Getting Feedback

From Paula: I do not understand why on this level (Ph.D.) – you do not get any feedback about the content of your paper. I am very passionate about my dissertation topic, but no faculty member/committee member ever commented on the subject. For me this was/is weird. I do not advocate for more feedback, but it would help to know this in advance and to understand the reasons for it.

Interesting issue, Paula, I had to stop and think about it for a while. I think there are a number of factors involved. First, unless you just happen to have a chair or committee member very knowledgeable about the topic (I have only a couple that I can think of), the faculty may not know a great deal about the subject. This means that their comments will tend to be related to the logic of the arguments you make and if you appear to have covered the necessary literature.

A second factor is that there is an underlying assumption that you are an expert in the area you are addressing. As a committee member, even if I know something about the topic, in all likelihood I have not gone into a great deal of depth in the literature of your specific subtopic. As someone reading the paper, I will look for the student's understanding of the areas that I do know. I will also look at the type of references used – are they primarily books or textbooks? This shows the student has not dug deep enough into the literature.

A third comment, I know for me (and probably most faculty) I tend to be a generalist in my knowledge, I seem to know a little about many topics and a great deal about some narrow ones. After teaching many different psychology courses over the last 25 years (icky to realize that!), I have learned quite a bit about most areas of psychology. This means I can generally judge if the content seems adequate or if the student has misunderstood something important. Also, I find most faculty will ask questions of the student in the paper rather than make comments on what is written- the idea is to make you think it through not to provide the answers.

A final observation, in general I think what I look for in content is a logical argument. If you think back to the posts, where I discussed writing from broad subjects to narrowing it to the subtopics, this makes sense. An example, if John sends me a draft of his proposal, examining the elderly's opinion of their medical care, there are certain content areas I expect to be addressed. He should discuss aging in general, aging and medical care, patient satisfaction, etc. I want to be educated on the topic/ subtopics, if I don’t feel like I really understand the rationale, there is something missing in content.

Next time we will look at being accountable for your actions. 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