Work-in-progress dissertation content review worksheet: a note for the ALRA (academic-oriented type) users

Work-in-progress dissertation content review worksheet: a note for the ALRA (academic-oriented type) users

From time to time, a researcher using the agile literature review approach (ALRA) (academic-oriented type) needs to perform a stock-take and review of the major dissertation project ingredients to ensure that the project direction is in order. In this case, the researcher can make use of an inventory list (i.e. the work-in-progress (WIP) dissertation content review worksheet) to review the WIP dissertation quality. The worksheet template is shown as follows:

The research gap statements	The derived research objective statements	The subsuming research questions	Academic ideas to use	Research methods to use
Research gap statement 1	Research objective statement 1	Research question 1.1 Research question 1.2 … etc.	Academic idea 1.1 Academic idea 1.2 Academic idea 1.3	Research method 1.1 Research method 1.2
Research gap statement 2	Research objective statement 2	Research question 2.1 Research question 2.2 … etc.	Academic idea 2.1 Academic idea 2.2 Academic idea 2.3	Research method 2.1 Research method 2.2
Research gap statement 3	Research objective statement 3	Research question 3.1 Research question 3.2 … etc.	Academic idea 3.1 Academic idea 3.2 Academic idea 3.3	Research method 3.1
… etc.	… etc.	… etc.	… etc.	… etc.

 

There are a number of review questions to consider when studying this review worksheet:

Question 1: Do these lower-level research gap and objective statements constitute a coherent pair of overall research gap and objective statements?

Question 2: Do the research questions appear convincing to be subsumed under their respective research objectives?

Question 3: Do the academic ideas appear to be relevant to inform the investigation of their respective research objectives and research questions? Is it necessary to increase (or decrease) the number of academic ideas to use? Is it necessary to improve the quality of the academic ideas to use?

Question 4: Do the research methods appear to be relevant to inform the the investigation of their respective research objectives and research questions? Is it necessary to increase (or decrease) the number of research methods to use? Is it necessary to improve the quality of the research methods to use?

If some of the answers to the four questions are negative, the students need to spend additional effort to: (i) carry out research gap analysis,  (ii) carry out literature review, and (iii) study the subject of Research Methods. The effort then enables the researcher to refine the quality of the research gap and research objective statements, the quality of the research questions and the quality of the research methodology and the research method design.

** Some of the suggested research questions and academic ideas (e.g. theories to use) could come from your dissertation project supervisor. You, the researcher, can then include these suggestions into your review worksheet in order to carry out a holistic review of the WIP dissertation content.

Lastly, the review worksheet is for work-in-progress project review, it is thus not recommended to incorporate it into the researcher's dissertation report.