DISSERTATION 101:
So, You’ve Completed Your Coursework, Aced Your
Exams, and Gained Topic Approval. What’s Next?
A n n e S w i t z e r, A s s i s t a n t P r o f e s s o r
Outreach & Social Sciences Librarian
switzer2@oakland.edu
S h erry Wy nn Pe rdue, D irector
Oakland University Writing Center
wynn@oakland.edu
Part I. Information Literacy
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WHAT resources do you need?
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WHERE can you find them?
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HOW do you evaluate them?
How Do You Get Started?
 Generate a research question.
 Locate sources that represent the breadth of responses to
that research question.
Research 101
• Consult your subject librarian liaison.
• Utilize library research guides and subject specific
databases.
• Learn citation searching and how to find “seminal” works.
• Examine past approved dissertations in your discipline.
How Do You Evaluate Sources?
• What are the credentials of the author(s)? Is s/he an authority?
• Does it contain accurate, reliable information?
• Is the source relevant to your dissertation topic?
• Is the source free of biased information, opinion or positional
advocacy?
• Has the source been reviewed prior to publication through peer review?
(Ulrich’s database)
Part II: Composing the Literature Review
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WHAT is (and is not) a literature review?
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HOW should you frame the literature you locate?
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How should you draft the literature review?
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WHAT role does the committee play in your project?
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WHERE is institutional support available?
Getting Started
• Do you understand the purpose and scope of a literature
review?
• Do you comprehend the difference between an abstract or
an annotation and a literature review?
• Have you examined dissertations that your chair values?
Have you (and your chair) annotated these models to
demonstrate why and how authors have succeeded?
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If your dissertation is qualitative, look for qualitative models, etc.
What is the Dissertation Literature Review?
• A professional conversation framed by a guiding concept
• A comprehensive exploration of existing scholarship on a specific topic
• “An account of what has been published on a topic by accredited
scholars. . .” (Taylor & Procter, 2001)
• An answer to a persistent question (R. Elmore, Harvard Graduate
School of Education)
A well-framed (by theme, method, chronology, etc.)
presentation of the current state of topic knowledge, which is
designed to highlight past research findings and to pave the
way for your study
Characteristics of a Dissertation Literature Review
• An introduction that shares the persistent question(s) the reviewed
literature will address and indicates how the reviewed scholarship will
be framed
• An organizational frame, which groups relevant scholarship by topic,
chronology, theoretical approach, methodology, etc. and/or a
combination of approaches
• A series of transitions organic to the discussion that indicate how
different studies approach the same issues both within individual
paragraphs and between paragraphs
Characteristics of a Dissertation Literature Review
• Evidence of how conflicting findings within the literature might be
resolved by looking at the methodology, sample size, questions asked
(and not asked), etc.
• A conclusion that clarifies how the literature demonstrates the efficacy
of the dissertation study. Does it demonstrate a gap in the literature?
Does it identify a conflict that needs resolution? In many cases the
specific research questions for the student author’s proposed study will
be shared here too
Literature Review Pitfalls: Forgetting to Frame
Failing to synthesize ideas and information from your sources into a
narrative account of what the professionals currently know with the
purpose of credentialing your study
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method, issue, etc. The literature review, however, is not an
annotated bibliography. In other words, you organize the literature
review by issues and ideas rather than by individual sources. Your
goal is to create a conversation between and among the scholars on
each important issue reviewed.
Literature Review Pitfalls: Overreliance on Quotations
Excessive quoting undermines your authority, drowns out your voice, and
creates disturbances in the narrative flow. You gain your reader’s trust by
sparingly and strategically using other people’s words.
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In most cases, you should paraphrase the material, selecting only the
portions of the original quote that you need.
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Generally when you use consecutive words from the original, you must
place quotation marks around all directly quoted material and use a
parenthetical citation that includes the page number. This advice does
not include the names of theories or tests, which are often quite long and
should be included as used in the literature.
