Where to Start?

You are ready to begin your dissertation… but where do you start?? First, you need a project idea, but how do you find one? Some students know very early in their program what they want to explore in their dissertation; however, if you do not know, here are some ideas as to how to come up with a topic. I suggest taking a couple of minutes and writing down what classes you liked, articles you have found interesting, and general topics which have interested you in your educational career. For the moment do not think about it in terms of doing a project; just consider things which have interested you. Let us say you came up with the following list:

Liked Women's Health class

Liked Changing Health Behavior class

Interested in pregnancy related topics

Interested in topic of cervical cancer

Found this article interesting:

Manne, S.; Ostroff, J.; Fox, K.; Grana, G.; Winkel, G. (2009). Cognitive and social processes predicting partner psychological adaptation to early stage breast cancer. British Journal of Health Psychology, 14(1), 49-68.

Now just do some free association, here is mine: How about partner adaptation to cervical cancer? This makes me wonder if anyone has looked at partner adaptation to testicular cancer. I wonder if people have looked at cervical cancer and pregnancy. Is this an issue? What kinds of programs are there for partner support for health related issues? I wonder if I could do a program evaluation of one of them. Is there any secondary data (a data set that someone else has already collected) available on any of these topics (I should check out any institutional secondary data resources, which may be available)?

Ok, we now have a few directions to explore. Go to the library and do some searches on the various topics, include the word review in your search terms, only look at the last 5 years. This will bring up recent literature reviews on the topics. Read the articles paying particular attention when they talk about "future research" or "research needed". See if anything sounds interesting to you and follow it up with more articles, paying attention to the methods they use. I hope you will have at least a general direction by this point! Once you think you have found a gap in the literature, do searches to make sure no one has done the study you are considering. Write your search terms, databases used, and articles you found helpful in your research journal (more on this in the next chapter). 

Next time, I will post an updated blog index. 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

One of many

One difficulty many students have is accepting that although their dissertation is a major priority in their life, for their faculty mentor, they are just one of many students. It is important to realize that your mentor's time is divided among not only all of his or her doctoral students, but also other obligations and commitments.

My message today is to be patient with your mentors, give them a reasonable amount of time for reviewing documents, answering emails and questions. Use your waiting times productively by going on to the next step in your paper/ process, such as the next chapter, preparing for a defense or IRB application.

Next time, I will discuss finding a dissertation topic. 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

Where are you going?

It is important to consider your end goal before you get started! Many of the readers of this blog are psychology students. What can you do with your doctorate in this area? First, it is important to understand in most states you cannot be licensed as a psychologist with a degree in an academic area (e.g., General or Experimental Psychology, Industrial/ Organizational Psychology and some Health Psychology programs). To be licensed, you would need to be in counseling or clinical psychology. So what can you do with an academic degree?

Many psychology students go into academia and work as instructors or professors, conducting research and teaching. What would your professional life be like as a professor? It depends a great deal, as to whether you have a full time or a part time position. Many beginning faculty members have one or more part time positions, particularly if they are working online. They may be teaching at multiple colleges or universities and teaching several courses at once. This means you would be online responding to discussions, grading papers, and interacting with students for many hours each day.

If you have a full time university position, whether online or in person, you would be expected to teach 2-3 classes a term, conduct research (or teach additional classes), and do committee work for the college/ university. If you do research, you will be expected to include students as research assistants, which means mentoring them in how to conduct research projects.

For a full time community/ junior college teaching position, you would probably teach 4-5 classes a term and participate in committee work for the college. You typically, would not be expected to do research.

What can you do now to prepare for such positions? Get some teaching experience. With a master’s degree you are qualified to teach at a junior or community college (no license is required). Another alternative is look at professional schools; as a grad student I taught an intro to psychology class at a paralegal school. The important thing is to get experience in front of a class. Save any teaching evaluations you get, this is proof of your ability as a teacher.

If you are interested in teaching at the university level, consider getting experience with research. If there are no research assistant positions available, consider applying for volunteer ones at local colleges or universities. You will get valuable experience, and may get the opportunity to be an author on posters or publications. Also, consider applying for a post-doctoral fellowship. These are (low-paying) paid positions after you have completed your Ph.D. and give you more advanced training in research. You will also have the opportunity to be listed on publications and presentations. The negative is it will take an additional year or two before you are in a stable faculty position. Plan ahead for what you want to be doing in your future.

Next time, we consider being one of many. 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

How long does a dissertation take?

One of the most common questions I receive is "how long will it take me to do a dissertation?" Of course, my answer is it is very individual, it depends on how good of a writer you are, the type of study you do, and what problems you encounter.

Let us go a little deeper. Some students become convinced they should be done with their dissertation within the program stated requirement. However, this number has little to do with reality; it is simply the academic requirement. Dissertations do not go according to schedule; it will take however long it takes. Yes, I have seen students finish in one year, but I have also seen others take 2-3 years.

Why does it take so long?? There are a number of reasons. (a) Students may not write well, requiring many revisions and they must work with an editor. (b) There are many waiting times; each person who reviews your paper must be given a reasonable amount of time to complete it. Therefore, if you have to do many revisions, the time adds up. (c) Different research methods take different time periods. The fastest is doing an archival (a data set previously collected in the past) or secondary data (data collected by someone else, may be from an institution or organization) analysis. Probably qualitative and mixed methods take the longest. (d) Problems arise; in fact, expect them. You may not be able get the required number of participants, your computer crashes, you or family members get sick, or your boss insists you work overtime. Things happen, which delay the process. (e) Chair or committee issues, sometimes personalities clash, committee members get sick or even die. There is no way to predict such things and they too slow you down.

What are characteristics of students who are done quickly? They tend to be excellent writers, work every day on their paper, and the dissertation gods grant them minimal outside problems. Promise yourself today, however long it takes, you will keep working on it. That will get you done.

Next time, we consider – where are you going with your Ph.D?. 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 Macro Level Writing Review

We now move to a macro level of writing review in which you make sure the chapters and the paper as a whole are consistent. As you write over time, it is easy for your paper to deviate in your methodology and approach. If you have ever read a new novelist's first book, you may have experienced the situation in which the details in how they describe a character or scene changes throughout the book ("Mary" may change from being "an auburn haired beauty" to a woman named "Marie, with golden hair" by the end). This is a lack of good editing. The next stage of your self-review should be as an editor.

To do this, you need to read the entire paper in one sitting. You need to keep track of any inconsistencies or changes in methodology descriptions; I like using track changes' comments for this, but you can also use your journal for note taking. Do not change things during the reading just note the problem areas. It is important that you are able to read the paper without interruptions, because you want to be able to remember details. Things to check carefully include the description of theories throughout the paper, are you always using the same terms? Check your research questions and hypotheses; are they the same in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 3? Are your descriptions of your methodology the same in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3? Are the topics introduced in Chapter 1 discussed in Chapter 2?

When you review the full five chapters of your final dissertation, it is even more important to double-check the details. Are Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5 all consistent? Did you do the methods and analyses in Chapter 4 you discussed in Chapters 1 and 3? If not, explain why they changed. Read Chapter 1 and then read Chapter 5 make sure everything is consistent; particularly look at theory issues. Make sure you have discussed all of your results in Chapter 5 you mention in Chapter 4. Each of your key findings need to be discussed in terms of the literature and the implications in Chapter 5. Compare the headers listed in the Table of Contents with your document to make sure they are all accurate.

A final check is to print out your references, then go through the paper and cross off each reference as it is cited. They should come out even. Make sure citations with 3-6 authors list all the authors the first time cited, and then use et al. When in doubt, check the APA manual for the correct citation. Make sure you have a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), for each article. These are 10-digit numbers unique to each article. They can be found on the first page of electronic articles, near the copyright notice. They are also listed in library databases for each article. Keep in mind some articles, particularly medical ones do not have a DOI.

All of these self-reviews will take you some time, but you truly will save yourself a great deal of waiting time in the end. In addition, you will be a much better writer for doing it. Eventually, you will do these reviews as you go and it will take much less time. 

Next time, I will consider how long a dissertation takes to complete. 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 Micro Level Writing Review

How do you review your own writing? Why should you spend time on this? Doing a good review of your writing before you send it to your chair or other committee member can save you a great deal of time in the end. Remember, every time a faculty member reads your paper they are allowed a reasonable time to review it, if you can reduce the number of reviews needed, it can save you months!

I recommend a several stage process of self-review; you can do the steps in any order that feels comfortable for you. Yes, it will take you time and it is not particularly fun, but it will save valuable time and it will teach you to write! First, review your writing at the micro level of individual paragraphs and sections. Make sure you have spell check and grammar check turned on in your paper. If you are not seeing some words/ sentences underlined in red or green in Word, go to the options menu (often listed under File)/ proofing and make sure spell and grammar check are turned on. Make sure the Exception boxes are not checked (these turn off spelling and grammar checks). Make sure that you then check all of the items in red (spelling) and green (grammar issues) underlining.

Step 1 is to pick a small section of your paper; read the section aloud, carefully listening for grammatical errors and missing words. You may also wish to consider utilizing and submitting your work, or even small sections of your work to electronic/online academic writing aids such as Grammarly and/or Turnitin. Check with you school as they may already provide students with access to these or other writing tools and aids.

Step 2, read through the section again checking for APA errors. There are several common problems students have, for example, citations and use of the second person ("we," "our"). Read those sections of the APA manual and make sure you are doing them correctly. Make sure any jargon is defined (a good rule of thumb, would your grandmother or friend not in your field, understand the term? If not, define it).

Step 3 is the hardest one, check your content. Make sure you are only talking about one topic in each paragraph. Are your arguments clear? Does every fact or statement have a citation? Check the length of your paragraphs and break up long ones (there should be no page long paragraphs). 

Next time, I will consider the macro level of writing review. 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

Secondary data

What is secondary data? It is data that has already been collected by someone else. It may be data that is collected as a standard practice in an organization (e.g., medical charts, pre-employment testing). Some things to know about this type of secondary data, particularly if it is from an organization where you are employed. First, you will only be able to use information that is available to any outside researcher. Second, the data will need to be "de-identified" before you get access to it. This means someone else will have to remove all names of individuals, so the data is anonymous when you receive it. Check with IRB early in the process, if you are interested in this option.

Another source of secondary data is large datasets that have been available by the original researchers. Walden provides students with the opportunity to access hundreds of datasets. To see what is available – go to http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/ The researchers provide information on the background, variables, and any coding they used for data input. The use of such a dataset is perfectly acceptable as a dissertation, however a few cautions. Make sure that the study you are considering has not been previously published with the data. Typically, the researchers give a bibliography of all articles published by them. However, it does not mean that other people have not published. Search the library carefully, and include dissertations in the search. Use the name of the dataset as a search term. Another very important caution is do not try to access the data until you have IRB approval, you must have Walden's ok to proceed. Also, be aware that it can be tricky to convert the data to SPSS, and to understand the logic of their data entry. You probably will not be able to contact the researchers, so you will need to figure it out with the help of your committee.

Secondary data analysis is a great way to get access to difficult populations' data; an example might be sex offenders. However, you are stuck with the variables that the original researchers used, and there is no possibility of getting additional information from the participants. If you decide to go this route, you can reduce your time to completion considerably, but be prepared to work through the issues I outlined above.

Next time, we will examine reviewing your own 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