Before you start

Set up your technological and intellectual environment. You should have taken all the steps below before you even contact a potential supervisor for the first time. This section deals with the technical, the next with the intellectual. But first, here is where you can start looking for a bursary. And here is Vera Chan's PhD Coffee Time - probably the most comprehensive set of videos about just about every aspect of the doctoral process.

Set up your technological environment. You need good software for word processing, reference management, data processing. backup, and communications.  You need to use all their features from the start.  You need to be fluent in the following before you write your first page:  

1. Word processing: Chose between MS Word, OpenOffice, Google Docs , or, if you are an IT geek, Texmaker. Learn how to create a table of contents, and a list of tables and a list of figures  automatically! And if you have already started without styles, here is how you can use search and replace to generate a Table of Contents from styles.

2. Reference management: Chose between Mendeley or Zotero. Here is the first of three videos by Dr Chris Copeland about How to use Mendeley. Watch all three. Convert your existing hand-made bibliographes to BibTex with Anystyle import into Mendeley or Zotero.

3. Data Processing: If you are going to use statistics in your research you need to consider SPSS and RStudio, but there are many top-rated free programs. See this list from Predictive Analytics Today. If you are going to analyze people's stories, then I recommend AtlasTI. 

4. Backup and Communications. Install Dropbox  on your computer and your mobile device and make sure it syncs your work every time you save. Here is how to use Dropbox. I use a whole lot of Google applications. Gmail for communication, Google drive to store my documents, Blogspot to post ideas, and of course Google Sites for static information. 

Enter the field

Set up your intellectual environment. The purpose of the doctorate is not to solve a practical problem, but to contribute to our knowledge of the field by solving an intellectual puzzle. To find out which puzzle to solve you need to have a thorough knowledge of the field and the players in the field.

1. Get introduced to the field. Enter your topic into https://www.connectedpapers.com/ and see the map of all the papers in your field. Then go to Wikipedia. Do not listen to the snobs who say you shouldn't. It's how you use it that matters.  You begin by reading the article on the topic of your choice.  If it is completely strange and hard to understand, then you cannot do your doctorate in that field. Then, if you feel that you are so familiar with the contents that you could have written it yourself, you proceed. Now click on the "Talk" tab at the top of the article, and read the comments made by the various participants in the article.  It is here where you will start finding the issues that may or may not be worth researching.  What debates are going on there.

2. Find out who's who in the field. Take note of the authors who commented on the Wikipedia article. Then scroll down to the reference section of the article itself and make a list of all the authors cited.  Now download Harzing's Publish or perish and check the "H Score" of each author.  Make a list of these authors and sort them according to this score. Now take the top five authors and for each, determine which are the top-scoring journals in which they publish. Now, when you have the top five authors, and the top five journals, identify the top five articles published by each of the top five authors, and identify the top five articles published in each of the top five journals. Now copy the keywords of all these articles into a spreadsheet. Sort them alphabetically and determine the five most popular keywords. You may want to draw a graph of these.  Now take the abstracts of all the articles and paste them into a word cloud generator such as WordSift. The resultant word cloud will give you a good initial view the key concepts of your field.

3. Ask the right questions. One of the most common mistakes made by doctoral candidates is to ask their potential supervisors for a topic.  Otherwise, their initial research questions are ones to which we already have the answers.  Check to ensure that you do not fall into the second category by typing your own research question, as you formulated it, into Google and see how many times your question (and its answer) actually appear.  A good research question is one that is both relevant and unique.  To find one you need to know what other people have asked (i.e. relevant) and what other people have not asked yet (i.e. unique). To do that you need to analyze the articles that you have identified even further.  Make a table. In the first column, put the full citation of the article. in the next column, put the keywords, then the main research question, followed by the answer to that research question, and finally the author's recommendation for further research. Now cluster the questions together around common themes, and arrange them in the order in which they appeal to you.

