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Waiting to Get Your Dissertation Accepted?
Last Updated on: 2nd February 2024, 03:08 am
One of the most important sentences in your dissertation is the Specific Purpose Statement. It’s not just a sentence – it’s a statement that captures everything your study is about. Together with the Problem Statement and Research Questions, it guides the entirety of your research. It may be a small section (usually less than a page), but it is an important one.
In this article, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Specific Purpose Statement. Let’s begin with an example.
Specific Purpose Statement Example
The Specific Purpose Statement is part of a bigger picture called alignment, where you make sure that all parts of your study are essentially going in the same direction. Every study has to have an implicit or explicit problem as the focus, which is described in your Problem Statement. The Specific Purpose Statement basically says that your purpose is to address the problem.
For example, let’s say your Problem Statement is this: “The problem to be explored in this study is the lack of understanding of teacher perceptions on student discipline.” The purpose statement might go like this: “The purpose of this study is to explore teacher perceptions on student discipline”.
However, a lot of schools will have you add the broad type of methodology and the specific methodology that will be used to address the problem. So, the actual Specific Purpose Statement would read something like this:
“The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to explore teacher perceptions on student discipline.”
These statements have to be aligned with your research question(s). So for this qualitative, phenomenological study, the research question might be “What are the lived experiences of teachers regarding student discipline?” or “How do teachers report their lived experiences regarding student discipline?”
Common Mistakes With the Specific Purpose Statement
We tend not to write our dissertations in one sitting, and that can create problems. The problem and purpose statement tend to be on different pages in the document, for example, so it’s easy to stray from your problem statement and have a purpose statement that’s slightly different.
One reason for this is the time and distance between creating the two. The other, which is totally understandable, is that it’s easy to feel like you’re repeating yourself when writing a dissertation. A lot. The answer is, “Yes you are, and keep doing it.”
Anyone who’s ever done creative writing will cringe at this, but it’s important to keep the wording exactly the same throughout the sections of your paper. Introducing minor variations in the phrasing of your problem and purpose alters the meaning, and consistency is key in a dissertation.
Committee members often like to parse words and want to see everything aligned. If you start using different words, your paper may get out of alignment. That’s why a Specific Purpose Statement that follows the Problem Statement is much more likely to be approved than one that uses different terminology to try to capture interest.
Over 50% of doctoral candidates don’t finish their dissertations.
Another issue that can arise (and which I often see in my students’ papers) is trying to do too much with one study. “The purpose is a, and b, and c, and d.” You want to make your project doable – that is, able to be completed within a reasonable time period. The more purposes you have, the longer it will take to complete the study and the more expensive it will be. Most successful dissertations have one very specific purpose.
How Long is the Specific Purpose Statement?
The Specific Purpose Statement section of your document does not have to be many pages. Tell us what your purpose is – that’s it. It’s usually two or three paragraphs at most. I’ve seen as little as one paragraph be accepted. You’ll get many chances throughout the document to say other things, but the Specific Purpose Statement section is not the right place to expound.
Be Explicit
You don’t want your committee members to have to wander around your paper looking for your purpose statement. You don’t want them to have to guess or make assumptions about your study. Start your Specific Purpose Statement with the phrase, “The purpose of this study is…” That way, you’ll get a lot fewer questions about what you’re planning to do. The more explicitly you state things, the easier it is for your committee to find them.
Some committee members won’t actually read all the material, but they’ll look for key terms. They’ll get to the Purpose Statement section and ask, “Where does she state the purpose?” Make it as easy as possible for the reader, and it will get easier for you. The journey is hard enough and long enough as it is.
The Key: Staying In Alignment
One technique that I’ve found very helpful for staying in alignment is to open up a brand-new document and cut and paste your title, problem statement, purpose statement, and research question(s). Print it out, and read it. See if you’re saying the same thing everywhere. Does your purpose statement line up with your title, your problem, your research questions?
If everything lines up, then you have crossed the threshold into alignment. Congratulations! Many universities have rubrics with a list of what they require in dissertations, and alignment is usually a key piece. Just by making this simple one-page document, you can be as sure as you can be (without input by someone who’s done it before) that you’re in alignment.
Once you get the concept of alignment, it seems simple – but if you’ve never written a dissertation before, there’s no reason to believe that it will come easily to you. If you need help with alignment, reach out to your Chair or another competent advisor and ask for assistance. Once people get it, there’s an “aha” moment. Getting alignment right early in the process can save a lot of time and frustration; it will also keep you focused as you design your study.
You Need a Clear Problem Statement
In order to have a successful purpose statement, it’s important to have a strong and succinct problem statement, which your purpose then addresses. If your problem statement is, “Not everybody likes each other,” the purpose is “To find out why everybody doesn’t like each other.” That’s a laudable goal, but in the confines of a dissertation, your Chair would very quickly say, “Nice idea, not doable.”
Another common problem is beginning with a too-broad problem statement. Ask yourself, “Do I have 47 years to do this research?” If the answer is “no” (which it should be), you’ll realize you need to look at a narrow enough slice of a problem that you can address with your purpose. Using the above broad problem, “Not everybody likes each other,” this could be narrowed to “The impact of Servant Leadership on conflicts between middle and upper-level managers is not known.”
The Specific Purpose Statement relates to a problem that’s well-bounded and doable. You can always tackle the huge problems later. I often tell students, “Do something that’s doable for your dissertation, and then save the world later, when someone else is paying you.” Dissertations are meant to be practice, with the training wheels of your committee, for a career of doing research. Use this time to learn the process thoroughly. After you’ve done that, you can take on the bigger questions and the tougher methodologies.
“The purpose of this study is to explore whether this specific intervention improves team functionality.”
In research, we answer small questions that get added to a pile of knowledge so that ultimately, enough evidence is developed over time that we get a good idea that something is (or isn’t) the case. Academics were never meant to work in isolation. Study builds upon study, giving us a “body of evidence,” so none of us has to solve the problem or answer the question all on our own.
Final Thoughts
As a student, the problem is that you need to finish your dissertation. Your specific purpose is to finish your dissertation. Don’t try to do too much, keep it short and explicit, and make sure it’s in alignment with the rest of your paper. If you follow these simple rules, you’ll breeze through your proposal and be collecting data before you know it.
