dissertation proposal – Page 5 – Love Your Dissertation

August 30, 2017

Understanding our place on the research continuum

Some students seem to start writing at the top of the paper and grind out page after page, until they get to the bottom of the last page, where they stop and type “In conclusion.” That is how they know they are almost done. Along the way, they write whatever comes to mind. Citations are rare. These students seem to assume that the only thing that matters is their opinions on the topic. Undergrads often write like this. However, for doctoral candidates, this writing approach is a massive red flag. Maybe this approach comes from a belief that now they are ABD (all but dissertation), reviewers actually care what they think.

If your approach is similar to what I just described, I ask you, What is the point of researching anything? You apparently already know all the answers. What more is there to learn? I hope you can see the problem with this self-focused approach. When you pursue a doctoral degree, you join the big wide wonderful world of academic research. That means you are not an isolated researcher conjuring opinions out of the ether. You are part of a continuum.

What is the “research continuum”?

Humans tend to be self-centered. I’m sure it’s a survival trait, passed down to us from our ancestors who saw a stick in the path and didn’t wait to find out if it was a stick or a snake. I’m out of here, stage right! In our efforts to survive, we moderns may forget that we are the product of generations who lived before us.

The same idea is true in our conception of research. We think our study is on the cusp of something unique and remarkable. We think we are the cutting edge, the culmination of a grand and memorable idea the world has never seen before. Well, maybe you are, maybe your research will be world changing. However, most of us must be content to contribute our little container of coleslaw to the world party. The key word here is contribute. Like those who have gone before us, we offer our findings to the body of knowledge, and then we fade away.

Well, we don’t entirely fade away. People who come after us may cite our study, just as we cite the studies of those who came before us. This is the continuum of research. It began when someone looked at the world and asked, “Why?” I imagine it will go on until humans no longer have inquiring minds. (Some may say that time has already come, but we know better, don’t we? I hope so.)

Sorry, your opinions are not that important

I know what you are thinking: My opinions are not important!? Sorry if that offends you. I know, ouch. We don’t want to hear that our opinions aren’t important. My intention is not to be disrespectful. I’m sure your opinions are full of pithy insight. I’d love to read them someday, when you finally get your massive tome published.

The challenge that trips us up is forgetting that we are part of the research continuum, tossing our little piece of knowledge into the vast knowledge pool. We spout, in depth and at length, to show how much we know and to explain to our readers that we have the answers. Often we drone on (oh, sorry, I mean, we write eloquently) in our Literature Review, gushing our opinions rather than actually reviewing the literature! I see this tendency to offer opinions with some frequency in the papers I edit. This problem can delay your proposal approval.

Right now, I’m sorry to say, nobody cares about your opinions. When you are writing your proposal, you haven’t yet earned the right to have an opinion. After you collect and analyze your data, then you can have an opinion—about your findings, that is. You can’t just spout unsubstantiated claims and expect to get away with it. And, certainly, your opinions don’t belong in the Literature Review. That is the place for other researchers’ opinions. Remember the continuum of research!

I edit many papers. Sometimes I come upon uncited assertions in the first three chapters—for example, “Teachers should give their students more homework.” Or: “The world will fall apart if XYZ is not implemented immediately. Therefore, we should do XYZ right away!” These are recommendations that come from the dissertator’s heart, I get that. But writing these uncited statements leaves these dissertators hanging out in the short branches with no support and a long way to fall.

Unsupported statements sneak in when we are unclear in our thinking. Unclear thinking leads to unclear writing. To combat this very human tendency, create the structure of your argument and do not stray from it, no matter how tempting each verdant tangent may seem. Stick to the bones of your argument and avoid the fat. Your reviewers will be more likely to approve your proposal if they can see the elegant skeleton underlying your project. Then they can see that all the elements fit in satisfying alignment.

Beware the frothy emotional appeal

Dissertators sometimes write with passion (drama! and who cares about citations when you are beating your favorite righteous drum?). I understand the temptation to get on the soapbox, even if it is to convince some university reviewer that your proposal merits approval. However, reviewers spot the unsupported appeal a mile away—the dissertator’s argument is short on substance and long on froth. Usually, it’s a sign the dissertator has not fully grasped some basic research concepts or is more interested in expressing his or her wrath than in finding objective reality.