4. Meet your heroes. Register with Academia.edu, Researchgate.net and Google Scholar. Follow the key authors that you have identified. Get to know who else is following them and get to know whom they follow. Find out which conferences they attend and what keynote addresses they have delivered. Visit their websites, and generally form a picture of the people whose work you follow. 

5. Be Ethical An important section of your proposal will deal with the ethics. Although the ethics statement is usually at the end you should consider the ethics first.  Watch this movie from the University of Leiden, which is a brilliant exposition of ethics: "On being a scientist". 

6. Begin with the end in mind: Now you need a reference model towards which to work.  Find a thesis that will serve as a model for yours. An excellent point of departure is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. You may want to start by browsing their prize-winning dissertations before searching for theses or dissertations with similar themes,  philosophical departures or methodologies to yours.

7. Finally check out what you should have done within the FIRST HUNDRED DAYS and The start and the middle of your PhD.

Search before Re-search

Both the English word research and the German word Nachforschung mean 'to search again'. So before you can do research, you first have to search... the literature. Now that you have an idea of who the key people in the field is, and what the potentially necessary and unique problems are, you start with...

The literature review

For research and masters' and doctoral level the aim of the literature is threefold:

• To remind the readers of what we already know.  NOT to try and teach them

• To tell what it is that we don't know and why it is important to find out

• To let them know where and how we should be looking for the answers

A good literature survey can be published as a research article on its own. Thus, it follows the same basic structure as any other piece of research. Here is a nice pre-print of an article by Pickering and Byrne, explaining how to do it. And HERE is the definitive PRISMA STATEMENT of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses.

First you have to find the literature. Here are a number of good places to start looking. Google Scholar is probably the easiest place to start looking, particularly if you are not yet registered with a university. If you are constantly frustrated by articles behind paywalls, then Core is the "world's largest collection of open access research papers", and Science Open contains 70 Million open access publications. Here is a really nice blog that shows how to use it. Your university library subscribes to numerous scientific databases and there is always a kind librarian who will show you how to use them, like Ms Zandile Mboneni explains how to use the CPUT databases.

Here is a list of the top 15 Educational Search Engines (Yes Google Scholar is not the only one)

To ensure you stay on the right track, use this anonymous checklist of differences between a good and a poor literature review. 

Part one - Analysis

To do a systematic literature review you need software that analyses textual data. I recommend ATLAS.ti. 

The purpose of the analysis is to classify the literature into categories and to show the links between them.

Part two: Learn to write

One of the main problems with academic research is that many of us are researchers first and writers second. We struggle with using the correct word or form of the word. We find it hard to formulate simple sentences, and construct paragraphs, and we hare real problems sequencing our information. Before you go further, work through this excellent free online Effective Writing Practices Tutorial of Northern Illinois University, and do al the self-tests. Then Learn how to write a paragraph! Finally, watch the three short videos below in which I show how you make a precis of a paragraph to keep your literature survey short, how to organize your paragraphs using a branching tree diagram, how to structure your academic writing like a proof in Geometry and how to generate a literature survey using those tables you made in the beginning.  Finally, learn how to write an introduction.

Part three: Write the thing

Read Justus Randolph's Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review. Watch Dr Lilia Sevillano of Massey University on Defining, Organising and Writing the literature review.

Then take a look at a few literature surveys, some from theses, and some that have actually been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Here is one by Mary Reynolds.  Look how well she describes how she found her sources. The link takes you to Chapter 1, the introduction, as well as to Chapter 2, the literature survey. See how they are linked.

This literature survey by Anne Strehler has an exemplary introduction, in which she explains why the literature survey is done, how it is organized, and then how the literature was obtained.  You may want to read these two literature surveys critically and run them through the rubric that you have designed as a part of the exercise in the text box above.

Here are some examples of literature surveys that have actually been published in peer refereed journals:

• Muirhead, B., & Juwah, C. (2004). Interactivity in computer-mediated college and university education: A recent review of the literature. Educational Technology &Society, 7 (1), 12-20.

