Chapter 3

Let's bring back your future dissertation reader, grad student, Lucy. The key issue for Lucy in reading your chapter 3, regardless of your methodology, is understanding what you did in the study. It needs to be explained in enough detail that she could replicate it if she wanted to. What does this mean for you, as a writer? It means you must clearly define who is eligible to be in your study and how you decided how many people should participate. Thoroughly explain any measures you used, give statistics on the reliability and validity of the measures.  

Did you do a pilot study? Why? Explain how you went about it. Discuss exactly how you recruited your participants What did they see as potential subjects (e.g., ads, flyers, etc.); include them in your appendix. How did they let you know they wanted to participate? What happened when they started the actual study? Was it done in a group? Individually? Online? How did you maintain privacy? How long did it take people complete the study? Be sure to include all measures, permission to use them, interview questions, etc. in your appendix. Discuss the ethical issues in your study, how you went about protecting your subjects and their data. Finally describe your plan for analysis of your data. 

Why do you have to include all of this? Because Lucy needs to be able to clearly see how your study differs from the one that she is considering. She needs to know how your participants are different from her population. Should she use the same measures you used or different ones? How should she structure her methods based upon your study? 

Think of chapter 3, in particular, as teaching Lucy about your study. Make sure she clearly understands the rationale for your methods as well as how you went about it. Next time, I will consider Chapter 4 and why each of the sections are included. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu