Dissertation / Thesis Writing
“I’m not quite sure about what I should put in my proposal when I give it to my advisors for their approval. ”
Once you’ve selected the problem you plan to study, you can profit from casting it in a form appropriate for submitting it to your advisors. Although professors may not all agree on exactly what should be in your proposal, most of them will at least want a clear statement of your research problem, your reasons for choosing it, and a concise description of how you hope to find a solution. They also may want to know how you define the key terms that are at the heart of your project. Chapter 6 addresses these matters in the following order: (a) stating the problem to be investigated, (b) defining key terms, (c) supporting your choice of a topic with a convincing line of reasoning, and (d) briefly describing your intended research methods.
STATING YOUR RESEARCH PROBLEM
Two popular ways to state a research problem are as a question and as a hypothesis. To illustrate, consider three graduate student projects. The first concerns academic aptitude, the second family functions, and the third political theory. By casting a problem in the form of a question, the researcher suggests the kind of answer being sought, with that suggestion then serving to guide decisions about the methods of investigation to employ.
What is the comparative effectiveness of four ways to assess high school students’ academic ability–(a) high school grades, (b) teachers’ letters of recommendation, (c) multiple-choice aptitude tests, and (d) achievement tests that students answer in essay form?
What changes have occurred in the structure and functions of Mexican-American families during the twentieth century, and what trends do such changes reflect?
Which aspects of a political party and what interactions among those aspects adequately explain the party’s success in local elections?
A hypothesis represents a probable answer to the research question, but the probability that the answer is correct still needs to be tested through further investigation.
The most effective method of assessing high school students’ academic ability is by multiple-choice aptitude tests. The next most effective is by high school grades, then by essay tests, and the least by teachers’ recommendations.
Over the twentieth century, trends in the structure and functions of Mexican American families have included: (a) a decrease in the use of Spanish as the language of communication in the home, (b) husbands’ continued dominance in deciding important family issues, (c) a rising divorce rate, and (d) a continuation of younger family members sharing household tasks.
Predictions about a political party’s success in local elections are most accurate when based on the analysis of the following components and their interactions: (a) fund-raising practices, (b) training methods for party workers, (c) a clearly stated position on locally important issues, (d) name-recognition of party candidates, and (e) activities that attract the attention of the news media–especially local television, radio, and newspaper reporters.
Now, which of these approaches is preferable–a question or a hypothesis? In what circumstances is one better than the other?There are at least two conditions under which you might favor the hypothesis over the question. One is when there is good reason to believe that a proposed solution to the research issue is correct, but that belief still needs to be corroborated or refuted by evidence. The other is when you intend to apply a statistical test to the data you collect, and casting the problem as a hypothesis renders statistical testing more convenient. However, the vast majority of problems can be expressed as questions that involve who, how, which, why, what, when, where, how much, how frequently, or several of these.
- Who were the original founders of Laver City, and what role did each play? (history)
- How do supermarkets set their selling prices for produce and, in particular, how much does the spoilage of produce affect pricing? (economics, business)
- Which method of teaching beginning reading best equips first-graders to infer the meanings of new words? (education)
- Why did Albania and North Korea become such closed, doctrinaire communist societies? (political science)
- What characteristics are most significant in differentiating people of the upper-class from those of the lower-class in Kentwood County? (sociology)
- When (during the day, month, and year) do people most frequently suffer feelings of depression, and why at those times? (psychology)
- Where did the counter-culture movement of the 1960s in California begin, and who led the movement? (history, sociology, anthropology)
- How frequently do immigrants from Britain compared to immigrants from China apply for U.S. citizenship, and what are the reasons for the differences between the two groups? (social psychology)
Frequently a topic is best expressed as two or more questions, sometimes with minor questions subsumed under major ones.
- In India, what was the extent of “brain-drain” migration of talented citizens to the United States over the period 1969-1999?
- In what fields had emigrants specialized before leaving India?
- What reasons did emigrants give for leaving their homeland?
- What expectations did emigrants hold for their new life abroad?
- In what parts of the United States did immigrants from India settle?
- What occupations did immigrants enter?
- How well were immigrants’ expectations fulfilled in their new environments?
To summarize, two important purposes are served by your being obliged to state your topic precisely. First, the statement guides you in charting the steps to take toward solving the problem. Second, it makes clear to your advisors what you intend to do, thus expediting their task of evaluating your proposal and offering advice.
