Practical Tips for Completing your Psychology Dissertation: A Recent Graduate Student’s Perspective

Kristin M. S. Lang, Ph.D.
Harvard Vanguard Behavioral Health, Concord, Massachusetts

Beginning the Process: Organizing Paperwork, Finding your Advisor, and Choosing your Topic
Getting Going
Developing the Topic and Outline via Review of the Literature
Choosing a Committee
Setting Deadlines
Developing the Hypotheses and Methods
Presenting the Proposal and Implementing the Research Study
Constructing the Data Analyses (Results) Section
Preparing the Discussion Section
Defending your Dissertation
References

Completing your psychology dissertation is not an easy task. Getting started, keeping it going and finishing it require a complex set of tasks to be completed within a structure you will create. The dissertation is an opportunity for you as psychology students to learn how to begin to research independently while still in the academic “nest.” Once out of graduate school you will be prepared to pursue your own line of research inquiry. Staying motivated to complete the dissertation by keeping in mind the big picture while having an understanding about how you will practically carry out the project is essential to completing it. Given the paucity of literature written on practical advice, this article is being written by a recent psychology doctoral graduate to provide psychology graduate students with some organizational tips to help them through the process. While every program is different and the tips in this article reflect the author's experience, the advice is meant to provide some general suggestions. Hopefully, students can find some useful suggestions even if all do not apply. The goal is that students armed with some practical strategies can avoid pitfalls and manage expectations that can otherwise slow down dissertation completion. The following areas of the dissertation writing process will be addressed: getting started including choosing a topic, advisor and committee, completing the different sections of your dissertation and finally, finishing and defending it. This article will be helpful to read when starting your dissertation to give you an organizational framework as well as at later stages. Most of the advice will not be useful until you are going through a particular stage of the process.

Beginning the Process: Organizing Paperwork, Finding your Advisor, and Choosing your Topic

When you begin your doctoral program, you will receive information regarding the graduate school’s outline for completing your dissertation. The information will most likely contain phone numbers, a time line indicating the order in which different parts of the dissertation must be completed, and forms that need to be submitted at certain times along the process. All this paperwork will make sense later but for now collect this information in a folder. Label it with a title and date. You will refer often to this information throughout your time in graduate school and will need it to be accessible.

Because those around you are going through the process, they will give you lots of advice. Take in all the advice and ask lots of questions about how the dissertation process works in your program. Just like with any new step in life you take (i.e., applying for college or a new job, marriage), everyone will want to tell you about his or her experience. It is no different with the dissertation. In many cases, graduate students and professors enjoy telling you about their dissertation experiences. You are a good audience since you have some vested interest in hearing their thoughts on the dissertation process. Do not worry if you do not know very much about the process because after all you are just beginning and that is why you have come to the program. Find out whatever you can about doing a dissertation. Those in your academic community (i.e., friends who are Ph.D.’s, more advanced classmates, or professors/advisors) will prepare you best for this process since they either know you and how you work or they know your graduate school and how it tends to work.

Finding an advisor and choosing a topic are also part of beginning the process. The two go hand and in hand and should be considered together. In the first couple of years of graduate school, you will find yourself being exposed to ideas and faculty with different interests. Finding a good dissertation topic and a good advisor for you require a balancing act between selecting a topic that you are excited about and one in which your advisor is interested. On the one hand, if you are purely trying to please an advisor by selecting a topic he or she recommends that you have not also chosen for yourself, you may get disheartened half-way through the process and lose some steam. After awhile you may find other areas of interest and feel angry that you committed to something that did not come from your own internal curiosity. On the other hand, you may have difficulty finding an advisor, if you are inflexible in choosing a topic in which there is no faculty interest. Even if you are successful in finding a faculty member who will support your idea, you may have trouble gaining the help of the advisor who because of their lack of personal interest in your topic may not have you very high on their priority list. You must juggle keeping in mind your interest and at the same time the research interests of the faculty around you as you move towards choosing a topic.