More reading is the antidote to the lack of understanding about concepts. The solution to the anger thing requires some self-awareness, a little soul-searching, and a commitment to finding and telling the truth as it exists, not as you perceive or desire it to be.

Be specific. Be concise. Be objective. If you want to make a passionate point, make sure you have lots of company (that means provide solid sources to cover your backside). Save your impassioned recommendations for your discussion chapter (and make sure you base them on your research findings). Don’t assume your view is the only view. Cultivate a little humility. Find all sides of your argument, and cite your sources. Be a fair, honest, and objective scholar. Welcome to the continuum of research!

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July 7, 2017

Feel like you can’t? Get busy and get it done

I can come up with a gajillion excuses why I can’t. Can’t what, you say? Can’t anything. Ask my mother, I bet she will say I was born moaning “I can’t!” Usually the thing I think I can’t do requires things I think I don’t have—typically, time, money, or energy. Rarely is the problem as simple as I don’t know how. Almost always, I’m bound up by my fear that I will fail. Here’s what to do when you are struck with a case of the “I can’ts” as you are struggling to get your dissertation proposal approved.

I can’t [fill in the blank]

When I was working on my doctorate, my sad refrain to my long-suffering colleagues was “Woe is me, I can’t finish this monstrosity!” While I was writing my first book, I whined frequently “I’ll never get it done!” to anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. I seem to be genetically disposed to complaining that I can’t do something, when the evidence implies otherwise.

The fact is, I did finish my doctorate. I did write that book. I can’t very well point to my track record and say, “See, Carol? You didn’t . . . so you can’t.” Because I did. So clearly, I can. If you get my drift. I confess, I was a Negatron long before there was such a thing. The good news is, it doesn’t matter! Let me repeat: positive attitude or negative attitude, or anywhere in between—it doesn’t matter.

Confidence is nice but not essential

You may be an expert on the power of positive thinking. If so, yay for you. If you don’t tend to look on the bright side, welcome to the club! The good news is, you don’t have to. Confidence is nice but not essential to completing your proposal. All the confidence on the planet is not going to earn approval if your grammar is subpar or you are missing critical citations. Just saying. In fact, I think confidence might be overrated. Confidence can become arrogance in a heartbeat. Arrogance can lead us to assume that our work is stellar when really it’s a big hairy mess.

Some people are naturally confident. I’m not one of them. Lacking natural confidence might sometimes be a good thing. For example, if I were naturally confident, I might say something breezily self-centered like “Feel your fear and do it anyway!” I might say “Go boldly in the direction of your dreams” without noticing you are hiding under the covers. I might say “Hey, all you have to fear is fear itself.” Blah blah blah. But I’m not naturally confident. I’m naturally terrified. You can diagnose me with low self-esteem, personality disorder, whatever. I’m here to tell you, none of that matters. I lack confidence, and I still earned my doctorate—it can be done!

There were times in my 8-year doctoral journey that I seriously doubted my ability to perform to a high enough standard to achieve my dream. When things got intense (meaning, when I was terrified out of my wits that I would fail), I narrowed my focus to the tiny piece of action in front of me: the chapter, the paragraph, the sentence. After I typed each sentence, I stopped to make sure what I was writing was on track and in alignment with my overall purpose and plan.

Sometimes I was too scared to write. Naptime! Right up until the end of the defense, I lacked confidence. As I wrote my book, I lacked confidence. As I write this blogpost, I lack confidence! Argh! However, if you are reading these words, I rest my case!

Action is the magic word

Lately my plaintive cry is “Alas, I can’t be creative. I can’t be successful. I can’t be successful being creative.” It is so much easier to complain about how my dreams daily fail to materialize . . . while ignoring the embarrassing fact that I’m doing practically nothing to help them happen. I spend a lot of time dreaming and fretting and not much time doing. (I can’t because . . . )

What do you worry about? Probably we worry about similar things. Here are a few of my worries: My work isn’t good enough. My topic is stupid. It’s been done. It’s already obsolete. It’s incoherent gibberish. I’ll never get done. This is costing me a fortune. I usually finish up with something like Alas, alackaday, woe is me [place back of hand on forehead].

