Writing Dissertations and Theses in Psychology

A Student’s Guide for Success

Stephen Haynes, John Hunsley, Stephen N. Haynes, John D. Hunsley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367855932
• eBook ISBN: 9781000292633
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Education in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This accessible guide equips students to succeed in their master's thesis or doctoral dissertation in psychology. The authors provide concrete assistance to the myriad tasks and requirements that students will encounter as they plan, conduct, and present their dissertation or thesis research.

Drawing upon their many years of experience in working with graduate students, the authors address the multiple stages of the dissertation and thesis process. They take you through drafting the proposal, the advisor-advisee relationship, interacting with committee members, the writing process, handling obstacles, and the final presentation. Chapters provide guidance on using a research team, collecting data, conducting a literature review, and even acquiring financial support. Finally, students will find additional resources such as practical information on copyright issues, research methods, case analyses, and teleconferencing.

This is an essential book for both graduate psychology students working on their master's theses or doctoral dissertations and their advisors.

1 Introduction

A Student’s Guide for Success

Introduction

If you are reading these words, chances are very high that you are enrolled in a graduate program in psychology. Congratulations! As you well know, admission to graduate psychology programs is very competitive and requires a very strong background in psychology. However, now that you are actually in a graduate program, the reality of the program’s demands may be sinking in. Our goal is to help you succeed with one of the major components of the program: the research project(s) you will complete as a thesis or dissertation.

Many students are worried and intimidated by the idea of completing a thesis/dissertation. This is a normal reaction when faced with a largely unknown challenge. In this Guide, we aim to make the challenge a known quantity for you by presenting recommendations for initiating, designing, writing, refining, conducting, completing, and presenting a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation in psychology. We hope that this Guide will help you to overcome hurdles you may encounter along the way, develop your research and writing skills, and allow your creative abilities to be used. If you are able to do all of this, you might even find yourself enjoying the process of working on your research project.

Master’s Theses versus Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout this book, in the service of parsimony, we often refer to doctoral dissertations, but most of the guidelines are also relevant to master’s theses. Theses and dissertations are similar in structure and content, and in their adherence to the basic principles of scientific inquiry, ethics, and communication. They often differ in the degree to which they are conducted independently by the student or are mostly based on the ideas and work of the dissertation advisor. They sometimes differ in their degree of complexity, length, and function within the student’s program or university, and in the number and composition of committee members.

Often, a master’s thesis provides a student in his or her first few years of graduate training with the background, research experience, and time management skills that enlighten and influence the goals and methods of a subsequent dissertation. The experience of writing a master’s thesis teaches students to apply the critical thinking and scientific methods they have been exposed to in their courses. PhD, PsyD, and EdD dissertations allow the students to demonstrate those skills within an independent research project. Dissertations often reflect the professional and academic interests of the student and inform prospective employers about the student’s critical thinking skills, communication abilities, aptitude for research, and interests.

Terms Used in This Guide

We understand that students can have multiple advisors. Sometimes a dissertation advisor is different from the student’s “major advisor.” For example, a student in a clinical, counseling, or school psychology program could pursue a dissertation in cognitive neuroscience, community psychology, or social psychology. In that case, the dissertation advisor could be a scholar from that academic discipline, whereas the student’s major advisor would continue to be from the student’s original program. In this Guide, we will use the term “advisor” to refer to the dissertation or thesis advisor.

Background and Preparation for Completing a Thesis or Dissertation

When you begin work on a thesis or dissertation, you already have the intellectual abilities, academic background and skills, stress tolerance, motivation, and perseverance to successfully complete it. You are smart, have worked hard and overcome distracting temptations and barriers, were originally selected from many qualified applicants for graduate school who wanted to be in your current position, and successfully completed many graduate-level courses. In the case of a dissertation, you are now engaging in one of the last endeavors leading to an advanced degree in psychology. Soon, you will enter into the real world of research, professional service provision, academics, or all of these career options.

You have also taken many undergraduate and graduate courses that provide you with the scholarly background and the conceptual and methodological foundations of your dissertation. You probably have an advisor, the most important resource in the dissertation process (we discuss the process of selecting an advisor, and changing advisors, in Chapter 2). As you will see, we emphasize the importance of your interactions with your advisor and provide numerous suggestions for how you can make them both positive and productive.

About the Authors

This Guide is based on our experiences serving as advisors, committee members, and consultants on more than 100 dissertations and theses at multiple universities. Additionally, we have talked with many colleagues who have served as thesis and dissertation advisors and have incorporated suggestions from former advisees and others who have successfully completed their dissertations and are now active professionals and scholars.

While serving as the director of clinical studies (five times in three universities) and a psychology department chair, we have also heard about many positive and negative experiences encountered by students during the dissertation process. In addition, we also completed our own dissertations, although we probably failed to follow many of the guidelines we will present, as there were no helpful guidelines when we conducted our doctoral dissertations a few decades ago.

This Guide is also influenced by our roles as authors and editors of several academic books in psychology and as editors, associate editors, consulting editors, and reviewers for many psychology and mental health journals. We have reviewed thousands of journal manuscripts and chapter submissions, and aspects of this Guide are meant to prevent some of the more common errors that we have observed in these documents.

Guideline Coverage and Caveats

What We Do Not Cover in This Guide

We presume that you already have an excellent background in your field. Consequently, this Guide does not cover essential knowledge in research methodology, such as research design and statistics, to which most students have already been exposed by the time they reach the thesis or dissertation level. The guidelines we present in this book are a distillation of concepts and methods that are important in the development of a dissertation. Because we trust your training and expertise, we will only infrequently discuss research designs, statistics, measurement principles, specific research procedures, and research ethics. However, we do provide a list of recommended readings in Resources at the end of each chapter.

