Week 10: Advance Application of Practice-Base Research in Health
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Completing the draft Prospectus is a key milestone in the Doctoral Study process. Take a moment to look back and consider the research you have conducted, the Prospectus you developed, the problems you have considered, and the questions you have posed—to yourself and to others. Think, as well about all the pieces of the Doctoral Study you have developed, clarified, and revised. Changes will continue as you proceed through the process, but this point represents a significant step forward in solidifying the research you plan to do. Congratulations!
Learning Objectives
Students will:
· Create a plan for completion of Doctoral Study
· Analyze milestones necessary for completion of Doctoral Study
· Analyze approaches to inform Doctoral Study committee on progress related to completion of Doctoral Study milestones.
Learning Resources
Required Readings
Rudestam, K. E., & Newton, R. R. (2015). Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Chapter 9, “Overcoming Barriers: Becoming an Expert while Controlling Your Own Destiny” (pp.247-258).
Walden University. (n.d.a). APA style: Overview. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa
Walden University. (n.d.j). Office of Student Research Administration: DHA Doctoral Study. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter/osra/DHA
Walden University. (n.d.k). Scholarly writing: Overview. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/scholarly
Walden University. (n.d.l). Walden University catalog [2016–2017]. Retrieved from http://catalog.waldenu.edu/
Required Media
Laureate Education (Producer). (2015f). Looking forward: Challenges related to and strategies for completing the Doctoral Study [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 18 minutes.
The video Transcript
Looking Forward: Challenges Related to and Strategies for
Completing Dissertation
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHRISTINE M. WALLACE: So one of the biggest challenges are the people
around you in your life are not always very supportive. I don’t think they really
understand if you don’t have a lot of people around you that have completed
either a medical degree or maybe a JD or a PhD, there’s a lot of people that
might be in your life that don’t see the value and don’t really understand that the
sacrifices that it really takes in order to be able to complete a dissertation. So it’s
constantly understanding that despite what those people might be saying to you,
not to let that play over and over in your head, keeping the goal focused right in
front of you at all times.
I had a screensaver on my computer that sort of made me laugh and kept me
motivated. And it said, “Non illegitimi carborundum,” which in Latin means, “Don’t
let the bastards get you down.” And I think that was always something that made
me feel like I had one up on my committee or people that were in my life that
maybe weren’t always as supportive as I hoped that they would be as part of this
process.
Some of the advice that I would give students that are beginning the dissertation
process. I think, first of all, you have to begin with the end in mind. Some of the
things that people told me that I thought were really interesting was to visualize
how many pages your dissertation would look like. And actually, put it in a
notebook, divide it into chapters, figure out about how many chapters, and put
blank pages into a book, which is something that I did do. And then every time
you write a page, you rip out a page.
So it begins to make you feel like you’re moving towards accomplishing a goal.
Another one of the things that people suggested to me as I was going through is
they said it’s very easy to get distracted as you’re going through your
dissertation. You come up with all kinds of things as you’re doing research,
especially on your lit review, that you think, oh, it would be really interesting to do
some research on this or to write an article. And I had a file in my desk, and
every time I came across one of those ideas, I would just take the article or the
idea, write something up about it, and throw it into the file cabinet. That meant
that I kept staying focused on what my original premise and what my original
purpose was.
Some other things that I used that helped me be able to get through the
dissertation process. I picked a set amount of time and a set time of the day that I
worked on at every single day. So for instance, I tend to work very late at night
after my family was in bed and after my children were asleep, my dishes were done, and everything else was sort of finished. I would spend, like, from 1 to 3
o’clock in the morning doing my writing.
And that seemed to work for me. I didn’t have to go to work in the morning until
about 10 o’clock. So that actually turned out to be a very good way for me to
make sure that I had a set amount of time getting it done.
ELIZABETH MAHLER: Well, throughout the dissertation process, the challenges
I encountered mostly had to do with fear of the unknown. But they were in a
couple of different areas. One being fear of my own capacity to be able to even
complete this kind of a daunting task. The second was fear of time and the ability
to balance my life so that I could actually do it in a reasonable time frame and
that it wouldn’t totally take up my entire life during the process.
