Qualitative Dissertation Methodology. Nathan Durdella
or do in practice. In reviewing both empirical and conceptual literature to inform the development of your research problem, purpose, and questions, you commit to an evaluation and synthesis of research studies to understand what will form the focus of your look at the phenomenon. In empirical studies, you incorporate rigor into your research framework by grounding the problem in examinations that used standard research practices and withstood scrutiny in the peer-review process. Similarly, the conceptual literature, which generally joins empirical studies in a literature review, tends to enhance the explanatory power of results in a study and allows for a more robust application of an interpretative lens in evaluating the research questions of a study.
As you execute the study that you have conceptualized and designed, originality may mean that you use standard data collection or analysis procedures in new ways. You may think, How can this be possible? With all of the studies that have been published and presented, how can what I propose in my dissertation study be innovative? Just as culinary recipes can be prepared in new ways, so too can research studies. Consider apple pie. Requiring a seemingly simple and easy recipe to make, apple pie can be made in many imaginative and creative ways. A few clicks and a Google search later, you can find hundreds of apple pie recipes! And that is not the end of it—you can make your own unique pie with a new ingredient or ingredients, a different mix of apples, a slight twist on existing ingredients, a change in baking temperature (or an alternative approach to baking), and so on. You get the idea here. In your discipline or interdisciplinary field, how many studies have used the same research design or tradition and procedures in the same research contexts or sites with the same participant groups to examine the specific phenomenon in your study at this time in human history? The replication of an existing study in a different research context is new, and the use of an existing instrument with new participants is fresh. You have done, are doing, or will do the literature review—and you have seen, are seeing, or will see endless combinations of topical areas of interest, empirical and conceptual studies, and research design and methods that result in unique sets of results, findings, and recommendations. This is the essence of innovation in empirical research.
Another characteristic that dissertations tend to exhibit is the use of standards in the field to gather and make sense of information. Culturally, faculty advisors, academic researchers, graduate student researchers, evaluators, and so on reproduce these standards in the field—reifying them in practice, publishing results of research work in journals, codifying them in academic texts, discussing them in graduate classrooms, and using them to advise dissertation advisees. While not static or linear, they tend to dictate steps in the research process—from conceptualizing research problems and questions to designing data collection and analysis procedures. In the dissertation research process, students generally use these standards as a “sustained set of acts through which rigorous habits of mind are practiced and internalized” (Smith, 2010b). Indeed, the practice of these standard practices support rigor in the research process and distinguish empirical from anecdotal sources of information, establishing credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability—the hallmarks of what counts—in studies.
In a qualitative methodological framework alone, general research practices and specific practices in qualitative inquiry guide decisions about a range of steps. The lens of a research tradition—ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, narrative inquiry, case study, and so on—generally informs how researchers proceed. Using a set of assumptions, principles, and techniques, a tradition’s lens helps researchers decide on the types and sources of information; settings and sites to access participants; the approaches to sample, recruit, and select participants; collect data and interact with participants; and make sense of patterns that emerge from an analysis of data. The practices generally establish a common language and an explicit set of expectations for behavior in the field—and research texts tend to be interpreted through them.
A final characteristic that tends to be associated with dissertation research is a problem-solving orientation. Granted, we articulate research problems in our research work, and research problems form the bedrock of most empirical studies—signifying ties to what others have found using standard approaches—but a problem-solving orientation means more than the use of the existing literature to guide a study. Here, problem solving relates to a study rooted in a persistent problem or problems in a local context—particularly among a group or segments of society who have been challenged by or struggled with social inequities or injustices at the community or family levels. This orientation presents a compelling interest to more than just researchers and the academic community—it sustains interest among local and regional stakeholders (and beyond) and holds implications for meaningful change and improvements in the lives and communities where people live and work.
Dissertation forms.
While a range of dissertation formats has emerged in doctoral program practice, the dissertation as a monograph or long-form research report—a five-chapter format—appears as the most common approach. The traditional five-chapter format includes all of the elements of what faculty advisors use in their own research work and teach in methods courses, which conform to broader standards that have been reproduced in academic research work and products. Generally speaking, the following five chapters or combination of five chapters appear in monograph dissertations:
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Background or Literature Review
Chapter 3. Methodology
Chapter 4. Results or Findings
Chapter 5. Discussion (of Results or Findings) or Conclusions and Recommendations
Across programs, dissertation chapter titles may vary—with differences characterizing everything from language that must appear in chapter titles and sections headings in each chapter to formatting guidelines that govern how to present a title or heading across chapters. Frequently, chapter title and section heading differences reflect the focus of a chapter or the emphasis on a specific research concept that the chapter treats. For example, Chapter 1 may be titled as “Introduction” in one program and “Statement of the Problem” in another. In Chapter 2, you may see titles such as “Literature Review,” “Review of the Literature,” “Related Literature,” or simply “Literature”—or you may see a more general title such as “Background.” Chapter 3 titles tend to appear as “Methodology,” “Methods,” or perhaps “Procedures,” reflecting a focus on the detailed steps in data collection and analysis. For Chapter 4, “Results” or “Findings” may appear as titles. With some program or department requirements or faculty advisors’ preferences in the absence of specific written requirements, the final two chapters—what appear as Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 above—may be combined in a single chapter that covers a discussion of the results—interpretation of analytical patterns, evaluation of research questions, application of empirical and/or conceptual literature to results—and recommendations for future research and practice. Here, a more conventional research journal article may shape the presentation of the final chapter as an efficient, cohesive discussion of results or findings and recommendations for future research and practice. When a fifth chapter appears in a dissertation, the following titles may be seen: “Findings,” “Findings and Recommendations,” “Discussion and Conclusion,” “Discussion and Recommendations,” or simply “Discussion.”
In some program and department contexts, chapter titles or formats