Full Description
Your dissertation is not a hurdle to jump or a battle to fight; as this handbook makes clear, your dissertation is the first of many destinations on the path of your professional career. Destination Dissertation guides you to the successful completion of your dissertation by framing the process as a stimulating and exciting trip—one that can be completed in fewer than nine months and by following twenty-nine specific steps. Sonja Foss and William Waters—your guides on this trip—explain concrete and efficient processes for completing the parts of the dissertation that tend to cause the most delays: conceptualizing a topic, developing a pre-proposal, writing a literature review, writing a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, and writing the last chapter. This guidebook is crafted for use by students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations, and incorporates a wealth of real-life examples from every step of the journey.
Contents
Acknowledgments
1: Preparing to Go: The Dissertation Journey
Can a Dissertation Really Be a Trip?
Packing Your Bags
Our Guarantees
Your Travel Agents
How to Use This Guide
2: The Journey before You: 29 Steps
Our Timetable
Yeah, But . . .
3: Planning the Trip: The Conceptual Conversation
Selecting and Orienting a Partner
Asking and Answering Questions
Identifying Key Pieces
4: Developing Your Itinerary: The Preproposal
Naming the Problem
Formulating Your Research Question
Selecting Your Data
Identifying Your Method of Data Collection
Identifying Your Method of Data Analysis
Identifying the Literature to Review
Identifying the Significance of Your Study
Identifying Your Chapters
Writing Your Preproposal
Assessing Your Decisions
Committing to the Preproposal with Your Advisor
5: Advice from Other Travelers: The Literature Review
Coding Your Literature
Cutting Apart Your Codes
Sorting Your Codes
Checking Your Piles
Creating Your Conceptual Schema
Writing It Up
6: Getting There: The Dissertation Proposal
Introduction
Research Question
Definition of Terms
Literature Review
Research Design
Significance of the Study
Outline of the Study
Recap: Sections of a Dissertation Proposal
Approval of the Proposal
7: Things to See and Do: Data Collection and Analysis
Collecting Your Data
Creating Codable Data
Identifying Your Unit of Analysis
Coding Your Data
Sorting Your Codes
Checking Your Codes
Creating Your Explanatory Schema
Getting Inspiration for Your Explanatory Schema
Assessing Your Explanatory Schema
Writing It Up
8: Making the Most of Your Travels: The Last Chapter Plus
Summary
Interpretation of Findings
Limitations
Suggestions for Future Research
Three-Article Format
Finishing Up
9: Useful Phrases: Writing and Editing
Fast Writing
Slow Revising
10: Travelogue: The Dissertation Defense
Preparing for Your Defense
The Defense Itself
Following Your Defense
11: Making the Best Use of Your Guide: Advisor Advising
Asking Appropriately
Agreeing on a Vision
Articulating Needs
Enacting Professionalism
Assessing Your Relationship
12: Avoiding Delays and Annoyances: Enacting the Scholar Role
Incomplete-Scholar Roles
Enacting the Scholar Role: Writing Regularly
Index
About the Authors