We also presume that you have a good understanding of your psychological content area, whether it is in an applied/professional realm such as clinical, counselling, or school psychology, or in a “basic” realm such as cognitive, developmental, neuroscience, or social psychology. One premise of this Guide is that you have a fundamental understanding of the conceptual foundations in your area of study and are broadly familiar with the literature in your area of psychology. In this book, we focus on recommendations for implementing your knowledge so that you can initiate, conduct, and complete your dissertation efficiently, effectively, eloquently, with minimal stress, and as enthusiastically and enjoyably as possible.

As you may already noticed, we promote the “enjoyment” aspect of theses and dissertations. You have selected a program, area of study, and topic that you have already found interesting. Perhaps you can see yourself pursuing this area and topic after graduation. Use the thesis and dissertation to explore the area in greater depth, read extensively (however, see our later admonitions to avoid distracting endeavors), consider alternative methods and theories, and the implications of your work. Enjoy the process!

Caveats to This Guide

There are always caveats, limitations, and complexities associated with any set of dissertation guidelines. For example, there are important differences in expectations across advisors and dissertation committees. Similarly, there are important differences in requirements across universities, psychology departments, and the programs and concentrations within the departments. This means you should be discriminating and selective in following the guidelines presented in this book. This leads directly to a recommendation that we will repeat many times: Check often with your advisor and inquire about the dissertation requirements of your advisor, department, program, and university before proceeding. Once you have done this, you can focus on the aspects we describe that are appropriate for your context.

We will often caution you that your advisor may approach theses and dissertations differently than we do. In such a case, always, always, defer to your advisor! Although you might be able to use the suggestions we provide to engage your advisor in conversations about how you would like to conduct your dissertation work, we encourage you not to use this Guide to object to, hesitate from following, or redirect your advisor’s advice. For example, one way in which this Guide can differ from those emphasized by your advisor is that we promote dissertations that are of “publishable quality.” This is an aspect of dissertation work that is not necessarily important to all advisors or departments. Asking about this goal within the context of your research supervision is certainly appropriate, but be sure that you follow the recommendations about “publishable quality” given to you by your advisor.

Each of the chapters in this guide focuses on an important aspect of the dissertation. The following chapters focus on how to select and communicate with your advisor (Chapter 2), select and communicate with your dissertation committee (Chapter 3), develop the focus and methods for your dissertation (Chapter 4), conduct and organize your literature review (Chapter 5), write competently and efficiently (Chapter 6), organize your dissertation (Chapter 7), move your dissertation along (Chapter 8), submit drafts to your advisor (Chapter 9), follow basic principles of research methods (Chapter 10), get your research approved by institutional research boards (Chapter 11), prepare and present sections of your dissertation (Chapter 12), and present your dissertation to your committee (Chapter 13).

Summary and Recommendations

This chapter provides an introduction to our guide for success with your thesis/dissertation and an outline of the key topics that will be covered in subsequent chapters. Important points and recommendations include:

• Master’s theses and doctoral dissertations can differ in several ways. With the thesis, students develop skills in critical thinking, learn how to use scientific methods, and become familiar with a specific area of study. A student demonstrates these qualities at an enhanced level when working on a PhD, PsyD, or EdD dissertation.

• Dissertations often inform prospective employers about the student’s critical thinking skills, communication abilities, aptitudes for research, and interests.

• Students already have the intellectual abilities, academic background and skills, stress tolerance, motivation, and perseverance to successfully complete a thesis or dissertation. Our guidelines are intended to assist you in timely completion of this work, with as little stress and as much enjoyment as possible.

• This Guide does not cover in detail essential content-related knowledge areas and methodology, such as research design and statistics, measurement theory, and specific content areas, which are well covered in the coursework in most graduate programs.

• Throughout the book we will recommend strategies for implementing the knowledge and skills that you have developed in graduate school so that you can complete your dissertation efficiently, effectively, eloquently, with minimal stress, and with maximum enjoyment.

• If your advisor approaches theses and dissertations differently than we do, defer to your advisor!

• Enjoy the process!

Resources

Research on Dissertations

Vidair, H. B., Kobernick, C. L., Rosenfield, N. D., Gustafson, P. L., & Feindler, E. L. (2019). A systematic review of research on dissertations in health service psychology programs. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 13, 287–299.

Dissertation Guidelines, Advice, and Recommendations

Books and Chapters

Bell, D. J., Foster, S. L., & Cone, J. D. (2020). Dissertations and theses from s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• About the Authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: A Student’s Guide for Success
• 2 Your Dissertation Advisor
• 3 Your Dissertation Committee
• 4 Developing the Focus and Methods for Your Dissertation
• 5 How to Conduct and Organize Your Literature Review
• 6 How to Write Your Dissertation Competently and Efficiently
• 7 Strategies for Organizing Your Dissertation
• 8 Moving Your Research Along: Pilot Studies, Research Teams, Initial Data Collection, Funding, and Getting Unstuck
• 9 Submitting Drafts to Your Dissertation Advisor and Responding to Feedback
• 10 Principles of Dissertation Research Methods
• 11 Getting Your Dissertation Research Approved by Institutional Review Boards
• 12 Preparing and Presenting Written Sections of Your Dissertation to Your Advisor and Committee
• 13 Presenting Your Proposal and Your Dissertation to Your Committee
• Index