We don’t need positive thinking, and we can’t sit around doing nothing. It’s all about action, people. Any action. You don’t have to believe in it, you just have to do it (obligatory kudos to Nike’s tagline, forever embedded in the American zeitgeist). It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to get done. This isn’t the culmination of your career, it’s just the beginning. You have lots and lots of road ahead of you to get it right.

Some words on the paper is better than zero words, even if they are incoherent gibberish. That’s how this blogpost came to be. Bla bla bladdy bla and next thing I know, I’ve got something done. Not perfect. Who cares. Sometimes, yes, the good is the enemy of the best, but perfectionism is the enemy of good enough. Nobody gets it right all the time. The ones who win (you define winning) are the ones who don’t quit, no matter what.

Here’s my suggestion: Work on your outline first. Get it on paper (that means type it up). Figure out what sources support which subsections. Then you can take a nap.

If you need some help, check out my book.

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March 18, 2017March 18, 2017

A down and dirty discussion of the dissertation proposal [Part I]

Download my dissertation checklist for free

Despite the photo, I like lists. Checking things off my list gives me the sense of accomplishment that helps me keep going. In fact, I doubt if I would have finished my dissertation without my dissertation checklist.

I’ve updated my dissertation checklist, and now you can download it for free (without registering or anything!) here. Just sneak in and grab it in Word format. Customize it for your own needs. This generic checklist includes many of the elements you need in your dissertation proposal. I also preview the elements you’ll need to include in your dissertation manuscript, after you collect and analyze your data.

The dissertation proposal

A large project like a doctoral research project has many moving parts, one of which is the dissertation. In the social sciences, dissertations are typically five or six chapters, plus some front matter (title page, abstract, acknowledgments, table of contents, lists of tables and figures, maybe a list of abbreviations) and some back matter (generally just the list of references and the appendices).

The first three chapters of a typical dissertation comprise the dissertation proposal. In this and three subsequent blog posts, I describe the sections of a dissertation proposal. Part I covers the front matter of your proposal. Part II covers Chapter 1, the introduction to your study. Part III covers Chapter 2, the basis of your justification for the study, also known as the Literature Review. Part IV focuses on Chapter 3, the blueprint for your research project, usually entitled Methodology. My discussion is generic, based on what I usually see in the dissertations I edit. Not all institutions require the same format. Follow your institutional guidelines.

The dissertation proposal: the front matter

The term front matter refers to all the pages that come before the first page of Chapter 1. Different universities require different elements in the front matter. Sometimes institutional guidelines can be quite strict. Other times they are refreshingly flexible. Here are the typical elements I find in the front matter section of a dissertation proposal.

Title page. Typically, the front matter starts with a title page. At the least, the title page provides the title of the study, the author, the degree, the school, and the date. Some of you will have to add the names and titles of your committee members. Follow your institutional guidelines. They may even have a template you can paste into place and customize for your project.

Abstract. The abstract is the overview or summary of the entire study. For your proposal, include one statement to introduce the topic, followed by the research problem and purpose of the study. Don’t include your research questions—later on, you won’t have room. For your proposal, focus on the problem, purpose, participants, and methods, and keep it short: The typical Abstract in a finished dissertation manuscript is no more than 350 words.

Acknowledgments & Dedication. We all want to acknowledge the people who helped move us along our dissertation journey. You can ignore this page for your proposal—in fact, I recommend that you do. Leave a placeholder (the title and a blank page), and fill it in after you’ve finished and received approval your dissertation manuscript. Then you can thank your mother, your mentors, your spouse, whoever helped you along your journey. I love to edit acknowledgments pages—I can hear the relief, gratitude, and profound weariness in the dissertators’ voices as they thank everyone under the sun. I know the feeling. I’d like to thank my cat, Eddie. An optional Dedication page may follow the Acknowledgments page.

The Table of Contents. Next up is usually the Table of Contents. If you don’t know by now, the Table of Contents (fondly known as the TOC) is an outline of your entire paper, usually to three or four levels of subheadings, depending on how your institution treats chapter headings. Some institutions put chapter headings in a class of their own, separate from the other heading and subheadings. Other institutions treat chapter headings as level 1 headings. Whatever. It matters, but not enough to fret about now. You’ll figure it out when your Chair dings you for not having three (or four) heading levels in your TOC. Argh.