The strategies that I used to get through it were multiple and many. Number 1
was planning and organization. I have an ability to do that, but it was definitely
taken to a whole new level so that I could work full time and complete the
dissertation within the two to three-year time frame I had given myself for that
goal.
The first thing that I had to do was make sure my office at home was organized in
a way that I could really get to my resources and not spend hours looking for
things. So I had to put my books in proper order. I purchased some rolling file
cabinets that I could designate for certain areas. I had three constructs that I was
dealing with– huge, huge constructs in my dissertation that had a lot of literature
related to each of them. So the organizing of all of my research articles and
background materials was really important to me to do.
Other organizational tools that I used was a planning calendar. I bought one of
those large calendars that you put on your desk that has no dates on it. And I
filled it in for three months at a time and put deadlines in it and days and things
that I would like to focus with on certain days and was able to use that as a
guide.
It’s not that I always met those dates. As a matter of fact, a lot of times, I didn’t.
But what it did for me was, one, gave me a sense of goal for the small steps that
I was completing along the way. But, two, it also gave me a kind of a reward
system in looking back and seeing what I had accomplished with my hour or two
I was spending on it on a daily basis. So those were really helpful kinds of
supports that I put in place.
Additionally, I put a support structure together. I had been in a cohort during my
coursework. And people were in different phases of the dissertation process, but
we tried to stay connected because it can be very isolating. So being very intentional about putting supports together, staying in touch with
people who are going through the same thing because it’s very isolating. And it
can be very lonely at times. You feel like at 10 o’clock at night or 12 o’clock at
night, you are the only one in the world actually sitting in front of a computer
doing this kind of work. And that’s not true at all. There’s a lot of us out there, so
we tried to stay in touch.
My family was very understanding. And I think when I first entered our program,
they did say this could have effects on relationships and marriages. And you
really needed to address those issues up front.
So my husband was extremely supportive. My family helped out. And when I
couldn’t host a family celebration or do something like that, they understood.
The advice that I would give to individuals who are now going through the
dissertation process is to actually trust that process, to know that there had been
systems put in place and directions that are given to us as we go through each
step of the process that are there for a reason. And they do make sense. Often,
that sense-making doesn’t come till you’re finished, but it does make sense.
And one of the things that I was told when I started out in my program was that
you would find your voice while you were working on your dissertation. And that
is really the whole point of the scholarship of the dissertation process, and that
was the goal. And truly, if you can look at it as a journey and not just a
destination, and even though it’s painful and can be lonely, it is a life-changing
experience. If you pay attention to what’s happening as you move along and
perhaps don’t rush too fast to get it completed, if that’s possible, then you will
discover the emergence of your own voice during the process. And I don’t think
there was a greater gift to me in the dissertation.
BARRY SUGARMAN: Everybody encounters problems during the dissertation. I
think mine were primarily time-related. I was working full time. I had a family with
three young children. And finding the time for that was definitely a challenge.
For the strategies that I used to overcome the time limitations that I had was to
wake up very early, get to my office hours before everyone else got there–
usually, around 6 o’clock in the morning– and I just cranked out two or three
hours of work every morning before my compatriots got to their desks, and
chugged through that for nine straight months. Another challenge that I
encountered during my dissertation was being able to pay attention to my family.
With three young children, it was definitely not an easy situation for them. They
required an awful lot of patience on the part of my wife, who played just a
tremendous role in my being able to get through all of the work and cover up the
timeAnd even though I was spending a lot of time in the morning at the office, which
was not really a drain on my family time, I would come home. There will be work
to do. There’d phone calls to make. And they just cleared the decks for me. They
did a wonderful job, and I couldn’t have done it without them.
There are a couple of pieces of advice, I think, I would offer a student who’s just
starting. I had two very good faculty members early on who gave me just very
short pieces of advice, but they really stuck with me. The first one was to pick a
topic that you can do.
And it sounds very simple, but there is an issue of scope creep that comes up in
most dissertations, which is you started off with something simple and it just gets
bigger and bigger and bigger as time progresses. So it’s you pick a topic that you
can work on, and you keep it to that topic throughout the entire time. And the way
she phrased it to me was, you can get the Nobel Prize on your next paper, but on
this first one, on your dissertation, pick a topic that you can do.
