Chapter 4

Your future reader, Lucy, has reached the heart of your dissertation, Chapter 4. This is where she finds out what actually happened in your study! First you will give her a quick overview of the study and why you were doing it. Then you jump into any pilot studies that you did. It is important to indicate any deviations that you made to your original plan in c. 3. Carefully lay out how you went about recruiting your sample for the pilot study and any changes that you made based upon what happened in the pilot. Lucy needs to very clear about where you are as you begin the main study. 

Next, you describe the setting of your study, remember that Lucy needs to know exactly how you went about it, so be detailed. Describe your participants, so Lucy can clearly see how your participants might differ from hers. Now clearly and in detail, explain how you went about your procedures with your participants. Lucy should be able to replicate your study based upon your description. So talk about how and where you recruited, how and where the study took place, how long it took, etc. 

Next, in c 4 is the data analysis section, describe how you went about analyzing your data. Discuss each step and how you went about it. Lucy should be able to take your data set, analyze it exactly as you, and get the same results that you did, based upon your description.

Now present your results, Lucy is very excited to see how your study came out, so give her a careful and logical explanation of everything you found and relate your findings back to your research questions. Finally summarize the chapter and what you will cover in c. 5. 

Next time, we will take a little side trip and celebrate going on break! 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