Having to write a dissertation is the single most reason many students leave a graduate program with the ABD (all but dissertation) designation. Working hard, being organized, and asking for help when you need it will get you through the process.
1. Before you begin your actual paper, you should have taken required classes and had seminars to help focus your ideas. Please be certain to secure the guidelines document from your college or university. Each school can and does have its own requirements concerning citations and the formatting of the paper. Save yourself some time and energy and use the required format from the very beginning.
2. A doctoral dissertation basically has ten sections. Sections one through three are numbered using roman numerals. Section one is the "Acknowledgment Page"; section two is the "List of Tables"; and section three is the "Abstract", a one page synopsis of the problem and results. Beginning with section four and continuing throughout the remainder of your paper, you will use Arabic numbers-- 1, 2, 3, etc. The final dissertation should be over 100 pages long. Sections four through eight consist of the five "chapters" explained below. Section nine contains the "Appendices" and section ten is the
3. Before you can begin to assemble your paper, you need to gather research. The 4 x 6 cards will be invaluable here. Lap tops are great but I found physically having a short detailed reference pile saved a lot of time. If you are familiar with the Endnotes reference program, that could help you. Personally, I did not like it. As you gather information, formulate what is it you want to discover, prove, disprove, or just are confused about. These questions can help you get started with your first draft. Once you can clearly state the problem or what your interest is in a problem you can begin to explain it. During this phase, the questions that will direct the final paper should start to arise. Please note that the easiest questions to develop and defend begin with "can" or "does." For example, "Can the Iowa Test of Basic Skills predict the high school academic success of a student in English and math?"
4. Sections four through eight are actually the five "chapters" that comprise a doctoral research project. Chapter one will be the "Introduction" where you state the problem, give the purpose for your research project, and ask the general questions that you've formulated from your study of past work. It is here that you will explain the significance of your study and also what delimitations and limitations you faced in your research. For example, a delimitation for my study was that I did not have access to the 20 year plus National Assessment of Educational Progress data banks. A limitation was that I did not personally administer the standardized tests that I analyzed as part of my study and therefore did not control test conditions. Refer to your instructor or your school' s guidelines for more help with delimitations and limitations in a research study.
5. Chapter two is the 'Review of Related Literature" section. In this chapter, you will choose several previous studies from out of all the ones you've found. You will need to explain how these particular studies are related to your topic. You are also going to have to draw a conclusion from these studies as to why your study is needed. For example, in two of the three studies I used to discuss a specific assessment tool, a clear correlation was not made between the grades and the test results. In the third study, a correlation was made but the study was done at a time (1948) when demographics were not fully broken down, there were no state standards, and computers were not available on a regular basis for more complete comparative analysis. Based on the three research studies I chose to analyze, I needed to study both test results and grades in order to prove or disprove a relationship between the given assessment and whether or not the student would do well in a specific class.
6. Chapter three is your "Methodology" chapter. Here you are going to breakdown the parts of your research project. What is your setting and population? What are your exact research questions? Are you going to interview people? Are you going to give them a test? If you are interviewing or testing, remember that you will have to get your school's Internal Reveiw Board (IRB) approval. Please note that even if you aren't doing either IRB approval is still required; it's just a little simpler to get if there is no direct interaction with a live human. What exactly are you going to study in this paper? For example, the school district that I used in my study was using several different types of assessment tools. Here I had to explain each of them, what they were designed to do, and how the school district was utilizing them. Ask for help if you need it!
7. Chapter four is your "Results" section and chapter five is a "Discussion" of those results. The "Results" chapter is where you are going to need a good statistical program like the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) and unless you are a math major you are probably going to need the help of a statistician to understand and then explain your data. SPSS provides a lot of backup help, but the more complicated the analyses you need to run, the more complicated the data becomes. For example, to "predict" an outcome I had to use a process called logistical regression. That is not one of the basic types of analysis procedures usually taught in educational measurement classes. If you don't understand your data, or can't figure out which analysis to run, ask for help! This chapter will be the make or break point of your dissertation.
8. Your final chapter is the "Discussion" of your results with a final recommendation of additional research that should be completed on your topic. For example, in the discussion section of my dissertation, I questioned why the assessment instrument I compared to actual grade performance was being used as the major tool to promote or keep back students from entering high school--that made no sense. I recommended additional research on a much wider scale. Coincidentally, studies by both the Rand Corporation and the Chicago Consortium of School Research were published that same year and both studies supported my conjectures.
9. Your paper ends with "Appendices" (possibly a list of acronyms or a glossary of terms) and a "Reference List" (bibliography). This is where you need to follow the rules of citation to the letter. Most major universities today use the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), but don't assume that yours does. A university may require the Modern Language Association (MLA)or the Turabian method developed years ago at the University of Chicago. Find out what your school uses and make the investment to buy the book. It will save you time at 2:00 a.m. when you're trying to make final edits.
10. As you no doubt realize by now, a doctoral dissertation is actually a small book. Don't let the idea of writing a book hold you back. Get started and follow the steps above. Before you know it you will have your paper done and be crossing the stage at graduation.
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