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HOW TO WRITE A DISSERTATION?



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If you can read, you can write a great dissertation. Just follow the method taught in this article, one step at a time.


The "Golden Rule" of dissertation writing:


"Start Taking Pleasure in Academic Research, or This Is Going to Suck"


Seriously, get yourself to enjoy research. You have to do TWO things:


- Learn about the most recent research studies about the topic, and


- Learn about some research methods.


You can't understand this stuff if you don't spend a few minutes reading about all of the different qualitative and quantitative research methods. Learning about "methodology" (the study of research methods) is easy. All the methods are based on common sense.


Applying the Golden Rule


Maybe a little capital punishment might help?


Many research articles have been written about capital punishment: humans executing humans. If you read a lot of the most recent articles, you'll see that the literature reviews tell an interesting story about the heated debate that surrounds this issue. Some studies are quite fascinating and will definitely get you interested in the arguments being made and the research methods being used. Even if it has nothing to do with your topic, I encourage you to read some research articles about capital punishment, because they are likely to be interesting.


Learning methodology in order to write a dissertation is like learning music theory in order to write a song:


Step One: Read Some Professional Journal Articles that Interest You


Search a database for keywords associated with your topic. It's also good to use the word "literature" in your search so you'll find articles that include a "review of literature" or "literature review" in the search results.


Maybe you are specifically interested in art therapy for use with sufferers of autism, so you search for: "art therapy", autism, literature.


Find a recent article that interests you, no more than 2 years old, and make sure it has a section called "Literature Review" and also a section called "Methods."


The best type of article to read is one that has an Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. These are the chapters typically used in a dissertation, and you'll probably find them in your school's dissertation guide.


First, you look at the literature review and you will see an clear discussion of many related research studies. If it is not clear and easy for you to understand, it is probably poorly written and you should stop wasting your time with it.


When you find a good article, it will be clear and interesting, and it will have a literature review that discusses all the other books and articles that have been written in recent years about the topic.


If the topic is "art therapy" for use with autistic children, for example, the literature review will explain all of the most important recent research studies that contribute to the pool of knowledge modern scholars have provided through original research.


This article is the key to getting through your own dissertation. It's the doorway into your own research. Step through the "doorway" offered by an excellent article. After you read the article's literature review, go back to the introduction and look to see what the author is trying to contribute to that pool of knowledge. And it's all very simple, as long as you know how to read.

Imagine a room with five people having a conversation about art therapy for use with autistic children. You walk into the room and say hello, and one of them explains to you what they are talking about.


"Jerry said art therapy is more useful than some of the more common types of therapy for treating autism, and Pam criticized him for making such a sweeping generalization. Dave mentioned a book he read that explains how art therapy can be effective or ineffective depending on whether the therapist uses certain evidence-based practices..."


You walk into this room where a conversation has been happening, and someone is courteous enough to bring you up to speed. Maybe you listen to some more of their conversation and say:


"I'd like to know what types of therapy have been most effective for helping autistic children, and maybe that will help me to use art therapy in the ways that apply the same principles that have proven to be effective."

By posing this question, you have already contributed to the conversation!


This is what it is like when you read a Literature Review in someone else's article. All you need to do is READ a literature review in an article no more than two or three years old, and wait for some questions to arise in your own mind. When you spontaneously become curious about a particular question, it is an important moment in your graduate studies.


Based on the research studies described in someone's literature review, what questions arise in your mind? You will do another keyword search to find some articles to answer your question. Maybe you will find answers that raise more questions. When your genuine (not faked) interest inspires questions that existing research studies have not adequately answered, you might have found the research question(s) for your dissertation.


Step Two: Write Some Sentences about Every Relevant Article You Can Find!


Using the example of art therapy for autistic children:


I'll do a Google search for these terms: autism, children, therapy. I will find articles that specifically explain the most effective therapies and the most important findings of medical research about children with autism.


Soon, I realize that I need to research "art therapy" and "autism" separately. I can search for art therapy and find a LOT of articles about its use with children who have learning disabilities. I can also search for "autism" and find plenty of brilliant articles written recently.


Every time I find an article or book that interests me, I write some sentences about it. I explain the main idea of their study and the method they used to support their argument.


