertation?A dissertation is proof to your committee that:

You are capable of making a valuable contribution to an active field of research,

You are conversant with the theoretical and empirical literature in your field

The work you have done is worthy of a Ph.D.

You are ready to go out into the real world and independently continue the work you have started

A thought to live by

It is never too early to start because:

A dissertation takes longer than you think.

You may well change your topic

Not everything you throw yourself into will wind up in your dissertation

You have a life outside of your studies (if you don’t, get one).

No matter how organized you are, dissertations are very messy affairs.

Getting stuck is part of the process

Begin where?

From your first class on, you need to be:

Looking for gaps in the literature,

Writing papers that help you focus your topic of interest,

Talking with faculty and other students about your interests,

All the while, completing courses, comprehensive exams, and all the other things that move you forward in the program

It really begins with a questionThis is harder than you think, and is a stumbling block for

many students.

A research question is not the same as a topic. It is likely you already have an area in which you are interested.

Familiarize yourself with the literature in your area of interest; look for what is not there as well as what is

Generate questions that are interesting to you, important to the field, and that can be answered

Everything flows from the questionThere is a logical relationship between your research questions,

hypotheses, design, and analysis.

Good research questions:Are grounded in the theoretical and empirical literatureLead to clear hypotheses and conceptual definitionsMake important contributions to the field when answered.

You likely will have multiple research questions, perhaps framed by an overarching question.

Shape your research across multiple coursesYour coursework is an appropriate venue for honing your

research questions, developing hypotheses, and most importantly, reviewing the literature.

You get the benefit of feedback from your instructor and classmates.

The classroom is a great environment for testing out research ideas (and occasional naps).

Use the resources around you

A university is an incredibly rich environment. You should:

Get to know your faculty

Get to know faculty in other departments

Spend time with your classmates

Live in the library (virtually or otherwise)

Major advisor

Work closely with your major advisor…

…and expect a little disappointment.

Major advisor

In reality, your major advisor is responsible for guiding your dissertation.

She or he plays four essential roles:

Advocate for you with other committee members and the faculty as a wholeSupervisor, and a good supervisor motivates workers to succeed.

Intellectual sounding board, listening carefully and stimulating new ideasCritic, reviewing your work in progress and providing constructive feedback.

Don’t get the idea that the other committee members are just along for the ride. It is up to you to engage them and draw on their expertise.

Some critical points

As with any research paper, a dissertation is persuasive argument (only longer)

Your chair/committee will ask:

What is the research question?Is the question worth Answering?Was the question adequately answered?Has the research made a contribution to knowledge?

The process

For the moment, assume you have your research questions, some tentative hypotheses, an a fair start on a literature review (from all those papers you have been writing), and you’ve gotten your comps out of the way or well under way.

What’s next?

Time for a dissertation proposal.

You cannot (or ought not) begin work on your dissertation until your committee has approved your dissertation proposal.

Dissertation proposal

Essentially, your proposal is the first three chapters of your dissertation (more about this in a minute)

Not necessarily in the complete final form but fleshed out enough to give your committee a clear idea as to what topic you are pursuing, why you are proposing it (good literature review, research questions, hypotheses), and how you will carry out the research.

Chapter I: Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the topical area and the study:

2-3 page summary of the topicStatement of the problemPurpose of the studyResearch questions and hypothesesSignificance of the studyDefine the concepts without operational

definitionsState how the rest of the proposal is organized.

Chapter II: Review of the literature

Begin with an explanation of the purpose of the review and how the review is organized

Use sub-headings for major topics

Provide historical background for the topic, if needed

Review the current theory and research

End with a summary review, giving attention to what is known and what is not known, indicating how the proposed study will contribute to the field.

Conducting a literature review

Develop a research strategy

Search systematically

Read critically (deconstruct the literature)

Put it all back together again (reconstruct the literature)

How many references (how much literature)?A common question to which there is no fixed

answer.

Essentially, your literature review is done when you have exhausted the topic (when you find yourself reading the same things over and over again).

A couple of years ago, I selected several dissertations from our graduates and counted the number of references. The mean was 180 with a range from 128 to 340

Chapter III: Methods

Begin with an overview of the methods and restate the research questions.

Indicate the general methodology (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods).

Identify the specific design

Describe the variables of interest with conceptual and operational definitions.

Identify potential threats to study validity and discuss how these will be handled

Chapter III: Methods

Identify the study population and describe the approach to sampling

Describe the measures to be used with psychometric properties and norms

If you developed your own measures (and I encourage you to consider this if you cannot find an appropriate measure), describe how you generated an item pool and selected items to include

Chapter III: Methods

Describe your research procedures, including instructions to participants, how materials will be distributed, and data collected.

Describe your approach to analysis at each stage, including data checking and cleaning, recoding, data transformations, handling of outliers, frequencies and descriptive statistics, correlations, selection of variables for modeling, approach to modeling.

Finish with a summary of the methods.

IRB

After your dissertation proposal has been approved, you need to prepare a protocol for Institutional Review Board Review

Send to your committee chair who will send it on to IRB.

If you are planning research internationally, get in touch with IRB to let them know

They will be helpful in getting approvals in the country where you will collect data.

Chapter IV: Results

Give a brief introduction to the results section.

Describe the characteristics of the sample

Present descriptive statistics for the variables in the study (frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations)

Present the results for each hypothesis in turn.

Use tables and charts as appropriate

Give a detailed interpretation of your findings in a manner that ties findings to theory and research

End with a summary of your findings.

Chapter V: Discussion

Summarize your findings against the literature and draw conclusions from the study

Indicate the contributions of the study to the literature and state the implications of the study for the field.

Offer recommendations based on your findings.

End with a summary of the results.