Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation

or Thesis FasterA Proven Map to Success

by E. Alana James and Tracesea Slater

Are You Ready to Write the Overview

for Your Study?

What is Included in an Award-Winning

Introduction/Overview Chapter

• Introduction of the Topic Huges (2010) builds a case, step by step, that persuades her audience of the worthiness of her topic and her consideration of it as a narrative life history, rather than a straight qualitative or quantitative research design. While not discussing methodology directly, she sets her case through consideration of the human, woman oriented, life choices that would lead to career decisions.

• Introduction of the Topic and the Methodology Pershing (2003) writes with a strict scientific orientation with an introductory chapter that might very well stand in as a synopsis of the entire work., almost every topic in the first three chapters was covered in brief in her introduction chapter.

Three Goals for the Introduction

• Make your reader feel comfortable with your topic in

the context of your study.

• Discuss the logic of your research methodology.

• Persuade the reader that your study is important.

What to Include in Your Overview

• Introduction to Chapter

• Context for the Study

• Problem or Purpose Statement (or Both)

• Nature of the Study

• Theoretical Context

• Local and Societal Context and Significance

• Hypothesis (for Quantitative Studies) and Research Questions (for Qualitative Studies) and Both (for Mixed Methods)

• Operational Definitions (Explanation of Jargon if Necessary)

• Limitations of the Study

• Delimiters

• Significance

• Summary

Topics Which Tie the Sections Together

• Discussion of Your Topic

• Discussion of Your Context

• Discussion of the Literature

• Methodological design?

Introduction Writing Tips: Do…

• Make your writing as concise as possible.

• Consider the pace of each section in relation to the one

before and after.

• Have people, who are not engaged in an academic

setting, read your introduction and tell you where they

get confused or have questions.

• Wait a week after you think it is perfect and then go back

to reread it out loud again.

Introduction Writing Tips: Don’t…

• Make sweeping or grandiose claims or write about how

things “should” be. This is one of the most common mistakes

for new academic writers, driven by passion. The world is a

complex place, and as you progress in research you will find

that many of your original assumptions don’t hold up in other

circumstances or contexts.

• Use the words many, most, some, and so forth. These are

considered vague attributions and force the reader to ask

who is involved in the many, the most, or some of the people

about whom you refer?

Where Should I Go to Dig Deeper? Suggested Resources to Consider

• Bloomberg, L. D., & Volpe, M. (2012). Completing your qualitative dissertation: A road map from beginning to end (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. These authors do a great job of discussing the perfect introduction for a qualitatively based research thesis.

• Sapsford, R., & Jupp, V. (1996). Counting cases: Measurement and case selections. In R. Sapsford & V. Jupp (Eds.), Data collection and analysis (pp. xxi, 360). London: Sage in association with Open University. Since the purpose of the introduction is to persuade your reader that your study is valid and credible, this book’s focus on data collection and analysis within quantitative work offers guidelines that will be helpful.

• Wallen, N. E., & Fraenkel, J. R. (2001). Educational research: A guide to the process (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. This is a classic for educational research and should be seen as a total examination of the decisions and challenges of scientific research within an educational setting. An introduction that adopts this model would be convincing.