Every time I write some sentences about a research study, I Google to learn about the Research Method it used. When I want to write some sentences about a book/article (one I am reading, or one that is mentioned in the Literature Review of the one I am reading), I need to search Google to learn about the METHOD used in the article. Was it a survey? Use Google to find out all I can learn about survey research. Did it involve interviewing people? Use Google to learn about interview research. Did it involve an experiment? Use Google to learn about experimental research.


Every time I search Google to learn about a research method used in one of the studies I'm reading, it takes only a few minutes to get familiar with that method.


For example, I might read an article that uses interview research to find out about the "best practices" recommended by therapists and physicians who specialize in the treatment of autism.


It says the interview data was analyzed using something called "grounded theory" so I skim through the Wikipedia explanation of what that is, and I find out it's way researchers use interview data. Grounded Theory is interesting! The researchers look for certain concepts that are mentioned over and over again during interviews, and they use a three-step process for analyzing people's interview responses to see what they had to say about the subject matter.


You really can understand research methods described in dissertations and research articles.


Learn about each research method used in the research studies you are reviewing, and write your literature review. Do not think about your other chapters. Only think about deeply understanding what these other researchers have learned and the research methods they used. Your experience can be exciting or awful, depending on whether you are truly interested in the subject.


Your interest in a topic -- the topic most important to you in your field of study -- is a doorway that will lead you into the world of academic research.


Example: I love the song called "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, and it was my doorway to becoming a guitarist. I was not interested in learning to play the guitar until I heard that song, and my ONLY reason for learning to play the guitar was that I wanted to be able to play this song.


I told the guitar teacher I wasn't really interested in learning any other songs, just this one. He laughed, because he knew that song was my doorway into the world of being a guitarist.


It's the Same When Your Interest in a Research Topic Causes You to Learn About a Particular Research Method


It's exactly the same when you review the literature related to a topic that interests you. Are you excited to read about research methods that were used by other people who share your interest in this topic? Isn't it easy to do that? How can someone say they are interested in a topic if they have not reviewed articles by researchers and theorists who have studied it? In order to understand the most advanced concepts associated with your topic, you need to know exactly what people have done to study the topic and what they learned.


Again, it's easy as long as you know how to read.


Step Three: Write Your Research Questions and Your Purpose


In many dissertations, the research questions or hypothesis appear in the Introduction (chapter one) and also at the end of the Literature Review (chapter two).


Have you ever participated in an intriguing conversation that made you feel curious about a particular question? It's that easy.


During your review of literature, many questions will arise in your mind. You will use keyword searches to find articles that address your questions. When you think of a question that has not been answered by some other article, or if it was not fully answered, maybe that is a good question to use as your research question!


Hypothesis or Research Questions? You might have a hypothesis instead of a question, but a hypothesis is really just another kind of question. Technically, it is a statement, but it's a statement made for the purpose of testing whether it is true, so that really makes it function like a question. You probably know a hypothesis is a statement that may or may not be true, and you can test it by using research methods.


Now that you have written a review of literature and learned all about the research methods used by other people who studied your topic, you probably have some questions.


Let's go back to the art therapy & autism example:


When I reviewed literature related to autism and art therapy, I learned that art therapy is especially helpful in enabling autistic children to express themselves. I want to make a meaningful contribution to the "conversation" I see in the research other people have done in recent years, so I come up with a research question that has not been addressed by any of them.


The Research Questions (or Hypothesis) Are Related to the PURPOSE


The "text book" explanation of the "purpose" of a research study is that it should be useful for exploring, describing, or explaining some phenomenon.


However, to get a positive response from your advisors, you should make the study interesting. It will be interesting if your purpose is to


1. Improve professional practice, or


2. Solve a problem


These are what people really care about, and they make great research studies.


Improving professional practice. The person studying autism might decide to interview several members of the American Art Therapy Association who specialize in the treatment of autistic children. If you were going to interview people to learn about your topic, who would you interview? What questions would you ask


Solve a problem. Maybe the person studying art therapy is not interested in interviewing people to improve practice. Maybe they notice that an insufficient amount of federal funding is being directed to support art therapy programs, so they want to use statistical methods to show that a significant number of autistic children have desirable outcomes when art therapy is used as an intervention. In this case, you might choose to use Survey Research to get data that will show how often art therapy has been measurably effective. If you were going to use survey research to solve a problem associated with your topic, what question would you ask? What hypothesis could you test?


