Alternative Sources for Articles, part 2

Previously I discussed the easy sources for articles, however, there are some other alternatives. If you have a college or university near you, you might check if they have the article you need. If all else fails, you can write to the author, although this will probably require some detective work. You can try the email he or she listed in the article (often listed on the abstract page), however, be aware faculty tend to move around a lot, and it may no longer work. The problem is you usually do not receive any notice the person no longer works there, so if you do not get a reply you do not know if they are just rude or never got it. If you know what affiliation (college, university, etc.) they listed on the article (it is usually listed near the title or as a footnote), go to the institution's website, and see if they are still employed there. They usually provide email addresses. If you still cannot find the author, do a Google search on him or her; you may pick up a clue where they work now and can try to track down an email address.

What do you say when you write them? Tell them you are very interested in their work on X and ask if they could send you a copy of their article (give the citation for it). Also, ask them if they have any other papers in this area. Be sure to include your mailing address in case they want to send it that way. Here is a sample letter:

Dear Dr. Jones,

I am very interested in your work on fear of pencils. I am a doctoral student in psychology at XXXX University and my dissertation is in this area. I have been unable to locate your paper Jones and Smith (2010) "Fear and Pencils: How do I function now?" I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me a copy of this article. In addition, if you have any subsequent papers in this area, I would love to get copies of those too.

Thank you so much for any help you can provide,

Suzy Student

17 Hopeful Lane

Johnston, NY 98765

Unfortunately, some people are rude, and you may not get a response. Give the author a week or two to respond; the final step would be to try to track down other authors on the paper.

Next time, I will discuss the prospectus – from a faculty view. 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

Alternative Sources for Articles, part 1

Students frequently ask me how to find articles that are not available in the library. Here are a few alternative sources. Make sure you have checked Google Scholar, also check electronic professional media such as LinkedIn or Research Gate. These are sites where authors frequently post preprints (work not yet published) as well as published articles. Be sure you have checked all of the available databases in your library. In psychology, one that is frequently missed is "Psychology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection." This database has many psychology articles, which for some reason, are typically not picked up by PsycINFO. If you are interested in a health related topic, make sure you check CINAHL (a nursing database) and Medline.

Check out "Thoreau: Search Multiple Databases." This often pulls up articles not found in individual databases. Similarly, the database, "Academic Search Complete" brings up some information outside the regular databases.

If you still cannot find a particular paper you are looking for and if you know the authors and title, you can request an interlibrary loan, in which the librarian will track it down for you. As a dissertation student, you may be allowed only a certain number of free loans, so check the rules out first.

Next time we will consider other alternative sources for articles. 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

Learning

During the course of writing, collecting, and analyzing your data for your dissertation, you will learn a great deal. You will learn about technical writing, APA format, and more about your methodology. However, if you are observant and self-reflective, you can learn a great deal about yourself too. Occasionally take stock of how you approach this large task. Are you methodological and require a step-by-step plan be implemented? Are you a last minute person, trying to put something together before you have to meet with your chair? Think through the implications of your responses, how is your personality interacting with your desire to be done with your doctorate?

Do you need frequent feedback or are you a person who likes to work on your own and just get feedback when necessary? How do you handle criticism? Do you become angry and defensive or do you look on criticism as a learning opportunity?

What writing issues are frequently commented upon by your chair/ committee? Do you tend to get into the little details to such an extent that your committee does not understand why you have included these issues? Common comments might be "please reduce your number of pages! Relate this back to your project." Perhaps you tend to follow interesting but irrelevant tangents in the literature- either never writing because you cannot get out of the literature or writing about issues not related to your study. Consider what leads you to these tendencies… how can you keep yourself on track?

How do like to read articles- in print or on the computer? How do you (or do you??) organize these articles? Do you have piles everywhere or is your office very tidy? All of these are giving you information about yourself and your personality. Why not take a little time to think about how you are reflected in your work habits? None of the characteristics are necessarily bad or wrong, however, it is an opportunity to decide if it they are getting you where you want to go.

Next time I will discuss some alternative sources for articles.  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

The Care & Feeding of Committee Members

What is appropriate behavior for a dissertation student toward his or her chair and committee member? In a traditional brick and mortar program you would see the behavior modeled by students further along in your program, but it is difficult at an online school to know what is normal.

The reality is it varies tremendously, so the first bit of advice I have for you is to ask what your chair and committee member prefer. If your chair does not suggest it, ask for a phone call to get you started, and discuss how your chair likes to structure their class and what their expectations are of students. What are they expecting from you in the first quarter? How will they decide if you should get a “U” or an “S” in the dissertation course? How would they prefer for you to address them?

In advance, think about how you like to work… are you independent and good at personal goal setting? Then perhaps ask if you could send them your draft once a month (or whatever the 2 of you agree is appropriate). Are you a person who has a hard time structuring your time and goal setting? Then ask for help as to what is realistic. You might want to set up regular meetings or times when you will need to submit drafts. Talk to your chair about your needs, and how they can be accommodated.

Also ask your committee member when they would like to see a draft. Many will prefer that you wait until the proposal has been approved by your chair, unless you have specific methodological or content issues on which you want their advice.

A few general bits of advice, be polite, ask questions when you need help, no one expects you to know everything. A “thank you” for good advice, prompt response, etc. means a lot to faculty (think of it as positive reinforcement, they will tend to repeat the good behavior J).