A major part of the process of writing your dissertation is idea development. This is not an easy task. Recognizing the potential difficulty of this task allows you to better manage your expectations. You should plan to struggle with this and if you do not need to struggle, consider yourself very fortunate. Leave yourself plenty of time to notice which ideas get you excited or curious. When you are in class, at lectures, reading articles, jot down topics of interest when inspired in a small notebook or on paper you compile in a folder. Talk to faculty and classmates about different ideas. Attend conferences. Find out what kinds of topics constitute acceptable dissertation topics. Remember that you are preparing to continue with research beyond graduate school whether you actually do or not. The dissertation is not simply an exercise to impress faculty or prove to yourself that you can do it. It is an opportunity for you to find a way to study ideas that you find important and that are important to the research community at large. Keeping this in mind will facilitate the process. You will most likely find a great deal of published literature on your topic. You will be able to write about the link between your topic and its relevance to the research community. Should you decide to publish, you will need to know how your topic fits with the research community beyond graduate school and if there is a future in investigating your topic.

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Finally, in choosing a topic, keep your idealism in perspective. While your finished published dissertation may jumpstart you into an instantly successful research career, most often your dissertation will be a stepping-stone to other research projects. If you stay in a research career, your work will improve as you continue at it, so do not expect this project to be your life’s work but rather as something pointing to future areas in which you may have interest. I am not suggesting that you should not try your best but keep this in mind if you find yourself becoming perfectionistic and immobilized. The long road ahead and desire to succeed often overwhelm students. Getting down to work by talking to people, reading articles, and writing down ideas is the best way to get going. Staying mired in fantasy about future success greatly inhibits progress. Often graduate students are attracted to the Ph.D. because of the opportunity it affords for thoughtful consideration of ideas. However, ideas often come about more readily in trying to put them into action through writing or conversation, rather, than keeping them circulating repetitively through one’s mind in isolation.

The dissertation process is particularly stressful because it involves many uncontrollable factors such as the personalities and politics encountered in your program. However, with information about how to carry out the process, some of the uncontrollable factors can be made more manageable. Choosing an advisor is a very important part of the process over which you may not have very much control. While no advisor will have everything you might be looking for, there are certain advisor qualities that make getting your dissertation completed easier. For example, it is helpful to have an advisor who has an interest in the area on which you will be writing. This is important as mentioned so that you will have your advisor’s motivation. Secondly, you might want to check if an advisor you like has a record of finished students. Find out if the advisor is known for being organized and turning drafts around quickly. An organized advisor will be good at helping students finish in a reasonable time frame. Thirdly, you may prefer an advisor who is known for his or her interest in students and will be invested in your learning process. You can complete the dissertation more easily if your advisor is getting excited with you about your work and helping you through the process. While some researchers can give equal attention to their own research and their students, advisors primarily focused on their own research, may be less apt to engage with you around the dissertation process. Fourthly, it helps to have an advisor who is kind. Not all advisors, even student centered ones, are supportive and encouraging. You may want to avoid faculty that have a reputation for being overly critical or picky. You may think you can handle a difficult advisor, however, it is possible other students have complained because their experience has been difficult for a reason. Occasionally, your interests will match so perfectly with a difficult advisor that it is worth the risk. However, you should be prepared that the road may be difficult at times. Being prepared will not take away the challenges that you have been warned about probably for good reason; however, they may make the bumps on the road more bearable. Fifthly, you may want an advisor who has research money to support your graduate studies. Finally, you might want an advisor who is willing to help you network and learn about grant writing. Some advisors will involve you in this process and introduce you to their colleagues at conferences. While this may not help you write your dissertation, it may help in a future research career once you are done with graduate school.

The advisory relationship can turn into a wonderful mentorship relationship at best and a nightmare at worst. Rose (2000, 6418) created the following definition of the “ideal mentor” based on graduate students’ rating of items according to degree of importance: “an experienced person who exhibits intellectual curiosity, reliability, research ethics and good communication skills. The ideal mentor is available to the student, provides challenge and constructive criticism, and conveys a belief in the student’s capabilities.” Finding these qualities in an advisor can only enhance your dissertation experience. However, you may not be able to find in the person you want to work with all the qualities that would be most conducive to your writing process. Along side looking for the qualities you need requires knowing yourself and the type of person with whom you can best work. For example, let’s say you have a very strong interest in health psychology but find yourself working with an advisor who is never available. Past students report long waits when giving rough drafts to this advisor. Knowing this ahead of time will prepare you to leave extra time in the writing process. One student might be so frustrated with an advisor’s unavailability that even extreme interest in the area would not compensate for the inability to be able to have closer contact with an advisor. This student may end up working with someone and choosing a less interesting topic but receives much hands-on attention from the advisor including quick turn around of drafts. You may even consider selecting a topic from among a preferred advisor’s many interests and find a way to incorporate something of your interest in that topic if you think you will work well with a certain advisor.