Step Four: Choose a Research Method


When you know what question you want to answer or what hypothesis you want to test, and you know the purpose you are trying to achieve, it is exciting to choose a research method.


Try to choose one you understand. In a perfect world, you would use the method most useful for achieving your purpose -- which is to test your hypothesis or answer your research question(s). However, you might have a favorite research method and want to use it.


I like Grounded Theory. It is useful for improving practice, which seems most meaningful to me. However, it is also meaningful when, as in the example from the previous section, a researcher uses statistical methods to show that a good program is working or that a bad program is not working, or to demonstrate some other important trend.


If you find a method you like, it's a good idea to search for articles that use it. If you like grounded theory, go back to your database of professional journal articles and search for "grounded theory" so you can skim through a lot of research studies that used it. Learn a lot about your chosen method by reading articles about research projects for which is was used. If your topic is art therapy for helping autistic children and you want to use Grounded Theory in your own study, look at articles about all kinds of studies where grounded theory was used: in business, in education, in healthcare, in parenting, and so forth.


Soon, you will find an article that uses the method you like in a way that would be very useful for your purpose. For example, maybe you find an article where Grounded Theory was used to interview 15 managers about "best practices" for getting desirable outcomes when conducting training programs for new employees. This has very little to do with autism or art therapy, but you can model your methods section after this other methods section.


Step Five: Use a Well-Written Article as a Template


That's right, you are allowed to use someone else's methods section as a model. Just choose an article that uses the same research method you want to use. Paste it right into your Word document and replace all of their information with your own. All the sentences must be REWRITTEN so that it is an application of this method to your study. It is very easy to write a great dissertation if you use a great paper as a model to follow.


If you are going to use grounded theory to analyze interview data from therapists who answer questions about their use of art therapy as an intervention for autism... you can follow the example of the guy who used Grounded Theory to analyze interview data from managers who answer questions about their use of training programs for new employees.


These two topics have nothing to do with each other, but you absolutely will gain mastery of your chosen research method. It is SO easy to write a methods chapter if you model it after a methods chapter in someone else's research article.


What About the Rest of the Dissertation Chapters?


Just keep following your template article. If you spend one evening choosing a perfect article to use as a template in order to apply the research method, it will be easy to follow it and complete your own project.


This is NOT cheating. The only way humans ever learn anything is by watching how it's done and trying to follow along. Believe me, it is very easy to write a dissertation if you have truly enjoyed reading someone else's dissertation or research article and emulate their application of the research method.


Most articles are boring. But some research studies are brilliant, funny, disturbing, inspirational... and you can enjoy reading an article as long as you understand it and it interests you.


So go back to the article that you used as your template when writing the Methods section. When you look at the Results (chapter four), Discussion (chapter five) and Conclusion (chapter six), pay attention to the kinds of things they say. If you read a few interesting ones, you'll get the hang of it.


Writing up the dissertation should not be a big deal. The meaningful part of the process is the METHOD and exactly what you do to make a real contribution to your field.


1. You'll only look at one task at a time. Reading the whole syllabus or dissertation guide can me mind-boggling.


2. First, you feel inspired while reading articles about the topic most important to you in your chosen field.


3. Then, you get excited learning about the brilliant research methods people have used to study this topic


4. Soon, you find yourself looking at other studies that used the research method you want to use, and you learn as much as you can about that method. It will be easy to write a great literature review, because you'll be reviewing articles and books about a topic that interests you. You'll want to contribute to the "conversation".


5. When you know a little about the other research studies that are relevant to your topic and have been done recently, you'll come up with some research questions or a hypothesis to test.


6. When you have read some of the methods sections of other dissertations/articles about your topic, you might find one method that you understand or that you like more than the others.


7. Choose a research method would be useful for answering your research question or testing your hypothesis.


8. When you choose a method, find some other dissertations/articles that use the same method for exploring topics different from yours.


9. Choose a dissertation/article that uses the research method you like, and use it as a template.


10. After exploring all the literature and using a research method to make a meaningful, unique contribution to your field, you write it up by using a model dissertation as a template (or think of it as a checklist) to make sure you include all necessary elements.