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5 Crucial Questions to Ask When Planning a Dissertation

Published on 08/27/09 - 0 Comments

Planning is an essential strategy that graduate students must do if they wish to complete their dissertation papers. Every one knows how difficult a task you have ahead of you, but with the right tools and the best dissertation approaches, you can be at an advantage.

Here are some of the key questions that dissertation writers should be asking themselves before they begin with their study:

1.What subjects are you interested in and from there, what areas are left unexplored? Interest is a key factor in the success of a dissertation because being genuinely engrossed in the topic means you will not easily get burned out. Remember, you are about to work on your dissertation for the next year or so. At least when you have an interest in the subject matter, you would not be giving up at the first sign of trouble or dropping everything because you are tired of the same subject plaguing you day by day.

2.What is wrong with the world and how can your topic provide an answer to that? The dissertation is not just about you completing your academic requisites, it's about making a contribution in your discipline. Make sure that your topic is pragmatic and can enrich the body of knowledge in your field, after all, this is what a scholastic endeavor is all about.

3.Is your topic feasible and do you have enough resources to carry it out? Apart from the significance of your study, you also need to consider its feasibility. Yes, it would be wonderful to finally find a cure for cancer or AIDS but is this doable within the timeframe that you have? Why not be more specific and choose instead questions like, will a certain ingredient help in alleviating a certain kind of disease or at least something to that effect. The point is, you have to delimit scope of your study and you need not know the answers to all the questions in the universe just to get a Degree. You just have to prove that you are good at one aspect.

4.What studies have been done and what data or statistics can be useful to help you in your research? Knowing where you stand in the greater scheme of things can help you a lot in your study and dissertation writing. Do a background research first and see what other studies have been done or whether you can improve it or try a new approach. This is also a good way to collate useful information and data that might help you substantiate your claims later on.

5.What are the data gathering methods that you will employ on your dissertation? There are various methods you can use in gathering information â€" case study, experiment, interview, survey, textual analysis, etc. Choose the one that would best fit the topic and you have chosen and one that would best prove your hypothesis.

Be guided by these questions and you know that you are on the right track to getting your PhD. The graduate students who plan their work carefully are often times the ones to succeed in their academic career. So, do not be an All But Dissertation student, better prepare and plan ten steps ahead. Nothing is more satisfying than facing the panel and knowing that you did well on your scholastic work.