The mentoring relationship you develop with an advisor can be a transformational learning experience leading students from emotions such as fear to the excitement of discovering new ideas (Wing, 2000). Many authors have written about the mentoring process from both the perspective of the student and for faculty. Some of the topics addressed include making mentoring more intentional (Johnson, 2002)), facilitating the process (Bigelow and Johnson, 2001), addressing the needs of ethnic minority students (Davidson, 2001), positive effects of mentoring on scholarship and satisfaction (Tenenbaum et al, 2002), mentor’s effects on graduate student development (Zorich, 2000), and ethical issues in supervising student research (Goodyear et al, 1992).

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Getting Going

By now you hopefully have some idea about how to begin and are not too overwhelmed. No matter how hard it seems, get started on something…choosing a topic, reading literature, filing paper work. Once you get started you will find you may move in new directions than you previously thought. It is necessary to get going even if it’s a tiny step. You can stay immobilized for a long time without doing anything thinking you can whip the project out quickly. Part of the project requires the unfolding of time as you intermingle with ideas, coursework, readings, faculty and collegial conversations. Alternatively, you may be working slowly but not making any progress. If you find you are spinning your wheels, move into a different aspect of the project.

Developing the Topic and Outline via Review of the Literature

By this point, you most likely will have filed some initial paperwork with the graduate school, have chosen an advisor and can now begin your literature review. Discuss with your advisor the length and depth of the review expected. Then begin your research. You may want to start with recent articles and review articles. Review articles will give you a summary of research on the different topics. Furthermore, you can scan the references at the end of the review article for related articles. As you read, you will get lots of ideas and can begin to narrow the focus of your topic. It is a good idea to put similar articles into piles and label each pile. This will make writing easier. As you review, continue to talk to classmates, friends and your advisor about what you are learning. This will help you to clarify your thinking on the topic. As you read articles, keep in mind the journals you might want to submit your project to and the requirements of acceptance. Having this in mind will make publishing your dissertation easier when you are finished.

After having read many articles, begin to narrow your focus, nail down your topic, and write a rough outline developing you topic with relevant content areas. In writing the outline, you may find other areas you want to explore or more articles that you need to get. Try not to rush this stage by doing a cursory review because it will mean more work later when a committee member asks you to cover another topic before he or she will accept a draft of your dissertation. On the other hand, guard against perfectionism and feeling as though you have to cover the topic so thoroughly that you never get to the writing stage. When writing your outline, be prepared to revise your outline multiple times. This will prevent you from becoming too perfectionistic. Once you have your outline, begin writing your literature review. On easy way to organize yourself is to write up each area related to your topic individually and then weave the areas together to build a case for your topic of interest. If you divide the review into content areas, it is simpler for the reader to understand the material you are covering and it is also a good way to help organize your thinking.

There are a couple of tips that make things easier for you down the dissertation road. Format your computer according to the writing standards of your psychology program (and graduate school) before beginning any writing. Do all margins, title pages, copy write page, rough table of contents, figure lists and appendices. However, do not put in page numbers until the very end. Pages numbers always become a mess once you stick in figures. It is easier to do them in a flash at the very end when you’re ready to print your readers’ copies. Doing the formatting first and getting the ‘no-thinking’ formality type pages out of the way makes it easier at crunch time. Invariably, deadlines you set for yourself always seem to come more quickly than you expect. With a few days left to hand off your copies, you will want to be writing content and not doing formatting, which can easily get messed up when you are stressed. It is better to do it when you are relaxed and feel like you have years to finish your dissertation. Do references as you go along. This can also be a nightmare if saved for the end. When you are stressed to meet a deadline remembering where the colons, periods and semicolons go can really make you a lot more stressed.

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Choosing a Committee

You want to choose faculty who will contribute to your learning process as well as facilitate your completing your dissertation. It can be beneficial to choose a committee after you have conducted the literature review. Reading the literature may spark your interest in a relevant area in which a faculty member is knowledgeable. Ideally each member should add to different parts of your project if possible (i.e., a stats person, methods person, ideas person, some one who knows a particular area of your topic very well, someone who may challenge your ideas and thus keep you aware of what the critics of your ideas are thinking). Choose members that will help you to improve on your work and can also answer questions in your areas of weakness. If your project requires expertise in an ancillary area that is not your strength, you can hire a consultant to devise a computer program for example.

