Dissertation Review Assignment Instructions
Overview
Quality is an elusive characteristic that often is derived as much from the “eye of the beholder” as it does from an objective application of a measurement standard. But, standards do exist when reviewing research. Here are some of the characteristics of a quality research effort.
Quality research is:
- driven by significant research questions;
- empirical in nature;
- theory-based;
- designed around a sound linkage between the research questions and the research method;
- based on clear inferential reasoning;
- capable of being replicated producing similar results;
- generalizable to significant audiences; and
- available for professional scrutiny.
Your task for this assignment is to do a review, as objectively as possible, of an EdD or PhD dissertation created by an LU faculty member or student. Your task is to discern the “quality” of the research in the form of a “research review.” Reviewing a dissertation does not mean that you are seeking to find editorial flaws in the dissertation document. Instead, you are seeking to compare the dissertation to a standard of research quality. You will be looking at both strengths and weaknesses of the research. That is also called “peer review.” Dissertations, including your dissertation, are public documents that are open to review. This makes for better quality and will improve your research work. For this assignment, you will be conducting a review of a dissertation to learn about research by carefully reading research.Dissertation Review Assignment Instructions
Instructions
Carefully read and review one EdD or PhD dissertation (not a DMIN project). You must meet the following standards for this assignment.
- You must select your dissertation from the LU Digital Commons or from another Christian institution using the dissertation links at the LU Library.
- The dissertation must be for a doctoral research program and deal with a topic in the fields of leadership or education.
- The dissertation must be empirical in nature and be social science-based in its methodological design. You may not select a humanities style dissertation.
- After the dissertation is read, you are to write a review of the dissertation by responding to the review questions below. Your responses should reveal both strengths and weaknesses of the dissertation since no dissertation is perfect.
- You will have two major sections of your paper. The dissertation review and a final section identify the research principles you learned in the review process.
- The paper is to follow APA style requirements.
- The paper will be 8-10 pages in length.
- The paper must include the content areas below and must use APA style headings.