• Tsai, C.-C., Chuang, S.-C., Liang, J.-C., & Tsai, M.-J. (2011). Self-efficacy in Internet-based Learning Environments: A Literature Review. Educational Technology & Society, 14 (4), 222–240. 

• Cheng, B., Wang, M., Mørch, A., & Chen, N.-S. (2014). Research on E-Learning in the Workplace 2000-2012: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature. Educational Research Review, 11, 56–72. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2014.01.001

The following document provides a brief outline of the "Structure of a literature survey".

The Proposal

The proposal is your fist stab at discovering the field. The proposal says why the research should be done, and how you plan to do it. It explains the value of the research. The first thing to do in the development of the proposal is to show that this research will be both necessary and unique. You explain what we already know, and where our existing knowledge breaks down.  Then you say how you plan to find it out and how you will ensure you don't harm anyone in the process. Finally you say what the benefit will be to all.

Introduction:  The word introduce means "to lead into". That's what your introduction does. It tells us why we should read this document. Do NOT start with giving background information. That comes second, and tells us why we should be doing this research. The first paragraph of the introduction should describe the entire proposal in four or five sentences. Amanda Wolf presents a very nice four sentence structure, while Dr Lucia Thesen of the University of Cape Town suggests using The Academic Fairy Tale. The proposal is the promise of the thesis, so we just need to make a small adaptation to the format and say:

1. Once upon a time researchers believed that...and many still do.  (The literature review)

2. But I think that maybe... (The hypothesis or problem statement)

3. So I am going to... (The method)

4. And I hope to find...(The findings and conclusions)

5. Which will change the way in which we...(The recommendations)

These five statements make the opening paragraph of your proposal (Although you may drop the "Once upon a time" and start with "Researchers believe that..."

Here is the late Prof Chris Kapp's "Formula" for a gripping introduction:

Opening Moves: This is the hook to get your reader interested. You could use a general statement that would be a "catch all", you could use an anecdote or describe an event - people love a good story. You could use statistics, quotations or provocative facts.

Common ground: Here you present the context in a way that will resonate with the reader. Show why this research is relevant and significant. Describe the current status of the problem. Discuss previous studies and show their benefits, but specifically also their limitations and omissions. Explain where your research fits into the current body of literature.

Disruption: Now it is your turn. Explain what does not work. (On the other hand...). Show gaps, inconsistencies or misunderstandings in previous research. Finally show the cost of leaving the matter unresolved, or the benefit of the solution.

Resolution: Present YOUR response to the problem What is the purpose of your research and how will it differ from others. Indicate your research methods, clarify concepts and give an indication of what is to follow.

Research problem: The research problem is the Intellectual puzzle of your study. The research problem is a knowledge problem.  We don't know something. That usually results in a practical problem - something is not working, which leads to a personal problem - you experience some form of discomfort, or you see an opportunity to fix or improve the situation. The best type of research problem is one that comes straight out of the literature, which is why you did the literature survey in the first place. To ensure that you formulate the research problem properly, read  Ellis, T. J., & Levy, Y. (2008). Framework of Problem-Based Research : A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 11. They recommend the following format. 

1. What: In no more than two sentences, what is the problem that the research will address? Remember, a problem is, essentially, something that is ‘going wrong’. Who: List three current, peer-reviewed references that support the presence of that problem and briefly describe the nature of that support.

2. How, Where, and When: Again, in no more than two sentences, describe the impact of the problem. How are people or researchers’ understanding negatively impacted by the problem? When and where is the problem evident? Who: List three current, peer-reviewed references that support the impact of the problem that the research proposes addressing and briefly describe the nature of that support.

3. Why: In no more than two sentences, identify the conceptual basis for the problem. That is, what does the literature outline as the cause of the problem? Who: List three current, peer-reviewed references that support the conceptual basis of the problem and briefly describe the nature of that support.  (Ellis & Levy, 2008, p. 28)

Aim, research questions, and objectives: The aim of the research is to solve the problem. To achieve the aim you need to answer the research questions. Each question has the objective of obtaining some kind of information. The questions are derived directly from the aims. The online programme uses a very specific model to design research questions. The model is called The ABC instant research question generator. Please read the whole article before continuing. 

