Among members of the academy, beliefs about knowledge and research work extend to members of different groups and to all types of scholarly contexts. In fact, in a postindustrial context, academic cultural groups have responded to changes in conditions in which they operate—competitive marketization, commercialization, massification, and globalization (Becher & Trowler, 2001). These broader dynamics have changed how academic groups think and behave—and what they produce in their knowledge work. While changes in academic groups and subgroups tend to be complex, standards for how to investigate and organize knowledge in the social and behavioral science research context have been documented. That is, steps to design, execute, and disseminate products of research work have been disseminated alongside changes in higher education institutions and markets. Between shifts in research paradigms, changes in research design and methods, and emerging technologies to collect, analyze, and interpret data, fundamental belief systems have reshaped behavioral forms in the research process—even while basic principles of systematic approaches to investigating human social life have remained the same. This is particularly evident in dissertation research.
With junior and senior members of the academic groups alike—from assistant and associate rank faculty in the tenure review process to the ranks of graduate students in terminal degree programs—reproducing conventional and emerging standards for research processes and outcomes, we can outline what tends to pass as research. If we look at the social and behavioral sciences—and trans- and interdisciplinary fields and applied fields that emerged from and remain connected to them—dynamic conventions of research govern what researchers do and produce. From faculty training graduate students to editorial boards of refereed journals to leadership of academic research associations, researchers abide by a general consensus of what constitutes sound designs and methods for carrying out systematic and rigorous investigations of social and behavioral phenomena. What comes to mind when you say “systematic and rigorous”? These research standards shape the general approaches to scholarly studies and inform the specific steps that researchers use to gather and interpret information in a study. And these standards dictate what you do as doctoral students in your dissertation research.
Historical contexts of dissertations.
The cultural meaning that faculty ascribe to scholarly research has shaped their orientation to dissertation research in terminal degree programs in the United States. As a culminating experience, the dissertation emerged in Medieval Europe as a mechanism for faculty to engage students in an academic ritual that served to train and prepare students for the rigors of their own work. The formal requirements for written research dissertations developed as early as the late 1700s in German universities (Barton, 2005). With the advent of book publishing and a reliable mail system, mechanisms to record, disseminate, and store written texts in Medieval Europe changed how fast information could be shared (Barton). Indeed, faculty at German universities initiated student requirements for written research in the form of a dissertation. The specific forces in German universities that facilitated the development of a model of graduate student research in the form of a dissertation study can be attributed to both academic freedom and scholarly research. Hofstadster and Metzger (1955) argue that the values of academic research and the freedom to teach and learn moved academics in German universities to promote research production as a key benchmark of faculty work.
The historical origins of dissertations as a central experience for students in advanced degree programs in the United States can be traced to American graduate student study abroad experiences in German universities and the migration of German academics to U.S. universities in the 1800s (Malone, 1981). As a general pattern, prominent American students who studied in German universities, earning Ph.D. degrees, returned to U.S. universities to implement the German model of graduate student research and the dissertation as a culminating experience in terminal degree programs (Lucas, 2006). While in dispute about the specific course of study in a terminal degree program, Yale University appears to be the first U.S. university to offer Ph.D. degrees in 1860, and Johns Hopkins is the first U.S. institution of higher education to be founded on the German research model (Malone). Through the 1800s to today, universities in Europe and the United States have continued to use dissertations as a major program requirement and culminating experience for doctoral education (Parsons, 1989).
The scholarly production apparatus and focus on empirical research that characterized early U.S. university faculty practices continue today. With a range of institutional missions and doctoral program areas of focus—research versus applied research emphasis, research-scholar versus scholar-practitioner dispositions—culminating activities in doctoral programs vary and may take forms ranging from a book-length research dissertation to applied research dissertations to a series of research and/or practice projects. While doctoral program requirements differ and new approaches to dissertation research projects have emerged, doctoral program faculty have largely retained dissertation research as a distinguishing characteristic of terminal degree study in graduate education. The place of dissertations as the most prominent component of doctoral programs (Malone, 1981) remains today and requires faculty to commit time and resources to promoting a coherent, meaningful dissertation research context for graduate students.
Distinguishing characteristics of dissertations.
One of the first and primary characteristics of dissertations is an original approach. As the Council of Graduate Schools (1991) described, the dissertation requires original work, a requirement that “implies some novel twist, fresh perspective, new hypothesis, or innovative method that makes the dissertation project a distinctive contribution” (p. 8). Here, the inclusion of multiple descriptive terms associated with original—novel, fresh, new, innovative, and distinctive—illustrates the nature of original research in the dissertation context. What do the terms novel, fresh, new, innovative, and distinctive mean to you? They are seemingly but deceptively simple adjectives that require us to use a mix of creativity, ingenuity, and a sense of inquiry to the research process. In a dissertation study, novel, new, and fresh may relate to the problem in knowledge and/or practice that you identify, the research design or data collection procedures that you use, or the analytical techniques and interpretive approach that you apply. The innovative and distinctive character of a dissertation study may be seen in the results, findings, and recommendations for future research and practice that you make. How will you distinguish your study from previous studies related to the same or similar topics and/or methods?
The broader context of science can explain, in part, the need to make an original contribution and use a rigorous approach in dissertation research. The thrust of work in scientific inquiry is to produce new knowledge and create new systems in work and society. What is unique to doctoral research in graduate education is the emphasis of training researchers to conduct their work in a manner that is consistent with expectations in the field—rigorous and systematic conventions to create knowledge. A final outcome of research work is to change the ways in which we think and act. Whether this is an incremental adjustment or a substantial change in what we know or do, the idea in dissertation research is to extend discussions about a topic of interest and phenomenon of focus and move people and communities in new directions. In most cases, this approach means that you disseminate findings from dissertation work and apply recommendations to local contexts of practice and broader communities of researchers.
At the conceptualization phase of a dissertation study, the use of existing literature to identify a gap in knowledge and/or