Ready to get your doctorate? This is the first of two articles on how to finish your dissertation in two years from start to finish.
There are many possible roads towards finding dissertation help and finishing through to your final defense. This timeline has proven itself with many students, but that does not mean it's the only road to success. I tell people that I like the dissertation option for finishing a doctorate because it is like a wide highway, many have traveled the road, and there are few unexpected bumps. I also like the doctoral dissertation because it is a rite of passage; when confronted with your own data which you analyze yourself you made completely new meaning for the first time in your educational career. It's exciting, transformative, and we hope a great deal of fun. But to get to that fun you have to be able to show expertise and rigor along the following journey. This article is the first of two which, together, structure a two-year process through which you will gain your dissertation.
The first year: building a library of literature and defining your methodology
You have one year from start to finish to complete two major tasks. First, you need to build a substantial library of literature on your topic for your review of literature. What is meant by substantial? Most universities will require between 75 and 125 peer-reviewed documents (journal articles and books) for a lit review. In addition to that, I personally ask the students that I mentor to show me that they are also familiar with self published and web-based non-peer-reviewed literature, media, etc. During the time that you are reading everything you can imagine on your topic you should be simultaneously sorting that reading into sub topics of interest to you -- these become the items you measure in your methodology.
I suggest you start immediately and commit to reading and entering three new articles a week on your topic in an EndNote library. Whatever organizational tool you use it needs to be able to: sort your references, attach your PDF files, allow space for you to write notes of your own as to why you like those particular articles, and offer a reference building tool that makes the final reference list relatively easy. I have used EndNote for years, and find it to consistently grow in its robust handling of these issues, but whatever tool you use, you must keep up regular reading and entering of literature.
Whether you choose a primarily qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods methodology depends on a number of factors, and it is good to keep these in mind as you read and establish your library of literature. First, you need to collect data to which you have access. As an example, it is unlikely that if you are an outsider to the prison system you will be given permission to collect data from prisoners -- why? Because prisoners, like youth and the disabled, are protected populations. Increasingly, it is difficult to receive IRB permissions to collect data from people in your employ due to be extra influence you have on them because of their financial connection to you. Regardless, as you are reading your literature you need to have in mind what population of people will be the target for your questions on your topic? If you want to finish without too much drama then you will select a topic for which you have access to data.
The second thing you need to decide is what kind of questions you want to ask, of whom, over what kind of period of time. In general, quantitative data takes time up front but analyzes quickly while qualitative data takes little time up front but lots in the analysis. As you might imagine, mixed methods may take a lot of time on both ends. A good place to start is by looking at the methodology reported in the literature you are reading. One of my students has what he calls a "doc in a box" solution -- find a study you really like that fits your ideas, contact the author ask permission to continue the study using their instruments etc. The lucky student who stumbles across such a study has much of the methodology for done for them.
At this point you should have a strong ability to discuss your topic and the sub topics of interest in depth with another person. You should also be able to tell them what particular questions you want to research, what methods you'll use to answer those questions, and who you will ask for the answers. Now you need the permission of your advisor to move forward. While, depending upon your University, you may have done some writing, be prepared for the likelihood that much of that will turn out to be rough drafts at best. Why? Because not until the time you have these two pieces to this level of understanding, can you completely draft either chapters two or three. Nevertheless you should be proud of yourself, you have done the hard mental work and are approximately one year away from graduation.
How to get from this understanding through the document writing, the data collection and analysis, and finished in a year is the topic of the next article.
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