Chapter 5 Issues*

Chapter 5 is the final chapter and discussion of your dissertation. One question that students ask me is "can I introduce new literature in chapter 5?" Any new literature should only be related to new topics that have arisen through the analyses of the data. I will use as an example, a recent study of mine (Stadtlander et al., 2013). We found that people over 85 who had escorts when they visited their physician, tended to indicate they liked their physician more and considered them more kind than people who went alone. Assuming that this had not been previously discussed in the literature review, in chapter 5 it would be appropriate to report any research related to this finding. 

Also in chapter 5, you will need to relate your findings to your theories that you discussed in your proposal. Questions to ask yourself are: What does the theory predict should happen in the study? How are my results similar or different from the predictions? If your findings are different from the theory's predictions, why do you think that might be the case? If there a way to modify the theory to incorporate your results? 

You must also think through the implications and explanations of your results. Given that the findings are correct, what does this mean for the population? How could such findings be explained? Let's return to the example I gave earlier that  people over 85 who had escorts when they visited their physician, tended to indicate they liked their physician more and considered them more kind than people who went alone. What are the explanations of such a finding? Some that we suggested are: it may be that escorts encourage patients to change physicians if they do not approve of them. On the other hand, having someone else approve of the physician may cause a halo effect (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), improving the oldest-olds' perception of the physician. An alternative, is those who like their physician may be more motivated to get treatment, and thus more likely to secure an escort. Are there further ideas that you have thought of? An implication is that physicians might want to encourage their older patients to bring a family member or friend with them to their visits.

Notice that the reference given (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) has probably not been previously discussed in the literature review. There would have been no reason to discuss halo effects before we had the results from the study. 

*My thanks to Susan, for suggesting this issue. Next time, we will take a look at where to get some help with writing. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Send me an email with your ideas. leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu 

Greenwald, A. & Banaji, M.R. (1995). Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4-27.

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M., Sickel, A., Brooks, E., Brown, C., Cormell, M., Ewing, L., Hart, D., Koons, D., Olson, C., Parker, P., Semenova, V., & Stoneking, S. (2013). Independent Living Oldest-Old and Their Primary Health Provider: A Mixed Method Examination of the Influence of Patient Personality Characteristics. Journal of Applied Gerontology. (Available in Walden Library's Psychology/ Sage database)