Writing a Dissertation - for Dummies

A "Dummies" title I hadn't seen before. There's an extensive preview available here - I think it's over 50 pages. Just wondering what DI members think - Doctors, Doctorands, Doctoral students and yes, of course, - non-Doctors, like myself, as well.

Is it any good? Helpful or hype? Leaf through it a bit and let us all know.

https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Writing_a_Dissertation_For_Dummies/lVLyvos7ZOEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

 

Back in my Union days, there weren't a lot of titles to help write a dissertation. What was this thing and how did you do one? My two favorites back then were:

• How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation by David Sternberg
• Successful Dissertations and Theses by David Madsen

Both are still available if you look around. They're timeless.

For you mathphobes, I loved Statistics Without Tears by Derek Rowntree. Still available.

 

I've seen that title. It is about writing an undergraduate or master's dissertation in the UK, not a doctoral dissertation. Huge difference.

In the UK, the paper you write to earn your honours degree is a dissertation. This is also true of the master's degree. The paper for the doctorate is a thesis. Americans could be confused by the title, thinking it was about writing a doctoral dissertation. It is not.

 

I've got Umberto Eco's "How to Write a Thesis" in audiobook form. It's more about how to write a Master's-level literary review thesis for the Italian school system, based on technology from the 80s. But it's got some good, and timeless, advice on how to conduct research to find material.

 

Thanks Rich. At least one Canadian was confused, too.

 

Dummies shouldn't be writing dissertations, lol

Some of the books I read that were helpful include:

Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: A guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis - Bolker
Completing your qualitative dissertation: A road map from beginning to end - Bloomberg & Volpe
How to write a phenomenological dissertation: A step-by-step guide - Peoples

I also found Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches by Creswell & Poth to be helpful in Chapter 3 (Methods).

 

Anything by Creswell. My favorite: Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. But the Five Approaches is good, too.

And for a good review of qualitative research methods overall, considering Michael Q. Patton's Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. It's more like a textbook, but an extremely valuable one.

And if you really want to blow your mind, try Patton's Developmental Evaluation. Not necessarily for the doctoral researcher, but it takes the whole idea of evaluation and measurement and stands it on its head. This from a guy who's written a ton of other titles on the topic. I had the good please to serve with Michael on a doctoral committee; he's a really cool guy and I love his books. He was a Union faculty member for a very long time; learners lucky enough to have him on their committee were in good stead.

If you're interested in theory-building (like I did at Leicester) instead of theory-testing (like I did at Union), Constructing Grounded Theory is the best. And if you're interested in doing qualitative research, you'll need to understand how to read and code your data. For that, go with The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldana.

 

Right - but no reason they can't play guitar - even I do that. I found "Dummies Guide to Blues Guitar" was well-written, instructive and interesting. Even though I've had a continuing love affair with the Blues for over 60 years, I was able to learn things from that book. I have at least four Dummies guitar titles and it seems to be something they're very good at. I think they have a knack for picking the right authors.

 

It's not bad. I can't speak to the "empirical" variety, but when I wrote mine, the most helpful resources were my school's handbook on writing style (and Turabian et al.), a wonderful little book called Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, a book called They Say/I Say, and the many other relevant completed dissertations/projects. Unlike my last program, my present doctoral program requires a dissertation project that incorporates statistical evaluation. For that, I have found Lincoln's Qualitative Research to be a valuable resource.