Defining Key Terms
Much misunderstanding in human communication results from people bringing different meanings to the words they use in speaking and writing. Effective researchers seek to avoid this difficulty by clearly explaining the meanings they assign to key terms in their investigations.If, early in the research process, you define precisely what you intend by words and phrases crucial to your project, (a) you help identify appropriate methods of gathering and interpreting data and (b) your advisors can judge at the outset how well they agree with your definitions, thereby saving you possible trouble during subsequent stages of your project.The terms key words and key phrases refer to concepts at the core of your study, concepts that must be unambiguous if you are to conduct your research with proper care and if the procedures and outcomes are to be properly understood by your reading audience. Among the most basic terms are those found in a project’s title or topic question. To illustrate key words, in the following examples we have italicized each term that calls for a definition:
What is the comparative effectiveness of four ways to assess high school students’ academic ability–(a) high school grades, (b) teachers’ letters of rec ommendation, (c) multiple-choice aptitude tests, and (d) achievement tests that students answer in essay form?
What changes have occurred in the structure and functions of MexicanAmerican families during the twentieth century, and what trends do such changes reflect?
Which aspects of a political party and what interactions among those aspects adequately explain the party’s success in local elections?
Different ways that researchers define key terms are those of (a) offering no definitions, (b) providing synonyms, (c) furnishing sentence descriptions, (d) citing shared experience or knowledge, and (e) defining by the operations used in conducting the research. Implications of using each of these methods can be demonstrated with examples of terms in the above questions.
No Definitions
It’s probably apparent that neglecting to explain what is intended by politicalparty aspects or success is unacceptable, because those terms obviously can convey so many different meanings. But the need to specify what is intended by academic ability, high school students, and family structure may not be so obvious, since we often find individuals using those terms without any clarifying explanation, apparently on the assumption that the words mean the same to everybody.
First consider academic. Are mathematics, history, English literature, Spanish language, home economics, auto repair, guitar instruction, and floral arranging all equally academic? If not, then what distinction should be drawn among them? And what about ability? On what evidence should judgments of ability be based–intelligence test scores, grade point averages, teachers’ judgments, or people’s performance in such games as Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and Monopoly?
How about high school students? If we are judging their academic ability, is it important to know who they are in terms of socioeconomic status, ethnic background, home language, parents’ education, and whether they are in private schools or in public schools?
Now consider family. Is family supposed to mean only a pair of parents and their biological offspring? Or does it mean people living together, whether or not they are biologically related? Or does it encompass all of a person’s legal relatives, no matter where they reside?
What is family structure? Is it the set of roles that different family members play? Is it the manner in which authority and power are distributed among family members? Or is it the pattern of communication among members?
In summary, we conclude that leaving key terms undefined is not acceptable in theses and dissertations.
Synonyms
At first glance it might seem that a synonym could clarify the meaning assumed for a key word or phrase. However, for the precision needed in research, synonyms rarely suffice, because too frequently they carry as many different meanings–or as many vague meanings–as the words they are supposed to elucidate. In the main, the only occasions on which synonyms are suitable are ones in which a new, unfamiliar word can be adequately clarified with a familiar word or phrase. This can occur with places ( Kalimantan= Borneo, Vanuatu= New Hebrides, Myanmar= Burma), people ( Muhammad Ali= Cassius Clay), institutions or agencies ( State Department=foreign relations department), or conditions (Downs’ syndrome=mongolism).
Sentence Descriptions
A single sentence, or a few sentences, may be enough to explain the meaning the author assigns to a term within the boundaries of the author’s project.
The words comparative effectiveness, as intended throughout this thesis, refer to the relative accuracy of four methods of predicting high school students’ later success in college.
The term Mexican-American family in this study means a group of people of Mexican heritage, currently living in the United States, who are related by blood and are members of the same household.
Political party aspects on which the present investigation focuses are (a) amount of money spent on a local campaign, (b) the amount spent on different forms of advertising, (c) the number of active party workers, and (d) the socioeconomic composition of the registered party membership
Sentence definitions often contain words that require further clarification in the form of additional sentences. Such is true of the terms high school students and later success in college in the first of our examples. It is also the case with Mexican heritage and related by blood in the second example and forms of advertising and active party workers in the third example.Sometimes it is desirable to tell not only what a key word is intended to mean, but also to explain what it is not intended to include. The purpose is to rule out unintended meanings that readers might reasonably assume unless they are told otherwise.
The phrase currently living in the Untied States refers to individuals who spend at least six months consecutively in the household, so the phrase does not include short-term visitors nor family members who shuttle in and out of the household during a six-month period.
The word advertising means presenting to the public information and appeals by means of paid-for space in newspapers and paid-for time on radio and television. Party workers going door to door to solicit votes is not advertising in the sense intended here, nor does a report or editorial in the news media about a candidate or a political party qualify as advertising.
Shared Experiences
Sentence definitions can sometimes be usefully enhanced with lifelike examples that serve as clarifying experiences shared by author and reader.