Setting Deadlines

Set deadlines for yourself early on in the process. It is important to be realistic and know how you work best. If possible make goals small, setting deadlines for each goal with some cushion around deadlines. Making a cushion around deadlines allows you to be realistic. If you are continually setting difficult goals for yourself and failing, you are doing a psychological number on yourself and may find the dissertation process wears you out quickly. It is hard enough without you feeling as though you are failing yourself through the whole process. It also helps you to prioritize. If possible, leave more time for harder tasks and get easy tasks out of the way first. The easy tasks can hold you back later (e.g., formatting and references). Some tasks you may want to get out of the way early on are scheduling meetings with committee members, filing paper work with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if necessary, and filing paper work with the graduate school. It is a good idea to set up regular meetings with your advisor. This helps you to keep focused on chipping away at your dissertation and it makes you accountable to being prepared for those meetings so that you do not waste your advisor’s time. It will force you to get your work done and it will show your advisor your commitment and motivation to getting the project done. An advisor who sees you are motivated may be more willing to help you. However, note that setting up meetings with your advisor that you don’t keep may leave your advisor feeling that his or her time is not important to you.

Developing the Hypotheses and Methods

Programs vary in their requirements about types of methods used for the dissertation. Due to the author’s lack of experience with qualitative methods, they will not be addressed here (refer to The Qualitative Report, an online journal on qualitative research edited by Ronal J. Chenail, Ph.D. for further resources). For the quantitative study, reflect deeply on your hypotheses prior to deciding on the specific operational definitions of the variables involved in your study. Concretizing the hypotheses statement(s) makes data analysis easier. Write out what you are expecting to find and your rationale for making such a hypothesis. An easy way to choose your methods is to pick out a few articles that use methods similar to what you would like to do. You can model yours similarly incorporating improvements in the design based on any problems the previous authors had encountered in their methods. Also refer to a research design book to ensure your methods are reliable and you have accounted for both internal and external validity. Write out your proposed data analysis method. Doing these sections systematically and carefully will make your project flow smoothly and consequently make the results and discussion sections easier to write.

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Presenting the Proposal and Implementing the Research Study

When you are nearing the completion of your literature review, hypotheses and methods development, you should be setting a date for your dissertation proposal meeting. This is when you will propose your dissertation idea to your committee. Again do this as early as possible and take the deadline seriously. Do not plan to reschedule the date, not only because it keeps you motivated but also it keeps your committee motivated. They will appreciate your sticking to deadlines and not inconveniencing them by continually needing to reschedule. Your proposal will contain the sections based on what is required by your psychology program (usually a literature review, methods section, and data analysis). Before arriving at the proposal meeting, your advisor will have approved of the proposal and a copy will have been submitted to committee members several weeks in advance. Most likely members will recommend changes. Make any changes right away. Don’t delay because it is much easier to make these changes while the ideas are fresh in your head.

Once your proposal has been approved by the committee, you may experience an emotional let down because there is still much work ahead and you have already worked very hard. It is important not to give up at this point. You may need a break but don’t take too long of one because a lot of time could go by before you get going again. Soon you will have to re-review the literature and recall all the reading you just did. If possible, start with easy tasks to get yourself back in the dissertation groove.

Carrying out the actual dissertation project varies widely for each individual. Talk to friends who have similar projects for moral support. As Bormann (1997) suggests, you can organize dinner groups to present your research to colleagues and knowledgeable friends. Be organized. Reset personal deadlines if necessary. Plan more time than needed because you will probably run into unforeseen pitfalls. For example, if you are using participants from a subject pool and you can’t get all your subjects in one semester as you had planned, you may need to wait another semester to finish your project. Gather additional references if needed. Find consultants if needed. Stay on top of paperwork from the graduate school, IRB, subject pool and your psychology program. Collect and/or code your data. Keep your advisor and readers updated on your progress in case any of them suggest changes in your course of action. It is better to incorporate changes earlier on rather than learning about them when you are almost done. It can be demoralizing if you are almost done and are told you need to recode some data or gather some extra data. Remember committee members have approved of your methods. If you make any changes, make sure you inform them and get their approval, which will prevent future headaches.

Constructing the Data Analyses (Results) Section

When you are ready for data analysis, think it through carefully and thoroughly. Be prepared before speaking with a computer consultant or committee member. They will be more likely to help you if you are organized and have done your part in trying to figure things out before going to them. You may want to consult with statistics textbooks, class notes and professors if necessary. If statistics is not your forte, you may want to consider paying a statistics consultant. You will still need to understand the statistics but they can help you brainstorm and give you more time. If you have committee members who are open to offering help, ask their advice if needed and periodically inform them of your progress. Go over your analysis with your advisor to make sure you are on the right track.