A few dissertators who aren’t afraid of Word styles have figured out that Word can insert an automatic TOC. Most dissertators would probably like that idea, but are terrified of setting up and applying Word styles to their headings, and thus resort to typing their TOCs manually. Oh the humanity. I take a look, cringe, and delete the entire thing, all those pages of spaces, tabs, raggedy page numbers—yep, all gone. Then I proceed to set styles for all those headings and subheadings. I go through the paper, tagging each heading and subheading with the appropriate style. That takes a while, depending on how hard it is to figure out the dissertator’s intentions. Then I insert a TOC, bada boom, it’s done, in about six seconds. That is how you do a TOC.

Every now and then I will edit a paper from some harried dissertator whose institutional guidelines seem hell bent on making it impossible for anyone to get approval. Things in the TOC must line up just so, the k under the j, and indented just this amount, no more and no less. In those rare cases, Word’s automatic TOC feature will only get us partway to the goal. Annoying, but what can we do? I guess we could do some programming in Word, but that’s above my paygrade. Feel free. If the TOC has minute formatting requirements, I insert the TOC, convert it to plain text, and then format it as required, hoping that the dissertator won’t move stuff around and mess up the pagination. That’s a different subject for another day.

To update your TOC, click anywhere in it and press F9 on your function key row, or right-click and choose Update Field. You can update the entire table or just the page numbers.

Lists of Tables and Figures. The Table of Contents is usually followed by the List of Tables and the List of Figures (starting on separate pages). Usually the List of Tables comes first, but actually, I believe the List that should come first is the one that is the longest. Follow your institution’s template.

The magical trick of creating these lists is to use Word’s INSERT CAPTION function. You can insert labels above each table (e.g., Table 1) and below each figure (e.g., Figure 1). Word will generate accurate lists of each. You won’t have to type anything except the table titles and the figure captions. Bada bing. Magic. On rare occasions, I like Word. Making these lists is one of them. To update your list, click anywhere in it and press F9 on your function key row, or right-click and choose Update Field.

List of Abbreviations. Most dissertators don’t include a list of abbreviations, unless they are in the military. Dissertators who are or were in the military usually present an extensive list of acronyms, because that is their common language. If you have a list of abbreviations or acronyms, present it simply and concisely, without definitions. You’ll have a section in Chapter 1 to present your definitions of key terms.

The end of the front matter

When I see the term front matter, for some reason I think of gray matter and then wonder, do I have any left? Uh-oh. Then I think, front matter doesn’t matter, which is just silly—of course, front matter matters, if you are writing a dissertation proposal. How your front matter looks is a huge clue to the quality of the rest of your proposal. For example, if I see that you’ve manually typed your Table of Contents, I know that your comfort level with Word is low. That means I will be on the lookout for other formatting errors, and I will find them. Front matter matters in the sense that this section sets the level of expectation for the three chapters that follow.

The final page of the front matter marks the transition between the preliminary gobble-de-gook (technical term for all that stuff I’ve been talking about) and your actual paper. The front matter prepares your reader (or reviewer) for the proposal that follows. That means you need a dividing line between the two sections. We accomplish this in Word using a section break.

That means, at the end of the final page in your front matter, there should be a NEXT PAGE SECTION BREAK. This is the crucial section break in most dissertations. You can have more, and you may be required to have more, but if the pagination of the front matter changes on page 1 of Chapter 1, you’ll need at least this one section break or you’re a goner. You’ll find this essential section break in the little section break boutique under the PAGE LAYOUT Ribbon.

The section break tells Word that the formatting in section 2 can be different from the formatting in section 1. That’s great, because quite often the page number format changes from lowercase Roman numerals to Arabic numerals, don’t ask me why. If you ever accidentally deleted a section break and cried out in horror as your margins, page numbers, headers, and footers went wonky, you know what I am talking about. Quick, CONTROL Z!

If you can’t see your section breaks, it’s not your eyes. Turn on the “nonprinting characters” by clicking the SHOW/HIDE button on your Home Ribbon. Voila! Suddenly the extent of your crappy keyboarding ability becomes apparent. Yikes! Where did all those extra spaces and tabs come from? Yep. You tried to align things using spaces, didn’t you? Whoopsy.

In the next blog post, I dig deep under the hood of Chapter 1 to reveal the surprising number of essential elements, all of which you will need if you want to get your proposal approved.

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