Qualitative Dissertation Methodology. Nathan Durdella
in the topical or content area and/or methodological expertise—in qualitative research, to be sure. Of course, you need to have a sense of the nature and direction of your proposed study before you can set criteria in expert knowledge or skill in content area or qualitative methodology. What is more, you need to decide which is more important to you, if an eligible faculty member demonstrates a record in content area but not methodology or vice versa. In fact, some faculty may only work with dissertation advisees who agree to use specific research design and methods or empirical and conceptual frameworks—given their own work and their self-perceived proficiency in one or another procedure or theory. For example, you may be open to the use of an ethnographic research tradition and participant observations, where your prospective chair has expertise, so content area knowledge may be more important to you than methodological approach. In some cases, you may find that a faculty member’s research appears to you on multiple levels—topically, conceptually, and methodologically. In all cases, you need to consider where your strengths lie and if you need support in one area more than another.
Attitude.
As they say, attitude is everything. Well, the same adage tends to hold true in academic life: explore attitudes of potential advisors (Thomas & Brubaker, 2007). How your chair feels about your topic, problem, purpose, questions, methods, and so on—the stuff of your study—generally shapes your experiences with them. Further, how potential chairs feel about the value of qualitative research is important to the success of your dissertation study. The idea here is that if they have an interest in your study, then they will engage with you and stay connected to your progress, perhaps because they have a stake in scholarly activity in the area and follow new and emerging investigations related to the topic. In other words, they perceive a career advantage or professional benefit in working with you—even if just to extend what they know about the topic. A related notion here is an attitude of “mutual respect and faculty confidence in your abilities” (Meloy, 2002, p. 34). A few key questions related to a prospective chair’s attitude about your research are as follows: Do they understand what I propose to do? Are they interested in what I am planning? How have they come to know my research topic and/or methodological approach? If you need to work with someone who shares your passion for an area of inquiry, then you have to explore how she or he feels about your study.
Dissertation Chair as Research Supervisor
At the dissertation phase of students’ tenure in a doctoral program, the faculty advisor role of research supervisor generally takes on greater significance. Between study design and proposal writing, data collection and analysis, and write up, students need close support and supervision from a qualitative research expert. As each dissertation is unique and reflects the distinct combination of personal, professional, and programmatic factors that shape this type of empirical investigation, the overall dissertation research process tends to be formulaic. While not meant to oversimplify dissertation research processes or experiences, especially qualitative dissertation work, you can be relatively sure that if students follow requirements codified in program, department, and university policies and work within social and behavioral science standards, they will be much more likely to complete their study. Here, faculty advisors with specific experiences in each step of the qualitative research process and insight into how to resolve issues that arise in design and implementation of qualitative research serve to implement these standards and interpret policies and practices for doctoral student use in their dissertation studies.
Availability.
Faculty who are available (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2016; Brause, 2004; Roberts, 2004) to you means that you will finish on time—or even at all. If you intend on completing, defending, and filing your dissertation, then a chair who is available is a must. So, availability refers to (a) whether or not he or she can chair your committee (i.e., is he or she carrying a high advisee load at the moment or is he or she over the maximum limit of advisees, if applicable) and (b) is he or she around to work with you in an advising capacity. In the latter sense, a couple questions that you may guide your exploration of this criterion include the following: What is their current or anticipated workload? Do they have sabbatical plans over the next 2 to 4 years? Is he or she pre-tenure or probationary faculty such that if he or she does not receive tenure, he or she may not be around for the duration of the dissertation research process? In addition to general availability, you want a faculty partner who is accessible or reachable. You can tell almost immediately if a faculty member is accessible by how he or she responds to you via email. When did he or she reply to your last three email messages? Did you have to wait longer than you expected to hear back from him or her? Let us be clear here: Accessibility does not mean that you will hear back on your question or request immediately, that your email messages will be returned within the hour, or that you can exchange text messages instantly. In the end, the more generally accessible a chair is to you, the more likely you are to remain satisfied with the advising relationship and the more efficiently you are to progress along in your study.
Reliability.
Being reliable (Roberts, 2004) is related to accessibility—in the sense that someone whom you expect to return email messages will in fact do so. When you request feedback, ask a question, discuss an issue, or have to share thoughts about an experience in the field or on campus, you need a faculty advisor whom you can count on to respond to you. For dissertation research and writing, reliability may also be seen in terms of mutual accountability and demands of quality work on both the part of the advisor and advisee. Conventionally, you would think that your chair functions to hold you accountable for progressing within timelines, meeting submission deadlines, and exceeding standards for research work in the discipline. But this is not always the case. In some advising relationships, students need to demand that their chairs meet or exceed expectations for timeliness and quality: from feedback on chapter drafts to insight on how to present their research work and advice on how to navigate committee hearings. In such cases, you need to persistently advocate for your work: Ask questions about feedback and comments, explore competing or alternative explanations, and consult peers about their experiences. Being in such a position is really not in your best interest—so consider a prospective chair who is there for you to support your research progress.
Advice to Expect From Your Dissertation Chair
For students, the process of socialization into academic life generally occurs throughout the program cycle—so faculty accessibility, reliability, and attitudes have implications for more than just dissertation advising. Over the course of their tenure in the program, students transition along a continuum of identities: doctoral student, scholar-practitioner, scholar-academic. While program advising involves more box checking or, at a minimum, guiding students through a set of tasks to meet program requirements, doctoral students tend to need more than advice about how to complete coursework—including qualitative methods classes—or qualifying exams. While important to meeting degree milestones, program advisement is insufficient to support student socialization into the discipline and qualitative research subfields, growth as scholars and qualitative researchers, and career preparation in the field. The characteristics of a mentoring relationship, in contrast to an advising one, may partially explain this pattern. In fact, advisors typically provide program- and dissertation-level guidance to students, but their work tends to be technical and/or logistical—to get students through a series of events, from coursework to final defense, within prescribed program parameters.
Personality.
In discussions of workplace relationships, personality (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2016) is used a lot. You have seen the blog posts or news stories about personality conflicts among coworkers or between supervisors and staff, right? Well, personalities play into your work with a chair—and perhaps more so. Think about who your chair may be to you: research supervisor, program advisor, mentor, and so on. With implications as wide as they can be for your current and future work, do you feel that you can establish a level of trust and openness with this person? Do her or his listening skills work for you? Does he or she understand your needs (Roberts, 2004)? Does her or his character make you feel comfortable? Is this someone who Smith (1990, p. 26) describes as a “senior scientist type”