This is important: No one will know you are having problems, unless you say something! Typically, if they don’t hear from you, the faculty’s assumption is that you simply don’t care or aren’t working on the paper. There are many people who can help if you run into problems. If you have writing issues, contact the writing center. They have editors that will work with you. If one of your committee members advises you go to the writing center then listen and try not to be defensive. They are trying to save you time and tuition money! If you have committee issues, contact your program coordinator or program director. Be assertive, it is your money and time being spent, however, always be professional in interactions with faculty and administrators. Emotional responses are never a viable solution.

Faculty are people too, with busy schedules and family obligations, it is not realistic to expect immediate feedback. However, if you have not heard from a faculty member at all within a couple of days of sending an email, write and double check that they received it. Ask if they can give you an estimate of when you might get a response. Again, be polite and professional.

Remember, every faculty member who reads your paper is allowed 10 business days. I know it is hard to wait, but go on to the next stage. If you are waiting to get feedback on your prospectus, then go ahead and start on Chapter 2. If you are waiting on your proposal approval, work on your IRB application and power point for your defense. There is always something to work on. If you can’t find anything else, do an update in the literature and see if anything new has come out that could be helpful.

What do you do if you are having problems with your chair? First, write out an email outlining the issues, say how you would like it to be resolved- be very professional- no emotional response. Often it helps to take on some of the responsibility. It is a good idea to let it set for a day to make sure that you are not being impulsive. As the health psych program coordinator, I am always happy to read such email drafts and give suggestions. Here is an example of a an appropriate email:

Dr. X,

I am concerned that it is often taking 3 weeks for you to review my proposal drafts; the delay is really slowing my progress on the paper. Is there anything I can do to make this process go a little faster? If it would help, I could just send you a couple of pages at a time. Ideally, I would like to be able to get a response on my writing within a few days to a week. Do you have any further ideas?

If you feel that you don’t get a satisfactory response, the next step would be to contact your program coordinator or program director and ask for help.

One final bit of advice keep a record of when you submit papers to faculty, when you get a response, and their comments. It is a record that may come in handy in the future (this is where a research journal comes in handy!).

Next time I will consider what you can learn about yourself while writing your dissertation.  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

What is a dissertation?

What is a dissertation, and why is required to get a Ph.D.? It might help to take a step back and consider, what is a Ph.D.? This is a Doctor of Philosophy; it is a research degree, meaning that during the process of getting the degree you were trained as researcher. Your dissertation is therefore the demonstration of your ability to conduct research and to write professionally. It is considered the terminal (or highest) degree in your professional field. Receiving the degree places you in an elite group (less than 4% of the US population has a professional degree), and it is evidence of your professionalism and learning.

Why are you required to do research to show you are a professional? Conducting a research project shows your persistence and ability to complete a large project. It integrates all that you have learned in your education and shows that you can formulate new questions for future learning. Most degrees simply show learning; however, a PhD also shows your ability to go further and explore unknown areas, to develop research that answers questions. It shows that you are a logical and critical thinker; you can synthesize ideas, data and information, and write in a technical and professional manner. Being able to conduct research also shows that you are able to sift through information to find the current thinking in the field; as well as able to apply theory to your thinking, practice, investigations, and current events. The dissertation is considered the first step in your future research plan for the rest of your professional life. Will you have to stay in this topic area? No, but you will have the ability to plan and execute future studies.

At the completion of your project, you are assumed to be able to teach in your areas of expertise – both content and method at a college or university level. No licensure beyond the doctorate is required to teach in post-secondary institutions.

Is the dissertation "just another paper to write?" No, it really is much more than that; it is a very formalized document that demonstrates your expertise in your chosen area of interest. Once you have completed the project, you are considered an expert in this area. The paper will eventually be published in the dissertation databases, and will be a part of the professional literature. Other researchers and graduate students interested in your topic will read it in the future.

There are a number of implications of these issues. (a) Your literature review must be correct and as complete as possible, both to demonstrate your expertise and also for future researchers. (b) Your research methods must be as accurate and complete as possible, so others know exactly what you did in your study. Consider the future researcher who does a study similar to yours but gets different results. He or she will want to be able to compare the two samples and methods to determine why the difference occurred. (c) Your paper must be written in the format required for publication, and the formatting will be checked before you are allowed to defend the final draft. (d) This paper will follow you forever. Any future employer or colleague will be able to look up this document. (e) For many students, your dissertation will be your first published work. Think of it as your first child, yes, you will make mistakes, and when you look back at it years later, you will see things you should have done differently. For your future self, make it as elegant as possible and something of which you are and will be proud.

Next time I will look at the care and feeding of your committee members.  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

Small efforts

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. -Robert Collier, author

This quote is the essence of working on a dissertation: small efforts, small steps, doing a little something every day. Sometimes life seems to overwhelm and it seems impossible to work on your paper, but remember this quote and do a little something on it- file some papers, read an article, just think about your project – perhaps consider your theory and what it predicts.

Every day do something on your dissertation, sit and write for an hour, read articles in the waiting room or while you are waiting for someone. You can do this… one small step at a time.

Next time we will consider, what is a dissertation?  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

Control

When doing research you may feel you have control of your participants and your study. However, I would like you to keep in mind the photo of Jed that I am attaching, he is quite sure he is controlling the remote, and no one moves without him being involved. Yet, the reality is his control is minimal, such is the case with research. Despite all of your hard work and efforts to have things run smoothly, there will be occasions when participants do the unexpected. Some examples are quitting the study midway through, not reading questions carefully, misrepresenting themselves, or lying.

What can you do about these things? Actually, there is very little that you can do directly; all you can do is be aware of the issues and the illusion of control. When you analyze your data and get some strange data, remember the reality, that people do the unexpected and discuss the issue with your committee. They can make have suggestions on sorting it out.

Next time, we will look at the effects of small efforts. 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