Literature Review Pitfalls: Patching not Paraphrasing
“Patching” occurs when you insert a series of borrowed ideas and phrases; these
strings often differ only slightly if at all from the original wording, whereas
paraphrasing involves both rewording and reorganizing the original material;
“synonym swapping” is not a paraphrase. Patching is a form of plagiarism, even
if the writer provides a parenthetical citation.
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You can mediate the potential for plagiarism by taking accurate notes in your
own words, carefully noting the source and page number.
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You can ensure that the relationships between ideas and sources are clear by
using rhetorically accurate transitions. For examples, see Graff and
Birkenstein’s They say/I say: The moves that matter in academic writing
(2010).
To avoid patching, practice making this material your own. You will
need to read a great deal more material than you cite.
Literature Review Pitfalls: Cursory Overview or Biased Sample
Haphazardly collecting research on your topic.
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You must implement a specific search strategy and a culling strategy, which you can
justify to your readers.
Failing to ensure that your literature review is comprehensive because you were unaware of
the seminal studies on the topic.
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ISI Web of Science is helpful for locating such works.
Consciously choosing to omit scholarship that challenges your initial hypothesis,
methodology, etc.
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If you narrow your review to two of three pedagogical approaches or to three potential
antagonists among many, you must indicate the rationale for this decision.
Whether intentional or not, these omissions will invalidate your claims.
Further, you may find it necessary to consider this pitfall as you evaluate
other scholars’ research.
Literature Review Pitfalls: Failing to Connect
Foundational Studies to Your Project
Citing “seminal” works—studies that are most cited by others—
without demonstrating how these significant, early studies
complement, qualify, or contrast with the approach taken in your
research.
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While it is helpful to consult reviews of the literature most crucial
to your subject (because they can guide your understanding of
your own source base), it is essential to gain a firm understanding
of the foundational studies that will contribute to the argument
you make.
Everything you discuss in your literature review needs to
pave the way for your project.
Getting Started: The Source Grid
• A graphic organizer that helps you document your “talking
points,” the level one headers of your literature review
• A non-linear outline of the major topics that your literature
review will synthesize
Drafting from the Source Grid
 Read, evaluate, and group the literature by major topics or talking points,
which become the columns of the source grid.
 Draft one column at a time. In other words, compose the text like a quilt.
Each paragraph/section develops an idea rather than simply summarizes the
results of one article. While there are times that an individual study might
occupy a whole paragraph (it could be the only study on an important issue),
usually the paragraphs situate studies on similar topics in relationship to one
another using transitions that indicate the relationship between and among
the sources (similar/different method, similar/different result,
similar/different explanation of a problem, etc.)
Caution: Never compose a draft without including an citation for each
source as you go. For a sad example of what can happen when this advice is
neglected, listen to this story about Pulitzer Prize winning historian Steven
Ambrose.
Example One
Unwilling to equate research and legitimacy with quantitative methods,
some compositionists employed qualitative methods in the late 1970s and
early 1980s: Donald Graves (1979) used case studies, Linda Flower and
John Hayes (1981) turned to speak-aloud protocols, Shirley Brice Heath
(1983) explored community literacy via ethnography, and Nancie Atwell
(1987) advocated reflective practice. Increased qualitative scholarship was
not the only factor contributing to the methodological debate, however.
These new practices reflected the emergence of identity politics and the
growing influence of poststructuralism in academe (Smagorinsky, 12). The
works of Derrida, Foucault, DeMan, and Bakhtin, founded on semiotics and
poststructuralist theory, encouraged English literature and composition
scholars to resist what they claimed as the objectivism in data-driven
research. While critics rightfully argued that the method should fit the
question and the audience, many advanced an implicit (later explicit)
assumption that social science methods were not adequate to the task.
