Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster

A Proven Map to Success

by E. Alana James and Tracesea Slater

Do  You  Have  Some  Idea  How  You  Will  Study  Your  Topic?          Bridging  Topic  and  Methods  

Beginning with Literature

•  How has your topic been researched in the past?

•  What methodologies were used? •  What are the different points of

view on your topic?

Tip- Make the librarian at your university your new best friend, or at the least take every tutorial or attend every training offered by your librarians. They will offer numerous tricks to finding and using the most helpful keywords, to how to easily download to your bibliographic software, all of which are extremely helpful (Roberts, 2004)

Investigating Your Topic

•  Explanatory works (books) •  Research / journal articles (peer reviewed) •  Secondary information (data/information

collected by others and archived in some form)

 

The Debates Inherent in a Discussion of Your Topic

•  Reorganize the ideas from your literature into topics and subtopics

•  Demonstrate that you understand the debates with your field

Organizing Your Thoughts

•  Chart your reading –  Seven concepts of research: purpose, scope,

methodology, findings, conclusions, limitations, and contributions

–  Agreement/disagreement with others’ works –  How you might use this article –  Things you particularly like –  Authors and works in the reference list that you

intend to investigate later (put this in your personal learning journal)

Critically Appraise What You Read

•  How interesting are their results? •  How sound was their methodology? •  Do these authors write in a credible manner? •  Do these authors discuss their work in a way that makes you respect

their knowledge of their topic as well as believe in what they found or are trying to suggest?

•  Take robust notes in bibliographic software on every article you read. •  Don’t forget to look up your DOI numbers and add them to your

database •  Watch for and make notes on the methodology used by authors studying

ideas similar to yours. •  Is this research quantitative?

Sorting Ideas Into Topics and Headings

•  Fit the ideas from your literature into the sections /structure required for your dissertation/thesis

•  Look at the logic behind your work – focus on those aspects of your work that directly related to your study (get rid of aspects of your reading that don’t specifically tie to your study – no matter how interesting they are)

Developing Your First Questions

•  Questions bridge to methodology •  Broad vs. focused questions •  Considerations for qualitative, quantitative

and mixed methods •  Access to data

Organizational Tools

•  Word processing software –  Templates –  Headings /sections –  Document maps / navigation pane –  Saving work on an internet server (e.g. iCloud, Dropbox)

•  Voice dictation software •  Bibliographic software

An excerpt from ‘Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster’

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Where Should I Go to Dig Deeper? Suggested Resources to Consider

•  Hart, C. (1998). Doing a literature review: Releasing social science research imagination. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 provides an in-depth discussion on how to construct meaning from multiple sources and build an argument as well as how to map and analyze ideas for a review of the literature.

•  Morgan, G. A., Leech, N. L., Gloeckner, G. W., & Barrett, K. C. (2011). IBM SPSS for introductory statistics: Use and interpretation. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Appendix B on writing research questions and problems is thorough and easy to follow.

•  Robson, C. (2002). Real world research: A resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK; Madden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Pages 54 through 61 do a great job of discussing developing your ideas from the questions, through the classification of the purposes of your study, and linking the two.

•  Single, P. B. (2009). Demystifying dissertation writing: A streamlined process from choice of topic to final text (1st ed.). Sterling, VA: Stylus. Chapter 4 goes into detail into the idea of citable notes and what can or should be included as you read literature.

•  Thomas, R. M. (2003). Blending qualitative and quantitative research methods in theses and dissertations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Thomas goes in depth into the various considerations of a number of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and their requirements relative to data collection and analysis