Once you are almost or completely done with the data analysis, set a date for your defense.

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Preparing the Discussion Section

The discussion summarizes your findings and how they relate to the research literature. Writing it should flow easily from the work you have already been doing for the past several years. Check with your advisor to find out how he or she prefers that you organize your discussion. The first part of your discussion should summarize your research question (s) and findings. It helps the reader if you write out your hypotheses and expectations as well. Then you can write out the findings and results in greater detail from your initial summary but with less detail than in the results section. You should cover reliability and validity, potential criticisms of your research design and implementation, the significance and use of your findings, a summary, a conclusion and ideas for future research. If you are not too crunched for time, the discussion can be a fun exercise in reviewing what you have spent a lot of time working on and can provide a place to talk about what you have learned from your project.

Defending your Dissertation

When you get to this point, you can almost relax. Get a sense from talking to classmates who have finished their defense or heard about others, how many students pass right away, how many need to revise, and who fails. You should have a rough idea about how you will do going into the defense based on your advisor’s feedback. In some cases, your advisor will have already approved of your reader’s copy before you sent it out for final review by your committee. In preparation for the defense, read through your dissertation. Be prepared to talk about why you did your project and how it went. What are some of the things you would have done differently if you had it to do over again? Think through possible criticisms and be prepared to address them orally.

If you pass, you can rejoice and relax. If you pass with changes make them right away. After such a long drawn out process, if you let go before making the changes, there is a chance you will never want to go back to it again. If you can run that last mile, and make the changes you won’t regret it because you are going to need a big break after you are finally done. If you don’t pass, review carefully with your advisor what did not go well and what you will need to do to change. Don’t give up. Even if you feel like changing careers rather than experience another defense, try to finish. Your degree will bring you many opportunities even if you never look at your dissertation again.

If you can, plan to publish soon after finishing. Once many years have gone by, it is necessary to redo a lot of the literature review in order to prepare your dissertation for publication. While everything is still fresh, write up a short version for publication. Another benefit of publishing right away is that if you don’t take an academic job after graduate school, getting access to an academic library is difficult. Having a publication can offer you many opportunities, especially an opportunity to apply for academic positions. Winslow (1996) encourages nursing students to publish their dissertations to share with the research community knowledge that could be beneficial. She views the lack of publishing a waste of time and talents. You have worked hard and your work is valuable even if you decide not to pursue the topic further or even perform more research.

References

    Bigelow, J. R. and Johnson, W. B. (2001). Promoting mentor-protégé relationship formation in graduate school. Clinical Supervisor, 20 (1), 1-23.

    Bormann, J. E. (1997). Dinner and dialogue: Creating research support. Nurse Educator, 22(1), 9.

    Chenail, R (Editor) (since 1990) The Qualitative Report [online journal] http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/

    Davidson, M. N. (2002). Mentoring in the preparation of graduate students of color. Review of Educational Research, 71(4), 549-574.

    Goodyear, R. K., Crego, C. A., Johnston, M. W. (1992). Ethical issues in the supervision of student research: A study of critical incidents. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 23(3), 203-210.

    Johnson, W. B. (2002). The intentional mentor: Strategies and guidelines for the practice of mentoring. Professional Psychology - Research and Practice, 33(1), 88-96.

    Rose, G. L. (2000). What do doctoral students want in a mentor? Development of the Ideal Mentor Scale. Dissertation Abstracts International, 60(12-B), 6418. (University Microfilms No. 2000-95012-166)

    Tenenabaum, H. R. (2002). Mentoring relationships in graduate school. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 59 (3), 326-341.

    Wing, L. S. (2000). Transforming doctoral candidates: An exploration of faculty-student relations through dissertation creation. Dissertation Abstracts International, 60 (12-A), 4624. (University Microfilms No. 2000-95011-186)

    Winslow, E. H. (1996). Failure to publish research: A form of scientific misconduct? Heart and Lung: The Journal of Acute and Critical Care, 25(3), 169-171.

    Zorich, L. L. (2000). Mentoring across stages of psychology graduate student development: A theoretical model. Dissertation Abstracts International, 61(3-B), 1662B. (University Microfilms No. 2000-95018-265)

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