Following the Complete Researcher Launchpad 06/11/18 - I've sought to find out what can be expected at the VIVA!
This link is suggested in the PhD handbook at DJCAD. Top 10 VIVA questions...
in understanding what is likely to be asked, I can review these questions throughout my research project, to reflect upon how my research will answer these questions.
Here’s where the Top 10 list of questions below can come in useful, as a frame to encourage you to think wider and more generally about the professional conversation to come.
Value-added and originality
- What are the most original (or value-added) parts of your thesis?
- Which propositions or findings would you say are distinctively your own?
- How do you think your work takes forward or develops the literature in this field?
- What are the ‘bottom line’ conclusions of your research? How innovative or valuable are they? What does your work tell us that we did not know before?
Origins and the scope of the research
- Can you explain how you came to choose this topic for your doctorate What was it that first interested you about it? How did the research focus change over time?
- Why have you defined the final topic in the way you did? What were some of the difficulties you encountered and how did they influence how the topic was framed? What main problems or issues did you have in deciding what was in-scope and out-of-scope?
Methods
- What are the core methods used in this thesis? Why did you choose this approach? In an ideal world, are there different techniques or other forms of data and evidence that you’d have liked to use?
Data or information
- What are the main sources or kinds of evidence? Are they strong enough in terms of their quantity and quality to sustain the conclusions that you draw? Do the data or information you consider appropriately measure or relate to the theoretical concepts, or underlying social or physical phenomena, that you are interested in?
Findings
- How do your findings fit with or contradict the rest of the literature in this field? How do you explain the differences of findings, or estimation, or interpretation between your work and that of other authors?
What next?
- What are the main implications or lessons of your research for the future development of work in this specific sub-field? Are there any wider implications for other parts of the discipline? Do you have ‘next step’ or follow-on research projects in mind?
To put these ideas in a wider context, you might also find it helpful to read parts of my book: Patrick Dunleavy, ‘Authoring a PhD’ (Palgrave, 2003), especially the chapter on ‘the endgame’ of finishing a doctorate. On Twitter, see also @Write4Research
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