Example Two
In addition to the above studies on dissertator difficulties, the Carnegie Foundation’s
Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) has yielded essay collections like Envisioning the
future of doctoral education (Golde & Walker, 2006) and The formation of scholars (Walker et
al., 2008). Both acknowledge how dissertators struggle. These volumes echo criticisms from
previous decades, particularly those made by Koefod (1964), of how graduate education
shortchanges dissertation writers. Although these volumes make salient critiques and offer
nuanced suggestions about reform, the 2006 volume’s discussion of the “dissertation
problem” was primarily limited to 1) the loneliness Madsen (1992) addressed and 2) the
increasing pressure to publish while in graduate school (Golde & Walker, 2006, p. 352). The
2008 volume, however, leveraged critiques of “poorly written, poorly conceptualized, and
poorly executed dissertations,” sometimes attributed to doctoral supervision by researchers
like Lovitts (2007), and it examined laments that too often dissertations “lie mouldering in
their library graves” (Tronsgard, 1963, p. 493, as cited in Walker et al., 2008). In response,
its authors addressed ways to combat attrition at the dissertation stage, such as integrative
dissertations—dissertations that are not subject to the less structured problems that Katz
(1997) addressed. They cite dissertations composed in the University of Michigan’s
Chemistry program, which consist of research projects done in conjunction with their faculty
members. In sum, this volume addresses more timely critiques and begins in a tangible way
to discuss the potential of the collaborative dissertation that some see as the future of the
dissertation for certain disciplines.
Drafting and Integrating the Parts
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To mediate distractions, Sherry finds it helpful to open a separate document for
each talking point into which I paste its grid material. If a good idea for a
different part of the paper intrudes on my process, I quickly click on that
document and record the idea before returning to the issue on which I am
currently writing.
Continue to draft new talking points and redraft previously composed talking
points until you have good fragments (quilting squares) of the paper’s body.
Once you have the parts, you need to examine them in relationship to one
another to determine which talking points must come first.
After you determine the order of information within the body of the review, it is
time to insert and refine your transitions.
After composing the body, draft the introduction and the conclusion. Caution:
It is never a good idea to draft these before you know how the literature will
come together.
Committee Concerns: Your Chair
• With whom do you work best? Under what circumstances have you
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worked with this person in the past?
Is s/he good at meeting deadlines and responding to questions and
submitted work? Will s/he read each chapter in a timely manner
and offer feedback on higher order concerns?
Does this faculty member understand and appreciate your research
question and your methodology?
Will s/he work well with the rest of the committee?
Will s/he agree to let you seek guidance from members of the
committee before your proposal defense?
Is s/he in a position to be both your coach and your buffer, as
needed?
Will s/he provide you a model from which to follow?
Committee Concerns: Members
• Do potential members know you, your work, and your chair?
• Will each potential committee member’s expertise complement your
project?
• Can those you select work well with and defer to your chair?
• Will they meet with you to offer guidance before you draft the
proposal?
Time Management
• Develop a timetable that breaks down the dissertation into
a series of manageable weekly tasks.
• Start the process early!
• Leave plenty of time for rewrites and edits.
• Request feedback as you go, rather than waiting until a
chapter is done.
When Should You Schedule a Writing Consultation?
• After the research consultation (but before you start writing) to make a
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plan and review the project specifications
After you have located and started reading your sources to discuss
potential talking points/headers for a source grid
After you have created a source grid to explore potential ways to situate
the issues within each major topic
Once you have drafted a section of the paper
Whenever you need help with documentation
Once you have a solid working draft, etc.
Anytime you get stuck or need a second set of eyes
Selected References
Elmore, R. Some guidance on doing a literature review. Retrieved on
January 15, 2010 from
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/library/services/research_instruction/el
more_lit_review.pdf
Graff, G. & Birkenstein, C. (2006).They say/I say: The moves that matter
in academic writing. New York: W.W. Norton.
Taylor, D. & Procter, M. (2001). The literature review: A few tips on
conducting it. Retrieved January 4, 2010 from:
http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html
University of Washington Psychology Writing Center. (2004). Writing a
psychology literature review. Retrieved January 15, 2010 from
http://depts.washington.edu/psywc/handouts/pdf/litrev.pdf
Thank You!
Anne and Sherry appreciate the opportunity to speak
with you about this high stakes manuscript. Please feel
free to schedule a Research Consultation or a Writing
Consultation for assistance at any stage of the research
and writing process as you move forward.