The purpose of an aptitude test is to estimate the capacity of people to succeed at some endeavor, such as to predict their ability to succeed in college. On the other hand, the purpose of an achievement test is to judge how well people have mastered knowledge or skills they have already studied or practiced. Sometimes the same test can serve both purposes. To illustrate, assume that two high school students take an algebra test. Their scores will reflect their achievement up to that time–what they have already learned about algebra. But their scores can also be used to estimate how well they will succeed with future studies in mathematics. A student scoring at the 95th percentile will, in the future, probably do better in math than a student at the 27th percentile.
The expression family functions refers to what family life contributes to the individuals who comprise the family. For instance, children–because they are members of a family–receive food, shelter, clothing, medical care, affection, and instruction in cultural traditions (language, customs, values). Parents–because they head a family–gain satisfaction for having produced offspring, receive affection and gratitude from their children, and enjoy the approval of outsiders for performing their childrearing duties in a responsible manner.
Operational Definitions
Defining a key term operationally consists of specifying the techniques used for measuring or assessing the characteristic that the term signifies.
In this study, academic aptitude is defined by the scores students earn on the Educational Testing Service’s computerized version of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, edition 2000.
Degree of success in elections is defined as “the percentage of votes a candidate receives out of the total number of votes cast.”
The term high school grades refers to a student’s grade point average as computed by the following formula where SLGE = student’s letter grade equivalent (A = 4, B= 3, C= 2, D = 1, F = O) and CPPW = number of class periods per week for a course.
Conclusion
It is not necessary to limit yourself to only one of the above ways of defining terms. You may often find it best to cast one definition as a sentence, another as several sentences elaborated with lifelike examples, and a third as the procedures used for measuring the variable that is being defined. Which methods you choose can depend on (a) which type you believe will be most precisely understood by readers and (b) which type guides you most accurately in selecting datagathering techniques and interpreting the data.
Providing A Rationale
A rationale typically consists of a line of reasoning that performs two principal functions. It describes a context within which to locate the intended project and suggests why doing such a study is worthwhile. A further function can be that of justifying the methods you plan to use for solving your research problem.
Roles for the Rationale
The rationale plays a role at two stages of your project: (a) when you first submit your research proposal to your advisors for their advice and approval and (b) when you write your final version of the thesis or dissertation so readers will understand the contribution to knowledge or the contribution to practice that your work represents.
Placing your work in context
Locating your study in a context consists of identifying a domain of life into which the research fits. One popular way to accomplish this is to introduce a label that you assume is familiar to your readers. Labels can be on different levels of specificity. To illustrate, for our hypothetical study of Mexican-American families, consider three alternatives that descend from the general to the specific. The first label–social change–places your work within a very broad field. The second–family structure–identifies a more limited realm. The third-trends in family structure and function among Mexican-Americans–represents a very narrow field, indeed. Your rationale might start with the label that signifies the field in which you think your work belongs.
Among theories of social change, the most prominent types . . . .
The literature on family structure can be divided into . . . .
Investigations of trends in family structure and function among MexicanAmericans treat such issues as . . . .
Your next task is that of showing how your project fits into the selected realm. Here is one way that could be done for the second option–family structure.
The literature on family structure can be divided into six categories focusing on (1) family members’ roles, (2) types of human needs met within different family structures, (3) nuclear and extended forms of family, (4) lineage and governance (i.e. patrilineal, matrilineal), (5) explanations of family structural change over time, and (6) cross-cultural comparisons. The present study links the second and fifth of these categories by addressing the question: What changes have occurred in the structure and functions of Mexican-American families during the twentieth century, and what trends do such changes reflect? In addition, by centering attention on a particular ethnic group–Mexican-Americans–the study provides material useful to people interested in the last of the categories, that of cross-cultural comparisons.
Identifying your intended contribution
Perhaps the most important function of an author’s rationale is the explanation of how the project can contribute to knowledge (basic research that corrects or expands people’s understanding of the world) and/or to practice (applied research that improves the conduct of some aspect of life). This function is typically performed by the author’s identifying shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge or practice that could be remedied by the proposed research. As noted in Chapter 1, contributions can be of various kinds, including
Evidence about kinds of events, individuals, groups, or institutions not studied before
Outcomes derived from applying existing theories or methods of investigation to events, individuals, groups, or institutions not yet studied in such a fashion
The use of new data-gathering methods or instruments for studying phenomena
A novel theoretical view of familiar events
New interpretations of existing data
Conclusions drawn from combining the results of similar studies (meta-analysis)
The following examples illustrate two ways of wording research proposals so that they (a) specify the question to be answered, (b) locate the study in a domain of knowledge or practice, and (c) identify the study’s intended contribution.
The first description begins with the domain of the project (cognitive development), then cites a shortcoming in the literature related to a particular theory within that domain. The author ends the proposal by specifying the research question, which implies what the project should contribute to the body of knowledge about cognitive development.