For the sake of this programme we limit ourselves to four research aims only, to Explore, Explain, Develop or to Describe.

In in mapping your research questions to your research aims you first need to ask if your answer is likely to be Yes/No, or It depends - in other words, is your research going to be objective or subjective? Then you need to decide if you want to work with abstract, theoretical concepts, or with concrete rules. 

From the diagram above you can see that if you are working with abstract concepts and your answer will be "It depends" then you are exploring - because you are looking subjectively at various implications of those concepts. On the other hand if you are working with abstract concepts and your answer will be yes/or no, then you are describing exactly when the answer to the concept is yes, and when it is no. On the other hand, if you are working with concrete rules and you know that the rules depend on the circumstances, then you are explaining a situation. If you have concrete rules and your answer is yes, the rule applies, or no, the rule does not apply, then you are developing a system or a policy.

We can now assign two questions to each aim.  We can also assign an objective to each question. If you explore, then your questions are what and how.  The objective of a what question is to obtain a list of things. The objective of a how question is to uncover a process or a relationship. So, if our aim is to explore we want to see what there is, and how it works.  If you explain then your questions are how and why. Again the objective of how is to uncover the process, and the objective of why is to understand the process. In that way you get to an explanation. If you develop then you still want to understand why the process works, but you also want to know when it works and when it doesn't. The objective of the when question is to determine the condition under which the rules apply. Finally if you want to describe, you want to know when a certain effect occurs, and you also want to know what those effects are.

Literature review: Now that you are this far into the proposal, the literature review that you have already written comes in here.

Design, methodology and ethics. During your literature survey you will have refined your research aim and your research questions. You will also have developed appropriate sub-questions. It is now necessary for you to develop an appropriate research design. This document describes it in great detail.  Research design is the overall strategy that you will use to bring all the components of your study together. The University of Southern California presents a really nice discussion of seventeen search designs. For each type they give a statement of definition and purpose, what these studies tell you, and what they don't tell you. It is certainly worth reading through them to get ideas of what you could do.

The design you select could mean that you would do your research in a laboratory, an office, or in the field. You would also have to decide if you plan to develop an intervention of some kind or not. An example of an intervention would be lesson you teach before testing its results. The lesson would be the intervention, and the learners' performance and opinions would be the data. Alternatively the intervention could be a product you design, build and test. The product would be the intervention, and what you leant during building the product, and/or what you learnt while testing it on users would be the data. The design of the intervention and and instruments will be discussed later.

A methodology is a considered set of methods. Methods are divided into quantitative or numeric, qualitative or narrative, and mixed methods, which, as the name implies, is a combination of the two. In deciding what you are actually going to do for your research project you need to get a good overview of the rich diversity of methods at your disposal. An excellent online point of departure is the Web Center for Social Research Methods by Prof William M.K. Trochim.   Another useful online text book is Dr Christopher L. Heffner's Research Methods, for students in education, psychology and the social sciences. For students from Africa, in particular, but also for everyone else.

In the design fields, including Interaction Design, Experience Design, Instructional Design and Learning Design there is much emphasis on methodologies that involve the development of some tangible outcome. 

At masters' or doctoral level we no longer have to supply definitions of these when we write. The critical readers and examiners have doctorates themselves. They know what they are.  Instead the rhythm of reporting is:

• I did the following...

• Because I wanted to achieve the following...

• As is recommended in the literature by this author...

And then, if you like, you can say why you did not do any of the other popular methods.

Here is some good advice about quantitative research questions.

Ethics are about containing any harm that could come from your study. It is not good enough to fill in the ethics checklist and say that you will get ethics clearance. You need to show that you have thought carefully about what harm may come to your participants, and how you will mitigate it. Here is a very useful summary of ethical considerations by Deborah Smith. Of particular value is the APA's Code of Ethics. Many people conduct research with their own students. This is tricky.   Here are two good sets of guidelines from Canada.

