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Waiting to Get Your Dissertation Accepted?
Last Updated on: 2nd February 2024, 05:21 am
So, you’re writing a dissertation? Amazing! Congratulations! (Also, I’m sorry. And good luck.).
If you’re embarking on this difficult journey, you need to go where you’re going. Every treasure hunt begins with a good map. (This particular treasure hunt happens to be for information that fills an extremely specific gap in the scholarly literature).
Your dissertation timeline is the map you’ll rely on as you navigate the stormy waters of your dissertation journey. It will tell you what you need to be working on at any given stage of the process, and what you should prepare for when you’re done with your current task.
Expect the Unexpected
Remember that the map is not the journey. You can plan everything out perfectly, but life happens. Life even happens to doctoral students, who have ostensibly given up having a life.
The point is, don’t beat yourself up when your experience doesn’t match up with your dissertation timeline. The timeline is there to guide you and provide useful goals, but it can be adapted along the way as things come up.
Perhaps your proposal needs five rounds of revision instead of the one or two you planned for (a common occurrence, except for those who have the foresight to hire a dissertation editor). Maybe your committee chair decides to take an unexpected vacation. Maybe an unexpected family event happens.
All of these bumps are normal parts of the dissertation process. Don’t worry if you don’t live up to your own expectations as far as how quickly you finish. The important thing is not to go quickly, but to get to completion.
Dissertation Timeline
Here are the major steps you’ll need to take when writing your dissertation, from ideation to graduation.
Over 50% of doctoral candidates don’t finish their dissertations.
Step 1: Prospectus
The timeline for a dissertation begins with the generation of your idea. This usually takes the form of a prospectus. A prospectus explains, What are you planning to do? Then, you get your chair and committee to agree that it’s a reasonable topic. Most people go through more than one idea before settling on their topic, and that can take some time.
It may take you a month to come up with your idea because you’re going to be looking for a gap in the research. Once you find a gap in the research, see whether you could complete a relevant study within a reasonable time period.
A tip – most students try to tackle topics that are entirely too broad. Look at past dissertation topics in your department, and you’ll see just how specific you need to be.
Step 2: Proposal (Chapters 1 to 3)
After your prospectus, you move on to the proposal stage. At most universities, that means writing Chapters 1, 2, and 3. These three chapters are going to be about 60 to 70 pages total. You are going to have to do a lot of writing and research and get committee approval.
A timeline might say you can do your dissertation proposal in three to four months, but that is only true as long as what you’re submitting is well-written and your committee approves it. For argument’s sake, we’ll say it takes four months. The next level of your dissertation is to collect data. But before you can collect data, you have to get IRB approval.
Step 3: Institutional Review Board Approval
Approval from the Institutional Review Board, or IRB, states that what you’re going to be doing will not harm any participants in your study. IRB approval is usually relatively quick, depending on what type of research you’re doing. If you want to research small children, for example, it’s going to take longer to get approval. There must be safeguards in place to protect those children. Once you have IRB approval, you move on to collecting your data.
Step 4: Data Collection
Collecting data can be as short as a couple of hours if you are accessing data for a quantitative study from a secondary data source. In that case, you would just be getting the data you need from the database. Then, take that data, make sure it’s in the format you need, and enter it into the appropriate statistical software package. If you need help with this, check out our quantitative data analysis services.
On the other hand, if you’re doing a qualitative study and you have to track people down, it can take several months in order to just find and interview them. Then, you can process those interviews by transcribing and entering them into the appropriate statistical or software program to come up with themes.
Step 5: Analysis and Conclusion (Chapters 4 and 5)
Once you have statistical results and themes, you can write Chapter 4 and report your findings. Then, write Chapter 5, in which you analyze your findings. Say what they mean and how it fits in the literature. Compare your findings to the literature you used to begin your study and address what future research should be done.
This phase could take anywhere from three to nine months, depending on how quickly you can collect your data. It is conceivable that you could finish your dissertation within a year or a year and a half. All of these time periods we’ve presented so far assume you’re working on your dissertation full-time. If you have a job and a family and are also working on a dissertation, it can take longer.
Step 6: Defense
Once you have finished your dissertation (Chapters 1 through 5) you have to go back to your committee, get approval, and then do your dissertation defense. This process can be as short as a month. But if your committee has problems with what you’ve done or it needs more work, it could take several months.
Variables in the Dissertation Timeline
There are a number of variables outside your control. For example, you might finish in July and then one or two of your committee members are off on research projects of their own and won’t be back until September. But in an ideal timeline, a year to a year and a half is reasonable.
While we can present ideals and hypotheticals, you do have a lot of control over the timeline. If you dedicate yourself and work ahead, you can minimize the amount of time it will take to have “Dr.” in front of your name.
Dealing With Unexpected Events
Unexpected things can come up as well. First of all, if you’re not a full-time student, life can throw many things in your way. Somebody could become sick, a pandemic could come about, or your job could increase its demands on you.
You don’t control your committee’s time, and they may have other things going on that prevent them from responding quickly. Funding interruptions can also happen. Being good at handling details is going to help you stay on track as much as possible.
That’s where a dissertation timeline comes in. Get this together from the very beginning, and you’ll be better-equipped to deal with unexpected events and finish your dissertation in as little time as possible.
