Dr. E. Glynn Harmon (School of Information)
Dissertation Tips
Below
are a few pointers about selecting a dissertation
topic and committee members, and pushing
the dissertation through to successful completion.
Please keep in mind that each situation
tends to be unique, so these pointers need
to be qualified and even challenged accordingly.
- Begin early to delineate your research
interests and talents, even before you
enter the doctoral program. Try to become
familiar with the works of the relevant
faculty members in your selected department
or school. Note which faculty members
seem to provoke the most thought or elicit
your research passions. Attempt to get
to know those faculty members by attending
their seminars and lectures and meeting
them face-to-face, particularly to see
whether or not there might exist a potentially
good "chemistry" between you
and these potential mentors. Do these
mentors have a reasonably successful record
of guiding their students through their
dissertations? Do the dissertations that
these faculty members chaired inspire
you to make a good contribution to knowledge?
Would you be willing to join them in their
research efforts, or might they be interested
in the kind of dissertation topic you
would like to undertake? Would you be
a worthwhile collaborator from the faculty
members' standpoint? How do other doctoral
students feel about these particular faculty
members?
- Try to pursue significant research
topics. Will your research have theoretical
relevance by unifying prior contributions,
challenging old theories or building new
ones? That is, would your problem, if
solved, tie together large amounts of
data, produce fresh insights, or go beyond
prevailing conceptual approaches? Will
your research attack problems that are
apparently serious and pressing, or those
that have long existed or frequently recurred?
Would a solution to your problem have
economic value, in that it would save
considerable time, money or energy, or
suggest a better allocation of resources?
Will your results possess prognostic or
predictive value?
- Thou shalt love thy topic! It is probably
fair to say that many permanent ABDs acquired
that status because they were not passionate
about their research, or did not learn
to make it a labor of love. Perhaps the
right topical area is one that draws you
so strongly that doing anything else becomes
an annoyance. You might then want to concentrate
on the dissertation day and night, as
if nothing else mattered.
- Conduct thorough literature reviews.
Some researchers find it necessary to
do two or more literature reviews. A first
review might be fairly broad, to scope
out the breadth and depth of a potential
topic and identify problem parameters.
A second review might try to define the
problem rigorously and isolate the best
past studies that deal more specifically
with the problem and provide clues about
the effectiveness of various research
methods and designs. Other reviews are
usually necessary as research progresses,
new insights occur, conclusions are substantiated
and elaborated, and failures send one
back to the drawing board. Encyclopedic
and annual reviews help especially to
parameterize problems, while journals
and proceedings help to come closer to
the front lines of research. Informal
communications with leaders who are probing
the research frontiers can provide approaches
that might not be published in the near
future. The Web of Science database can
be useful throughout this process. Resist
the temptation to merely summarize abstracts,
or to rely excessively on Web site information
in lieu of rigorous literature review.
- Ask the right question at the outset,
and perhaps you have the job half done,
an old saying goes. Often, the difficulties
inherent in the initiation of inquiry
are glossed over, and spurious problem
statements result. Large amounts of data
can be then be collected and analyzed,
with the disappointing realization that
you have pursued the wrong question. Rigorous
problem definition requires copious literature
review at the outset, along with the solicitation
of early criticisms from advisors.
- Pilot studies might be regarded as
a gift from God. With relatively little
effort, one or more pilot probes can help
better define a research problem, shape
and refine the research design, collect
and test sample data, and reach interesting
preliminary conclusions. One can then
try to make the final effort more cost
effective by achieving a very low ratio
of research cost (time, effort, money)
to overall knowledge gain.
- Take advantage of available research
software and other tools. Software and
data gathering and analysis tools can
be deployed to gather and organize stored
bibliographic and numeric data, and to
mine, gather, organize, and analyze primary
qualitative and quantitative data. Specialized
web sites and tools can likewise be helpful.
- Organize and schedule the dissertation
effort. Some researchers find it useful
to develop three critical path schedules:
one for developing and dealing with the
substantive problem; a second for dealing
with the corresponding deployment of methods;
and a third for managing the entire dissertation
effort (coordinating with your committee,
adhering to deadlines, etc.).
- Outline. Some dissertation writers
have benefited by understanding the cognitive
chunk limits of human short-term memory
( seven plus or minus two) and the impact
of cognitive limits on knowledge production
and representation. For example, writers
might plan to write a dissertation of,
say, 100 pages in length, exclusive of
appendices. They can thus outline something
like five chapters (7 minus 2) of 20 pages
each (the introductory chapter, three
chapters in the body, and a concluding
chapter). Each chapter can then be factored
into five sections of four pages each,
and each section can consist of five or
so paragraphs. This sectioning effort
then provides the basis for doing several
reasonably balanced trial outlines until
one gets it right. That is, this approach
seeks to provide a skeleton upon which
to hang the content of the dissertation,
and serves to break the overall task down
into manageable chunks. The appropriate use of appendices
can shorten the formal drafting effort.
- Edit your own work. Do not expect
your chairperson or other committee members
to edit your writing. Clean up after yourself.
If you submit unedited drafts to your
committee, each member will probably tend
to fall automatically into the task of
editing, and then turn the dissertation back to you without rendering
much substantive criticism. Then, when
you resubmit, the committee members might
finally turn their attention to providing
substantive criticism. The submission
of unedited drafts can thus lead to successive
re-submissions, and
obviously slow the dissertation effort
down considerably (and perhaps partially
alienate your committee members along
the way).
- Do not crash dissertation proposal
or submission deadlines. Work systematically
and continuously to give your committee
and other dissertation officials enough
time to review and approve your work.
Your committee should not be compelled
to treat your procrastination and your
last-minute submission as their emergency.
It might pay to defend a dissertation
or proposal fairly early in the semester,
when committees tend to be in a better
mood (November and April tend to be stressful
months for all). Summer might not be a
bad time to defend your dissertation,
provided committee members are available.
- If you appear to be getting interesting
research results, plan to publish your
dissertation findings, preferably in one
or more top-level journals. Some students
organize their dissertation into modules,
so that each chapter can be redeveloped
for publication. Or, consider converting
the work into book format for submission
to a top academic book publisher.
- Do not linger in the dissertation effort. Time is not necessarily your friend. Many things can go wrong during prolonged dissertation efforts, as many permanent ABDs can testify. Enthusiasm can wane (yours or other's) and money, health, emotional or family problems can arise. Your literature review and even your research design can become increasingly inadequate. Committee members can move away or fall prey to illness or death. The position that you accepted can become too demanding to make much dissertation progress; or you might not be as competitive in winning your dream position for want of a completed dissertation. Petitions to extend your doctoral candidacy might have to be filed, and prolonged tuition and fee payments can become burdensome. You incur economic opportunity costs when you delay re-entering the full-time or most optimal labor market. Perhaps speed is more of a friend.