• MacLean, M.,&Poole,G. (2010). An introduction to ethical considerationsfor novices to research in teaching and learning in Canada. The Canadian Journalforthe Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(2). Retrieved 25 May 2021 from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1073593.pdf

• Al-Hinai I. (2018) Teachers Doing Research with Their Own Students: A Blessing or a Curse?. In: Al-Mahrooqi R., Denman C. (eds) English Education in Oman. English Language Education, vol 15. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0265-7_5

Over and above the ethical considerations there may also be regulatory and legal issues that you will have to consider. You need to obtain permission from management if you are going to research an institution, and, of course, some things that you might want to research may simply be illegal.

Logistics: In this section you will discuss timelines and budget. Use a gant chart for the  timeline and a table to indicate the budget. Even if you will pay for it yourself the committee would want to know if you have done a reasonable costing.

Delineation, Outcomes, Contribution and Significance: Here, firstly, you say what you are NOT going to do.  You might limit your research to one specific population only, etc. Then explain what the implications of the delineation is - what will you not be able to claim at the end. 

Now show what your results might look like.  Will you come up with a table indicating differences and similarities? Will you have a graph indicating correlations?

Under contribution we want to know what we will know at the end of your study that we do not know already.  You will notice that this is pretty much a repetition of some of the elements of the introduction.

The significance of the study is an indication of what will be different for us once your study has been completed.

Outline of Chapters: In the form of a table, show what will be said in each chapter.  Remember to use the type of summary that is shown in the "Learn to write" section of this site. Don't just say what the chapter will be about - give an actual summary of its contents.

References will include the references of your literature survey as well as the references you use in the research methodology section.

Glossary Here you will give a brief definition of all the subject-specific terms you will use.

Here is a video by Dr Shady Attia about assessing your research ideas. There are also some useful documents in the link below the video.  

Finally read these Guidelines for preparing a dissertation proposal by arguably the most respected team of researchers in the field of educational design research, Jan Herrington, Sue McKenny, Tom Reeves and Ron Oliver.

Here is a link to Prof Tjeerd Plomp and Nienke Niveen's booklet on Educational Design Research from which the table below is taken. The table describes what happens in each phase of design research.

Data collection

Regardless of whether you have conducted an intervention, or whether you are conducting a survey it is necessary for you to develop instruments to obtain data. To do so you have to select your data sources, develop data collection instruments (or select existing ones), collect the data, process it, analyze it, and interpret it.

For fear of re-inventing the wheel, I refer you again to Dr Trochim's  Web Center for Social Research Methods. There you will learn about the whole process of sampling, data collection, cleaning, validating, etc.  However, there are shortcuts.  Some institutions want to know things so badly that they will give their data away for free. One such intuition is the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

Data collection instruments include log sheets, rubrics or check lists, interview and focus group protocols and questionnaires.  Here are some useful links:

• • Log sheets: Mindtools.com have a nice page about activity logs, that you can use as a point of departure

  • Rubrics: Duke university have a simple guide for developing rubrics.

  • Interviews:

    • Jacob, S. A., & Furgerson, S. P. (2012). Writing interview protocols and conducting interviews: Tips for students new to the field of qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 17(T&L Art, 6), 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR17/jacob.pdf

    • Here is collection of interview tips and templates from Cleverism.

  • Focus groups:

    •  Here is a set of Guidelines for conducting a focus group from Duke University.

    •  Professor Glenn Blank, emeritus of Lehigh provides this resource for conducting a focus group.

    • Here is an example video of a bad and good focus group from UBC Learn

  •  Questionnaires:

    •  WikiHow's How to develop a questionnaire for research: 7 steps is a good start.

    •  About.com have two interesting pages on Constructing a questionnaire and on multiple-choice questions.

