Chapter 5 Rejected? This Is Almost Always Why.

I've looked at lots of Chapter 5s over the years, and the reason people fall down or don't move forward with their Chapter 5 is not because their study was bad, and it's not because of statistics they've done. It's because they don't tell their story. They don't actually toot their own horn. I'm Dr. Steve Tippins, Ph.D., and I've been in academia for over 35 years. I've served on over 300 dissertation committees, and I've helped hundreds of students reach the end and complete their dissertations as a coach. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how to actually complete a Chapter 5 that your committee will accept, and you get to walk across stage. Chapter 5 is different than the previous chapters in your dissertation. And by saying Chapter 5, I just want to clarify, typically a dissertation has 5 chapters. The last chapter being the conclusion, the summary, the findings, things like that. Now you could have a 6 or 7 chapter dissertation, and it's the last chapter. So I'm just going to call it Chapter 5 here moving forward. In the first 4 chapters, typically there's a template that you can follow pretty closely to complete things. You report on what you're going to do and what you did, and you're pretty constrained by the method that you said you would move forward with in doing your research. Chapter 5 is different. While there can be a template showing you make sure you cover these things, this is where your committee is looking for your interpretation. For you to tell us what it all means. For you to tie it all back together with the previous literature. Academic writing doesn't give you a lot of creativity, but Chapter 5 is the one area where you get some creative abilities in your writing. I've seen too many students undersell what they've done in their initial attempts at Chapter 5. And by undersell, I mean too often I get someone who spent a year or more on a document they've written 104 pages on the first 4 chapters or 128 pages on the first 4 chapters, and their Chapter 5 is 4 pages and covering all the sections that are required to be covered in Chapter 5. And as a committee member, it doesn't ring true or doesn't sound like you know what you're doing or that you have done the work yourself, because this is where you get to say, here's what it means. This is where you get to sort of sing your own song, so to speak. So if you put a year into this and all you've got are 4 pages to write, they're gonna question you. Ultimately in their minds, they may be thinking, they did all this work and that's it? That's all they've got, really? You know, maybe we weren't hard enough. Maybe we didn't give them enough to do. This is where you really should be totally explaining what you found, what it means, what the implications are, so that not only does your committee know, but also you're paving the way for future research for yourself and others. So where Chapter 4 was, hey, what did I find? A reporting of the results. Chapter 5 is different. Now you get to say, here are the results and here's what they mean. Here are the implications. In some disciplines at some schools, they even ask you to say, and what does this mean in practice outside of academia? How are these results meaningful? Who can use them? Why are they important? Filling that in should take you more than 4 pages. Your results are contributing to the academic world as well as the real world. Look, I know you're tired when you get done, and Chapter 5 is typically the last thing you're writing because you have to have the results and write them up before you can say what they mean. And it's easy to say, "Well, I'm done. I can't write anymore." But committees in general are looking for 15 to 20 pages in your Chapter 5. So Keep that in mind. If you fall short at 15 pages, that's great. If you think, "I'm going to write 4 pages," and that's what you're going to write, your committee is most likely not going to accept it. And I've seen a number of dissertations sent back with people who have written 4- and 5-page Chapter 5s with committees saying comments like, "You have not really explained what this means. You've not told us how it impacts the academic world or the real world. You've not talked about future research." save yourself a lot of back and forth and do it at the beginning. So the goal in Chapter 5 is depth, not just filler. Now I'm going to take you through 6 steps you can put into place and keep thinking about when you're writing Chapter 5 so it's much more likely to be accepted. And if you're looking for help, click the link below and you'll be sent to our free dissertation help community to join. So What do I do to strengthen Chapter 5 to make it more likely to be accepted? Well, one area that's skipped frequently is you haven't tied this to the previous literature. Meaning, here are your results. How do they fit with what you talked about in your literature review, Chapter 2? You write Chapter 2 as support for what you want to do, but it doesn't just stay there. It's when you get your results. Now, hey, how do my results fit within what has been done. Oh, they're similar to, or they differ from, and that means— so you get to really do more