In L. S. Vygotsky’s theory of children’s cognitive development, a feature that has attracted increasing attention among psychologists and educators has been his zone of proximal development, which can be defined as “the set of actions that the child can perform when helped by another person, but which are not yet available to the child in his individual acting” ( Valsiner, 1987, p. 233). Although Vygotsky’s proposing such a zone has been widely praised, the present writer’s survey of the literature on learning suggests that very little is known about how to recognize when a child has entered such a zone of readiness for instruction. But if the people who bear responsibility for children’s learning are to profit from the notion of a zone of proximal development, they need guidance in how to recognize when a child is within that zone. The purpose of this dissertation is to help fulfill that need by seeking answers to three questions: (1) What are the potential indicators of the zone of proximal development? (2) How accurately can each indicator predict a learner’s readiness to acquire a particular skill nor type of knowledge? (3) Which characteristics of teaching methods are most effective for promoting learning in the zone of proximal development?
The second example opens with the research problem, cast in the form of a hypothesis, which is followed by the domain of knowledge (social stratification) and a rationale suggesting how the author’s project could add to that domain. The proposal has been rendered more elaborate than the cognitive-development example by this author’s bolstering the presentation with several citations from the professional literature and defining two key terms.
This thesis is designed to test the hypothesis that the class structure of a society is a social construction which is perceived differently (a) by people at different levels of the structure and (b) by different age cohorts.
My aim in conducting such an investigation is to help settle a controversy in the field of social stratification about the defining characteristics of social-class structures. A large body of theory and empirical research has been devoted to identifying dimensions of social class ( Allsworth, 1973; Bennel & Masovic, 1967; Garcia, 1982; Mendoza, 1990; Swenson, 1986). However, the issue of how people in the social system perceive the structure continues to be muddled and controversial ( Johnson & Haxton, 1996; Pontius, 1992). Furthermore, there is a lack of information about how the variable age-cohort may influence perceptions of class. My intention is to help clarify these matters by studying social-class perceptions of residents of the city of Mapleton.
For the purpose of this thesis, the concepts social construction and age cohorts are defined in the following manner:
Social construction refers to the belief that social class is not an objective reality, in the sense of a necessary relationship among people based on their possessions, abilities, or accomplishments. Instead, social class is an agreement (a mental construction) among people about (a) where individuals belong in terms of their relative prestige and (b) the characteristics that contribute to that prestige.
The term age cohort refers to the period of time (such as the year or cluster of a few years) during which a particular group of people were born. For example, all persons who are now age 14 form one cohort, and all who are now age 27 form another.
Describing your data collection methods
Some faculty advisors will be satisfied to have you submit your proposed study initially as a topic and a rationale, as illustrated in the cognitivedevelopment and social-stratification examples. But before giving final approval to your plan, they will usually wish to learn what methods you intend to use for collecting and analyzing your data. This means that you may wish to submit your proposal in two stages.
The first stage consists of describing your research question and supporting that choice with a rationale. Your intention at this juncture is to solicit your advisor’s opinion about the suitability of your topic before you go to the trouble of working out a data-gathering plan. Then, if your topic and its rationale are judged acceptable–either in their original state or in a revised version–you move ahead to specifying your methodology. At the first stage, your advisor may wish to suggest which methods will and which will not be suitable for answering your particular research questions. Subsequently, in the second phase of your submission on a later occasion, you describe your intended data-gathering techniques and perhaps the mode of interpretation you hope to employ.
However, at the time that you first submit your proposal, some advisors will want you to specify your methodology as well as your topic and supporting rationale. The following excerpt illustrates one way that might be done. In this example the author (a) begins by identifying a domain (high school vocational counseling), (b) then explains that his intended contribution consists of a theory generated out of other researchers’ work (cited in brackets) and that the project is designed to test hypotheses derived from that theory, and (c) finishes by describing the intended methods of data-gathering and interpretation. In this instance, the research question (Why do the effects of high school vocational counseling on students’ subsequent careers vary from one school to another?) is implied rather than stated outright.
Writers have often proposed that the influence of high schools’ vocational counseling procedures on students’ subsequent careers varies among schools, but none has offered a compelling theory for why such effects occur [ Lindsey, 1994; Hanks, Stuart, & Alpert, 1995; Risutto, 1995]. I use existing knowledge about counseling effects to develop hypotheses for between-school differences in counseling outcomes. Building on the work of Stevens [ 1987], I argue that the impact of vocational counseling varies according to the vocational opportunities in the community. I also consider claims that counseling produces different effects in public and private schools [ Galloway & Burton, 1987; Portia & Vandenberg, 1990]. I plan to test these hypotheses by applying methods of multi-level contextual analysis to data on vocational counseling and later job placement in a national sample of high schools.
A Final Comment In order to cover a lot of ground and offer diverse examples within the space of a few pages, we have described research problems and their rationales in an unrealistically brief form. In actual theses and dissertation proposals, such descriptions are far more detailed.
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