The second one was– from that second advisor– was very simple. It was put pen
to paper and write. This is before we wrote them mostly on the computer. But just
the process of putting that pen to paper, being actively involved in writing it rather
than just thinking about it, rather than just planning it, actually writing the words
stimulates the thought process, gets you going, gives you momentum, gives you
incentive. And being actively involved in that way was a big help.
Now, 15 years after I completed my dissertation, if there is one piece of advice
that would have been helpful then that I would like to impart to someone now,
this is to pick a project that you love. Going through the one year, the two years,
however long that it actually takes you to complete your dissertation, having a
project that you love that’s meaningful to you, that you think will not just change
yourself but maybe change the way you look at projects, change the way you
look at your subject matter, change, the world; but whatever it is, if it’s something
that you really love and that you want to be engaged in, it helps with resilience. It
helps get through those hours when you’d really rather be doing something else,
when you’d rather be playing with your kids, when you’ve got a project that’s due
at work, but you need to focus on this. Having that enjoyment and having that
connection to the topic, I think, carries you through those difficult times.
ARAVINDAN VEERASAMY: So some of the challenges that I faced in doing the
PhD work is choosing the right topic. Many times, if you come to PhD with no
industry experience– say, from undergraduate in my case or from master’s
straight into PhD– then you are slightly at a disadvantage because, first, you
need to identify the problem you are trying to solve, the research problem, then
finding the solution. So in my own case, it took maybe 60%, 70% of the time
finding the right topic. A related issue is, especially in the IT field, in the computing field– and this is the
second challenge that I faced– it’s a fast-changing field. And so you are seeing in
the industry, they are also very quickly solving problems as they are facing
things. And so you wonder whether it’s much better off being in the industry trying
to solve problems or staying in academia doing PhD research because, many
times, it’s just that solutions have a shelf life of, say, three to five years or so. And
then if you take three to five years in your PhD, and the solution is there for
another three to five years, you wonder whether it’s much better off being in the
industry to solve the problem and then come up with the product simultaneously.
The third one is staying motivated, keeping a high level of motivation. Many
times, you will see that it’s hard to keep going. And it’s like– one of the seniors in
my PhD would say it’s like having a midlife crisis.
Why am I doing this? Keeping a final goal in mind would always help. And at the
end, it is very worth it.
DEBORAH SEYMOUR: I encountered multiple challenges in writing my
dissertation. For one thing, the institution in which I was doing my dissertation
was a very good institution in linguistics. Actually, it was ranked fifth in the United
States at the time. But in terms of finding faculty members who were really wellversed in my particular topic, that was a little bit difficult.
And so I did find two external members. There was actually the executive director
of the entire program in which I was a student, and then there was another
faculty member. But the committee had to have at least three people on it, and
they actually preferred four. And so I had to search externally to the graduate
center in order to find other committee members.
And when you’re going to ask people to participate in your committee with whom
you’ve not studied before, you’re always taking a risk. So that was one risk that I
had to take is asking people to work with me whom I had not worked with before,
didn’t know what their standards were, didn’t know exactly what their areas of
expertise were, although I had a general idea. So that was one challenge that I
encountered.
And I was a working mom. And I was a single mom at the time. So I had three
part-time jobs, and I was putting myself through graduate school, and I had two
children. And so that alone formed a very, very big challenge in trying to
complete my dissertation.
So in order to overcome the challenges, I had to develop various different
strategies. For one thing, when I had a lot of time with my children, that was what
I was focused on. If I was thinking about my dissertation while I was with my
children, that didn’t work so well. So you really had to learn to compartmentalize
very well. But I also was very fortunate. I was working with somebody who is very wellknown in the area of linguistics that has to do with child language acquisition.
That is how children learn language. That was one of the part-time jobs I had at
the time. I was working in this person’s lab in which we were actually testing how
children learn language. And she offered me various strategies.
And one of the strategies the she offered me was what she called the one-minute
rule. So how does the one-minute rule work? Well, the one-minute rule becomes
the five-minute rule becomes the 10-minute rule.
