What makes a quality dissertation? Surveying local norms

by: Paul Downs, Dallas Jensen, Sam Tobler, Bryan Mickelson, Neil O. Annandale
Brigham Young University

Cone and Foster (1993) advised graduate students who are confronting their dissertation to “learn about your local requirements” (p.5) regarding format of the dissertation. Further, they stated, “completed projects vary in quality, and faculty members might want to direct you to examples that are most relevant to the type of research you are contemplating (p.6).” Krumboltz (2002) critiqued current practices regarding dissertations in psychology and challenged the profession to consider what was most effective rather than making the dissertation process a rite of passage.

We are doctoral students in the first and second years of a four-year APA-approved Counseling Psychology program. While considering our prospectuses we worried about the length that our documents should be. One of our professors called this question a “red herring”. He proposed that the real issue was the quality of the dissertation and not the length. After multiple discussions and lively debate, we were still left wondering what comprises a “quality” dissertation. The same professor reminded us of Pirsig's (1974) solution that “quality” is undefined. As intriguing as Pirsig's logic was, it didn't help us much.

It was clear that we would be held accountable to some standard of quality and that it would most likely be based on the local norms of our department. The tension between post-modernism and standardized accredited programs seems to be somewhat resolved by the concept of local norms. While we will be held accountable to a standard, it seems that the standard is not universal, but rather, locally determined.

We decided to explore what made a quality dissertation by assessing the local norms in our department. We identified several variables that we proposed might represent quality. These could be considered either process or product variables. We created a survey with 21 items (10 process and 11 product) and provided space for faculty to identify variables that we had not considered. Examples of product variables were “clarity of prose” and “clean research methods.” Process variables included “congruence with faculty research interest” and “relationship between student and chair.” We also included some demographic variables including gender, age, and years of teaching experience. We designed the instrument as a forced-choice survey in which the faculty were asked to rank their top five considerations. Rankings were reverse-scored to emphasize weight. Total scores were obtained by tallying the reverse scored ranks.

We distributed surveys to the 18 faculty (9 female and 9 male) in our department and followed up with email reminders asking them to return the survey to the professor who was supervising our project. Fourteen faculty members returned usable surveys. Of those, eight were from female faculty and six were from male faculty.

The faculty actually nominated a wide range of variables for the top five criteria. Across all nominations, however, the top five criteria were ranked as follows:

1. Relevance to the field
2. Students' learning (i.e., students gain knowledge of the research process)
3. Publishablilty
4. Relevance to student goals (i.e., prepares students for future employment/practice)
5. Feasibility (i.e., scope, cost, time, and pragmatics of completing the dissertation)

We looked further for trends regarding preferences among the faculty for determinants of a quality dissertation. We collapsed the data into a nominal scale and conducted four Chi Square analyses to determine whether there was a general preference for product versus process variables and whether the preferences seemed independent of gender, age, or years of experience.

We discovered that, in general, faculty did not show a significant preference for process or product variables (Χ 2 = 2.88, NS). Similarly, there was no preference according to gender (Χ 2 = 2.78, NS). However, preferences were not independent of faculty age or years of experience. While younger, less-experienced faculty showed no particular preference for product or process determinants, the older, more-experienced faculty did prefer product variables as the determinants of quality

(Χ 2 = 4.37, p < 0.05[age]; Χ 2 =4.37, p < 0.05 [experience]).

We do not consider these data to be generalizable to other settings. The purpose of our study was to identify our local norms and to help us understand what standards would be required of us. As a result of our experience we would venture to make three recommendations to other graduate students.

First, we invite other graduate students to explore the local norms in their respective programs. This is not to encourage a duplication of this study but to suggest that students be proactive in understanding the expectations of faculty members in their departments. Second, more than numerical results, our questioning led to fruitful in-depth discussions and clarifications that aided our dissertation process. Moreover, gathering this kind of information helped us overcome our fears and concerns, helped faculty clarify what it is they look for, and streamlined the prospectus process. (Thus armed, the four second-year students in our group submitted our prospectuses by the end of fall semester). Finally, we would suggest that this process need not be limited to students gathering information from faculty but the converse could also be useful. Students in an intimate doctoral program also establish norms for a wide variety of behaviors and faculty would do well to know what norms exist among their advisees.

References

Cone, J. D. & Foster, S. L. (1993). Dissertations and theses from start to finish .

Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Krumboltz, J. D. (2002). Encouraging research: Make it collegial, enjoyable, and

relevant. American Psychologist , 57 (11), 931-940.

Prisig, R. M. (1974). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance . New York, NY:

Bantam Books.