integration or synthesis of your work into the previous work. You have results. You get to report your results and tell what they mean, but don't go beyond what your study talked about or what your study was, the research questions and the purpose of your study, because you aren't going to have a proverbial leg to stand on. So if you were doing a study about school lunch programs and you have findings and you say how they work and how they should be used and what the implications are for student grades and things like that, but you didn't do anything about athletic programs in there, don't make claims about school lunch programs and the impact on athletic programs because your committee's just gonna send it back saying you didn't study that. It's always good to remind your reader when you're beginning Chapter 5, hey, what was the problem you were looking at? What's the purpose? And what are the research questions? Now it's easier for them to understand. Yes, you put them in Chapter 1. Yes, you might have put them in Chapter 3 as well. But you know, this is a number of pages separated from when you did it. And reminding them here and saving them from having to paw back through your document or scroll back through your document keeps them more engaged. So remind them where your study was going and what it was doing. You want to, when you're writing Chapter 5, think ahead to your defense as well. Because think about this, it's been a year or so you've been working with your committee, and your committee members has given you comments all along about, oh, one committee member might be interested in format, another committee might be more methodologically interested, and other committee members might be content interested. Well, in your Chapter 5, if you can answer questions that they've asked on the ongoing basis, or answer questions that you think they're going to ask about what you've done, then you're not going to get those questions during the defense. They've already seen that you've done it. And the more you can stop questions from happening, on a defense, the more they're on your side and the easier your defense goes. And I've seen this happen. I've had clients where I've said, let's answer this in Chapter 5, and when they've gotten to their dissertation, they've had no questions from specific people who had been, I wouldn't say bothering them or pestering them, but adamant that certain things be involved, and they avoided the questions by actually thinking about it ahead of time. Chapter 5 is where we talk about the big picture. It's not item by item or significant result by significant result. It's, here are my results. I might give a graph or a chart or something like that, but here is how it's going to impact stock traders or principals or the collection of data for biological testing. Here is what it means in the big picture. Okay, this is you trying on the mantle also of an academic and you getting to become one of the experts and show the field that you understand what you're doing. And finally, Chapter 5 is just that. It's the final thing you're writing. It's the final part of this research. So you want to make sure that it's written well and tight and communicates what you want it to communicate. I sat on a dissertation committee a couple years ago, which was good work. I mean, it was a good study, it was very interesting, and they got to Chapter 5 and just got tired and didn't really explain things. And it took 3 back and forths for them to understand that this was really important stuff. It wasn't just like, here's my results, I'm done, fine, see you later. It's, I've given you the results and here's how now I am part of the conversation on this topic. And those 3 back and forths cause that student to go into a new term, timing-wise, more tuition, wasted opportunity. So in wrapping this up, if I'm approaching Chapter 5, the idea is to start Chapter 5 with the idea in Chapter 5 is to start with a preview of what you're going to be covering, reminding the reader about your research questions, your problem, and your purpose. Then including the implications, what it means, how it fits into the literature. Then we're going to move on to recommendations. What does this actually mean to schools or businesses or communities, whatever you were studying, to other scientists. What recommendations do you have for the results? But also, what recommendations do you have for future research? What else should be done? Because you've done this, you know the limitations. You also now know what else should be done in this area. And at the end, bring this to a strong conclusion and leave the reader with the notion that this is a strong contribution to the field. Chapter 5 is not an afterthought. It's where you get to really show why your work is important and what it really means. If you shortchange this, you shortchange not only your dissertation but your academic field as well. If you're struggling with your Chapter 5 or struggling with how to integrate everything so that your committee will understand what you're doing, Join our free Dissertation Help Community. You'll get our 5-step dissertation acceptance framework along with real support from veteran committee chairs. Good luck!