Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1: Preparing to Go: The Dissertation Journey
Can a Dissertation Really Be a Trip?
Packing Your Bags
Our Guarantees
Your Travel Agents
How to Use This Guide
2: The Journey before You: 29 Steps
Our Timetable
Yeah, But . . .
3: Planning the Trip: The Conceptual Conversation
Selecting and Orienting a Partner
Asking and Answering Questions
Identifying Key Pieces
4: Developing Your Itinerary: The Preproposal
Naming the Problem
Formulating Your Research Question
Selecting Your Data
Identifying Your Method of Data Collection
Identifying Your Method of Data Analysis
Identifying the Literature to Review
Identifying the Significance of Your Study
Identifying Your Chapters
Writing Your Preproposal
Assessing Your Decisions
Committing to the Preproposal with Your Advisor
5: Advice from Other Travelers: The Literature Review
Coding Your Literature
Cutting Apart Your Codes
Sorting Your Codes
Checking Your Piles
Creating Your Conceptual Schema
Writing It Up
6: Getting There: The Dissertation Proposal
Introduction
Research Question
Definition of Terms
Literature Review
Research Design
Significance of the Study
Outline of the Study
Recap: Sections of a Dissertation Proposal
Approval of the Proposal
7: Things to See and Do: Data Collection and Analysis
Collecting Your Data
Creating Codable Data
Identifying Your Unit of Analysis
Coding Your Data
Sorting Your Codes
Checking Your Codes
Creating Your Explanatory Schema
Getting Inspiration for Your Explanatory Schema
Assessing Your Explanatory Schema
Writing It Up
8: Making the Most of Your Travels: The Last Chapter Plus
Summary
Interpretation of Findings
Limitations
Suggestions for Future Research
Three-Article Format
Finishing Up
9: Useful Phrases: Writing and Editing
Fast Writing
Slow Revising
10: Travelogue: The Dissertation Defense
Preparing for Your Defense
The Defense Itself
Following Your Defense
11: Making the Best Use of Your Guide: Advisor Advising
Asking Appropriately
Agreeing on a Vision
Articulating Needs
Enacting Professionalism
Assessing Your Relationship
12: Avoiding Delays and Annoyances: Enacting the Scholar Role
Incomplete-Scholar Roles
Enacting the Scholar Role: Writing Regularly
Index
About the Authors

About the Author

Sonja K. Foss is professor of communication at the University of Colorado at Denver. She created and is co-director of Scholars' Retreat, designed to provide intensive, focused, and supervised writing time for dissertations, theses, and other writing projects. William Waters is associate professor of English at the University of Houston, Downtown and co-director of Scholars' Retreat.

Reviews

To the rescue comes Sonja K. Foss and William Waters with their outstanding book, Destination Dissertation. This book is a must-have for anyone in graduate school, and for anyone who faces the prospect of writing a research paper or journal article with trepidation. In this book the authors succinctly and efficiently guide you through the entire dissertation process via a step-by-step, easy to follow format. . . . No matter what field you are in, or the type of research you are conducting, you can effectively use Destination Dissertation as a guide to writing your dissertation or thesis. . . . If you are facing the prospect of having to write a dissertation or thesis, get this book!
*The Athenaeum*

With relevant, realistic, and easily accessible information, this book covers a wide array of issues pertinent to one of the most important milestones of a graduate education—the creation of a dissertation. It is an outstanding book, and adopting it may only lead to better guidance on my part, and success for my students.
*Alexis O. Miranda, California Lutheran University*

Destination Dissertation is a great addition to any course that seeks to explain the dissertation process to students. Helpful advice and guidance is plentiful and the step-by-step process of completing a dissertation offered by Foss and Waters will help students view the journey as one they can navigate.
*Mary Madden, University of Maine*

Your dissertation is not a hurdle to jump or a battle to fight; as this handbook makes clear, your dissertation is the first of many destinations on the path of your professional career. Destination Dissertation guides you to the successful completion of your dissertation by framing the process as a stimulating and exciting trip—one that can be completed in fewer than nine months and by following twenty-nine specific steps. Sonja Foss and William Waters—your guides on this trip—explain concrete and efficient processes for completing the parts of the dissertation that tend to cause the most delays: conceptualizing a topic, developing a pre-proposal, writing a literature review, writing a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, and writing the last chapter. This guidebook is crafted for use by students in all disciplines and for both quantitative and qualitative dissertations, and incorporates a wealth of real-life examples from every step of the journey.
*Marianne Di Pierro, Western Michigan University; director, Graduate Center for Research and Retention*

Regardless of discipline or research approach, Sonja Foss and William Waters have encountered all of the roadblocks and excuses related to completing the dissertation or any other scholarly writing project. Their straightforward methods, cleverly and uniquely packaged in this book, will provide a clear pathway to successfully finishing your work. Stop reading the other 'how-to' books for completing the dissertation. Follow Foss and Waters's guidelines and finish!
*Brian L. Heisterkamp, California State University, San Bernardino*

Destination Dissertation offers a comprehensive, systematic, and well-tested approach for writing dissertations. Foss and Waters's focus on doability, efficiency, and production of original scholarship will appeal to graduate students at all levels, their advisors, and even faculty members working through their own publication processes. This book also offers unique insight into the process of conceptualizing a dissertation, working with advisors, and becoming a scholar-writer in post-dissertation writing. In short, this book should be required reading for all dissertating students and their advisors!
*University of Texas, El Paso, Stacey K. Sowards, University of Texas at Austin*

Destination Dissertation presents an attempt to demystify the process of conducting, writing, and presenting original research, completing dissertations, and making the transition to journal articles. The travel metaphor is creative and one to which all of us, as scholars, can relate. The format is cohesive and the chapters flow according to the process of the dissertation format. The techniques suggested are ones that students in my methods classes have found extremely beneficial.
*Monica M. White, Wayne State University*