    •  Eiselen & Uys of the University of Johannesburg provide this very comprehensive overview of Questionnaire design

  • Online surveys:  Apart from Google Forms there are a number of good, free online survey tools. Here is a list of 10 from Getapp

Data processing

Many data collection tools, such as Google Forms or MS Forms write their data to a spreadsheet, which means that the spreadsheet is probably your best tool for initial data processing. Here is a video by TrixieMay Racer showing you how.

Here is Predictive Data Analytics Today's Top 19 Free qualitative data analysis software

And here is the Top 10 Free statistical software recommended by Goodfirms

Processing Quantitative Data

Writing it up

Prof Pat Thomson says you can do it in just five minutes a day!

Here is a free PhD writing template and a database with every tip and template you will ever need.

There is no excuse for taking too long with the thesis. Once the data is in, the exciting stuff starts.

Start with an executive summary in the form of Dr Lucia Thesen's story. Complete these sentences.

The thesis as a story

• Once upon a time researchers believed that …………………….. (literature review).

• But then I thought that maybe ……………………… (aims),

• so, what I did was ………………………………………… (method),

• and I've discovered that …………………………. (findings),

• which changed the way we …………………. (contribution to knowledge).

Thesis writing in general

Check out this very useful slideshow by Dr Shawn E Nordell on How to write your Dissertation/Thesis on 30 minutes a day.

Then check out this AMAZING collection about Writing Your Thesis

Kim Thomas provides the following 15 top tips for finishing your PhD thesis.

And here are Herber Lui's Four basic writing principles you can use in everyday life.

Information organizers: Graphics and Tables

One of the most important skills to learn in writing a thesis is how to "take your reader along with you". Graphics are very useful in this respect. Digital inspiration provide this chart to find the right chart for your data.

Also, be careful when interpreting your data that you do not fall prey to these errors of logic.

The structure

People often wonder if you should use past, present or future tense.  Here is the answer.

So, to contextualize your chapter, check out the logic of a thesis.

Also take a look at these 25 tips for doctoral students.

 Then break out the word processor and write

• • Chapter 4

The first chapter that you will finish completely is Chapter 4 - the Findings. But before you start on the chapter, it is very useful to gather your thoughts by writing an academic paper about your single most important finding. Think of the paper as a micro-thesis. So, ask yourself, if someone on the bus were to ask you "so what did you find in your research?" what would you answer?  That is the topic of your paper.

Here are the outlines of the other chapters in the sequence as you should be writing them.

• • Chapter 2:  Remember. You have actually already written Chapter 2 - the structured literature review. Now go back to it. Ensure that it is arranged in the same sequence as Chapter 4 that you have just finished. Also ensure that you add the latest literature that is relevant to your findings, and remove the literature that has become redundant because you may not have found anything relevant in your own findings.

  • Chapter 3 : Research Methods. Now that you know what you actually did, you can describe the research methods more accurately.  Remember you are describing what you did and why. Do not turn this into a textbook chapter on research methodology.

  • Chapter 5: Prof Dr Tjeerd Plomp's "Structure of the final chapter" Together with Chapter One, this is the only chapter the external examiner will actually read.

  • Chapter 1: You write this chapter last. It is your tour de force. The purpose of this chapter is to make the examiner want to read the thing, and to give you a high pass without recommending changes.

Now that you think you have finished: Take six weeks off.  In this time, give the thesis to at least two friends to read, and give them this examiner's guideline from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.  You could also consider these from AUT, or 

Ask them to pretend to be an external examiner and examine it for you.  The more critical they are the better.  Then fix it.

The oral defense

Here is some good advice on preparing for your oral defense from ASQ

Getting published

Here is a link to the "Directory of Free Open Access Journals" where you can publish without paying author's fees.

Denise Nicholson's "Scholarly Horizons" https://scholarlyhorizons.co.za/about-denise/

Here is an example of The outline of an academic paper

Here is a link to my Article Writing Workshop where you will find useful information