Article S9.5 Attributes Examined While Evaluating a Doctoral Thesis Seminar Leader: Malabika Deo Professor & Head, Department of Commerce, Pondicherry University, India malabika.com[at]pondiuni.edu.in Doctoral dissertations can take various forms. An ambitious doctoral dissertation can open up an entirely new area of research; it may provide a unifying framework for already existing knowledge; it may even resolve some long-standing research issues. Realistically speaking, not every doctoral project can be as ambitious. More commonly, a doctoral dissertation explores an area thoroughly; it may contradict or support prevailing knowledge. It is important for a doctoral project to be moderately ambitious, but more importantly, focused in its approach. A doctoral project is a journey towards becoming a qualified researcher. For various practical reasons, it is important that the journey is accomplished in a reasonable period of time. Therefore, doctoral work should focus on a limited number of issues, which are to be studied thoroughly and the results interpreted clearly. A doctoral thesis ought to have a meaningful title capturing the essence of the thesis. It should convey a clear picture of what lies within the thesis. Coherence of ideas and their seamless flow are important in the literature review part. Merely reproducing excerpts from sources referred in other articles does not fulfil the requirements of a literature review. Such work reads unfocussed and directionless. In case some survey data are used, the sampling should be adequate and representative of the relevant population. The writing should be crisp and clear, instead of ambiguous or flowery language. The interpretation of the results should be accurate and the recommendations should be in line with the results. The references need to be cited exhaustively, honestly, and appropriately using the required institutional style (such as APA or Harvard style). Various reasons why a thesis may be accepted, rejected, or require revision were discussed. These were illustrated by taking the example of a successful doctoral thesis. In this example, the researcher had revised an existing model for credit rating of listed companies. The work suggested a new set of variables to be considered. These new variables were assigned reasonable weights and then the revised model was applied to listed companies. There were clear hypotheses to be tested. One hypothesis was that the credit rating should vary before and after a significant economic event. Another hypothesis was that the revised model would give a more deserving rating to a company in comparison to the existing models. The thesis of course had an appropriate title and contained an exhaustive literature review. The sampling was adequate and the research methodology was considered sound. The dissertation contained interpretation of results followed by recommendations. The interpretations were reasonable and the recommendations were logically related to the results. This was a neat piece of work that was recommended for the PhD. Reported by Swati Panda, with inputs from Paromita Goswami; edited by D. P. Dash. [March 20, 2011] Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home | ||
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