Thesis

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This entry was inspired by Ben Gross's thesis proposal defense. During the defence the faculty outlined their expectations as far as what students should be prepared to talk about in their thesis proposal defenses, and so some of us thought that we should try and capture what was said in the defense as best we can.

Read here for a faculty member's discussion of what goes into a dissertation proposal

1 Summary of our Impressions
- 1.1 Methodology
- 1.2 Theory
2 Les Gasser's Levels and Types of Research Contributions:
3 Allen Renear's concept of Scientific Research
4 Questions raised by faculty members
5 Related Pages

[edit] Summary of our Impressions

In the course of the defense, the faculty posed a number of questions which your thesis proposal should answer. I have tried to repeat them below, and tried to supplement them with questions I remember faculty posing in other discussions I have been a party to.

What kind of contribution are you trying to make?
- Refer to the section Les Gasser's Levels and Types of Research Contributions below.

What are your research questions (specific questions that you will answer)?
- What do you hope to accomplish with your thesis?
- Complete the sentence, "The purpose of my study is ..."
- Enumerate your research questions and link back all the data to these questions.

What do you think your work will contribute to the field?

How does this fit with other work done in the field?

How will you know when you have completed your thesis?
- How will you know when you've answered a research question?
- How will you know when you've made a contribution to science?

What are the unknowns in your research?

Are you going into the project with expectations of finding a particular result? If so:
- What are you expecting to find?
- What would be surprising?
- Are you open to discovering something unexpected, and how are you prepared to recognize it? (This question I am less sure about)

[edit] Methodology

What methodologies are you going to use?

What are you trying to accomplish by using this methodology?
- Does the methodology you have chosen allow you to accomplish your goals? How?

Is your research setup properly so that the application of this methodology is valid?
- i.e., if you are doing statistical analysis, are the assumptions you make about the population valid, do you have enough subjects, how have you controlled for sampling bias, etc.

If you are doing a survey or an interview, what questions are you going to ask?
- This is more a question of what kind of information are you going to try and elicit, rather than a request for a list of questions.

[edit] Theory

If you are using a particular theory in your work, why?

What are the principles and concepts in the theory that are relevant to your work?
- How are they useful?
- How do they contribute to your work?

How is the theory going to help you answer your questions?

Is it a theory, a methodology or just a way of talking?

[edit] Les Gasser's Levels and Types of Research Contributions:

Mapping -- What's happening in the domain of interest?

Conceptual Development -- Devise a conceptual framework to describe what is happening in the domain of interest.

Correlation --

Explanation -- Explain what is happening, and why it is happening.

[edit] Allen Renear's concept of Scientific Research

This discussion touches on whether one should look for emergent results vs. working within the framework of an existing theory. See the Methods of Approaching Research discussion on the Research Methods page for more information.

In the proposal defence, Allen brought up a point that perhaps Ben ought to pick a theory of identity before he collected the data, and then present the conclusions of his data in response to that theory, either supporting it, or showing where it breaks down. If the theory breaks down, then one can propose an ammendment or a supplement to the theory, or propose a new theory, so that both the old and the new results are explained.

After the defence, Ingbert approached Allen and proposed that to do that was cheating in some sense, because the point of doing research is to first collect the data, and then see if it actually fit into any of the existing theories, and if not, then demonstrate why not. It might be that the way people can make their reputations is by disproving a theory, and having a strong impact in that manner, but that is simply playing the system. The whole point of science is to look at the data and use it to devise explanations which can make accurate predictions.

Allen countered that in any field in science, the strength of an individual's contribution comes from how it ties in with what other people have done, that if you are researching diffusion of a chemical accross cell membranes, it had better draw upon what is known in cell biology, chemistry, physics, etc. In the same way, Ben should relate or ground his work in existing work on identity. Theoretically, science may be conceptualized by how Ingbert described it, but in reality scientific discovery is a process (I can't remember the word he used), that functionally exists in people's interactions via publication and other forms of communication.