Dissertation polish
Five final checks to ensure your capstone project is ready for prime time.
By Laurie Meyers
gradPSYCH staff
After much blood, sweat, tears and many cups of strong coffee, you've finished the final draft of your dissertation. Now it's time to make it shine with these five tips from writing and dissertation-prep experts:
Make it flow. Getting the results and discussion to come together, and not read as separate articles, can be tricky, says Margaret Debelius, PhD, director of the Georgetown University writing center. Enlist extra readers—colleagues, members of your dissertation writing group or trusted advisers—to help ensure the path from your hypothesis to conclusion is clear.
Cut the flab. "Students will often use many more words than they need to," says psychologist Kjell Erik Rudestam, PhD, co-author of "Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process, 3rd ed.," (Sage Publications, 2007). "Everything that goes into a dissertation should be there for a purpose," he adds. "Ask yourself: 'Why I am putting this in? How does this support my argument?'"
Check the table of contents and references. Software glitches and revisions can cause page numbers and chapters to get out of whack. Dissect your table of contents to ensure every chart and table is accounted for. Also, see that every study in the text is included in your references section and vice versa.
Enlist proofing help. Debelius recommends investing in a professional copyeditor to comb for typos and grammatical snafus. There are companies that specialize in APA style, while others may only make grammar fixes. Some charge by the hour and some by the project, but you can expect to spend anywhere from $350 to $1,200, depending on the extent of the services and how much work your dissertation needs. Before you hire a service, make sure you verify their credentials. If hiring help is not an option, ask friends or family with writing experience to go over your manuscript. Also, consider making a list of grammar mistakes that you frequently make and triple check those areas.
Know your university's policies. Each program has specific rules about the format of final dissertations, say Rudestam and Debelius. Find out whether your manuscript should be formatted digitally, how it should be bound and other housekeeping-type requirements.
Parts of this article was adapted from "Dissertations and Theses From Start to Finish," John D. Cone and Sharon L. Foster, (APA, 2006).
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