The one-minute rule is you start by writing one minute a day. Force yourself to do
it, even if what you’re producing is garbage. But you force yourself, you time it–
60 seconds. You write one minute every single day, 365 days a year.
Once you find that you’re actually comfortable with the one-minute rule and
you’re not necessarily producing garbage or a paragraph that is useless, you
move to the five-minute rule. Produce five minutes every single day, 365 days a
year, unless you have a real problem and can’t do it on a given day for five
minutes. And then you move to 10 minutes and eventually to 20 minutes and so
forth.
And that was very, very good advice for me. So I did force myself to do that. And
eventually, I would find that I would sit down in front of the computer and two
hours would go by, and I had no idea how the time had passed. So that was a
very, very useful strategy for me.
Another strategy that the same faculty member provided me with at the time was
what she called the reward rule. And that one was also equally effective for me.
So how does the reward rule work? The reward rule works in the following way.
You sit down to write for several hours or whatever the amount of time you’ve
allotted to yourself by then happens to be. It might be 10 minutes. It might be 15
minutes. And if you’ve really gotten far along in your one-minute rule, you’re up to
three hours or so. So I would sit down to write for about three hours on a Sunday
afternoon, and at the very end, I would promise myself a reward.
Now, you can’t promise yourself a huge reward every single day of the week. So
it can’t be that you’re going to go out and buy yourself something very expensive
just for writing for three hours. But I would sit down on a Sunday afternoon at 1
o’clock and promise myself that if I managed to write for three hours, I would go
see a movie that night. And if I didn’t manage to write for three hours– no movie.
And that reward rule worked very, very well for me.
Another strategy that I used in helping myself to get through the dissertation
process was actually spending a lot of time with colleagues– multiple colleagues who are also in the midst of the dissertation process. There is nothing like peer
support. Peer support in writing the dissertation is huge.
And if you have other candidates with whom you’re familiar and you associate
with them regularly either online or by phone or in person, through support
groups, even through one-on-one conversations, that is a huge help. And you
can really support each other in what the challenges are, how you overcome
them, even how to do research on your question. If your research goes awry,
what you can do in order to fix it. All of those things. Colleagues are huge.
Well, here’s the advice that I would offer. And it actually comes from a very
different context, and not a context that had anything to do with my dissertation. I
was fortunate enough to hear the first woman general in the United States Army
once give a speech. And what she told herself to get herself to the position that
she was in was never give up.
And when she was speaking, she repeated that to the audience 11 times. “Never
give up. Never give up. Never give up.” And if you make that your mantra and
repeat that to yourself as often as you need, that’s probably the best advice you
can give yourself.
Optional Resources
American Psychological Association. (2014). Learning APA style. Retrieved from http://www.apastyle.org/learn/
Walden University. (n.d.h). Grammar. Retrieved from http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/Grammar-and-ELL.htm
Walden University. (n.d.m). Welcome to the Center for Research Quality. Retrieved from http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter
Discussion Part (3 pages)
Plan for Completing the Doctoral Study
Now that you are completing your proposed Doctoral Study Prospectus, it is appropriate to look ahead at completing the Doctoral Study itself. The entire process will be much smoother if you take time at the beginning to plan each step and consider how you will go about achieving your research plans.
By Day 4
· Post your plan for completing your Doctoral Study. In your plan, be sure to list the specific milestones and your detailed timetable for completing these milestones, Make sure to indicate when, in particular (e.g., in the evening, on weekends, etc.), you will work on your Doctoral Study. Also, comment on how you will keep your Doctoral Study committee informed of your progress. Be specific and provide examples.
· Support your Discussion with citations and specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are asked to provide a reference list for all resources, including those in the resources for this course.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.
By Day 6
Respond to at least two of your colleagues’ postings offering additional suggestions for completing their Doctoral Study or communicating with their committee.
Return to this Discussion in a few days to read the responses to your initial posting. Note any insights you have gained as a result of the comments your colleagues made.
Submission and Grading Information
Grading Criteria
To access your rubric:
Week 10 Discussion Rubric
Post by Day 4 and Respond by Day 6
To participate in this Discussion: Week 10 Discussion
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