Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

How Doctoral Students Lose Months of Progress

17 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Steve Tippins Ph.D. advises doctoral students on practical research planning considerations that can cause delays. He emphasizes assessing available time, as more time permits more complex designs, and evaluating data access, noting that full factorial designs often demand larger sample sizes. He outlines IRB approval complexities, especially when collaborating with other institutions, and highlights the heightened difficulty of obtaining approval for studies involving vulnerable groups such as minors, pregnant women, prisoners, or military personnel. He concludes by inviting viewers to comment "help" to receive a link to his free dissertation help community.

Chapters

One of the things I would be thinking about is how much time do I have? The more time I have, the more complicated something can be. How much access to data is there? Remember I said if you're doing a full factorial design, you might need a larger sample size. In your IRB approval, your school's IRB approval, and you may be going to another institution if you're using respondents from their institution or data from their institution, what are their requirements about design and/or sample sizes or who's in a sample. Because you're going to find out if you're going to do studies of experimental designs— oh, for example, minors or pregnant women or prisoners or members of the military— it's going to be much harder to get IRB approval. Drop the word "help" in the comments below, and I'll send you the link to my free dissertation help community.