I have had my Dissertation Proposal accepted and I have submitted my IRB paperwork (ethical requirements). While I am waiting for that to be approved I am starting to write Chapter 4. I can put in all the "information" and plug in the data/results later. Since all 5 of Research Questions and Hypotheses are the same concept with a different twist, I wrote one section and started to copy and paste it for the other Research Questions and Hypotheses'. Then I just changed a few words (male to female since one question is regarding male communication sat and one is female). This just seems too easy. Am I missing something or is chapters 1-3 the big trick to get past?
Chapter 4 is easy IF the data comes in the way you expect it. On my dissertation, the software I intended to rely upon (major big-name statistical package) at the time I defended my proposal was subsequently found to fudge a particular calculation in a way that made it unsuitable for my purposes. I had to write a MASSIVE program to do the calculations myself and then find a way to prove that my calculations were correct and that those of the "major big-name statistical package" were wrong. Similar issues were encountered with a major spreadsheet application that is marketed out of Washington State. I have heard many horror stories about unexpected results. I hope that you don't run into anything close to the problems I ran into.
As long as you have no unexpected bumps - the proposal is the "big hurdle." Of course, if you choose to engage in qualitative interviewing, you need to transcribe all of those interviews...
A fellow PhD candidate did his interviews, recorded them, and used an online service where he could upload the interviews as an Mp3 and they would do the transcription for him. He also paid an editor to do all the formatting for his dissertation. Cost him a few hundred bucks, but saved a lot of time. His dissertation process was relatively easy. His proposal however, was pretty brutal. It was 8 hours long! I seem to have the inverse. My proposal was easy, the dissertation is brutal.
Please note that this comment regards computer/software error. There is a more common and traditional connotation of the "data coming out wrong." Many students set out to prove something in their dissertations. They set up hypotheses to test, often using one-tailed tests to look for data in one direction. But their data sometimes comes out pointing in the other direction. Either they find no significance, or it points the other way. (Or put another way, two variables, instead of being correlated, are either not correlated or--horrors!--inversely correlated.) As Sternberg reminds, however, significance is found in the results, no matter how they turn out. Sure, our cherished theories might be disproved (or, more accurately, found not to be supported), but even that is a contribution to knowledge. After all, scientific success is built on a mound of scientific failures. So.... Data coming out wrong because some stats package has gone kablooey is a real concern and must be fixed. Data coming out wrong because you predicted it would go the other way is just fine. Write it up that way and convince your committee that at least you've sealed off a dead end for other researchers!
For me, getting the proposal and the IRB approval were the most time consuming and difficult parts of the process. After the proposal was approved, I wrote Ch. 4 in about 2 days. Ch. 5 took about 2-3 weeks. A stumbling block was getting through the final format review for APA. Apparently my chair and committee member were only keeping an eye out for the most blatant of APA issues, so I ended up going through one extensive APA fix, then one very minor one. The bright side (I suppose) is that I learned so much about APA from the experience that I'm now serving as an editor for others.
Racechick, did you do your work at NCU, as well? I've heard good and bad about getting through the dissertation there. Looks like you are skating along, Randell, hope you skate right through.
