First Submission - Sort of...

I continue to struggle with finding an Introduction that I'm happy with. I am on my NINTH revision.

So as not to delay any further, I sent to Dr. Z a partial introduction (includes significance and justification of the study, the limitations, and the definitions of key operational terms), all of the Methodology chapter (chapter 3) and all of the results (chapter 4). It also has an appendix attached to it.

I'll wait for Dr. Z's comments before I start the conclusions/implications chapter (chapter 5).  For now, I've got about 25,000 words and 104 pages.  Need more...

Output of Research

Just a note to show the followers of this blog that I'm truly making progress.  Click on this link to see an interactive map of my research.

Link:  Losses and Risk Exposure

Isn't that cool?!

Breakthrough with the Numbers Today

I've been hunched over the computer for days now, but I finally got my numbers to work.  It's not only been a refresher in statistics,  I've learned an incredible amount about formulas and formats in Excel in the process.

I can see the finish line!

Proposal Part 7: Method and Sample

Having to go to the "Big Gun" - Practical Research: Planning and Design by Paul D. Leedy and Jeanne Ellis Ormrod - for this one.  This book was integral to what I call "Proposal, Take One" (see earlier blog post) as I had little guidance on how to write a dissertation proposal back in 2007. 

Going back to it, I realize that even then, I didn't use it as well as I could have.  So now, with "Take Two," I've got some better insight.


Qualitative vs. Quantitative
Geez, this is a lot of stuff.  I certainly want to go the quantitative route--see my purpose statement.  I'll be using studies already done by others and correlate results.  To my knowledge, it doesn't look like anyone has actually correlated the three studies I have in mind yet.  That's both good news and bad.  Good news is that that's perfect for a dissertation.  Bad news (maybe) is that it can't be done.  

That's nothing to be decided for the proposal, though, so I'll keep moving and cross that bridge when I get to it.

What I'm doing for the proposal:  Each of the research questions contain at least one independent variable and one dependent variable.  I'm naming the studies behind each variable and organizing the proposal write-up around the correlations of each.  For example, I want to compare risk cultures with venture capital investment.  I have a study for cultural dimensions and a five-year longitudinal study on VC.  I can run the data on both to determine what--if any--of the correlations are.

I'll do that for each of the five research questions.  This is probably the part of the proposal I'm most uncomfortable with...I expect some clarification will be needed after my submission.