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.

Is Your Methodology Keeping You From Finishing?

15 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this concise advisory video, Steve Tippins Ph.D. emphasizes that the primary factor in choosing a dissertation methodology is its doability—whether the researcher can realistically execute it given their time, resources, and data. He argues that most methodologies are either overly simple or overly complex, and both extremes hinder completion. Rather than aiming for groundbreaking breakthroughs, dissertations should focus on incremental contributions, adding modest pieces to the existing knowledge pile. If a method is too complex, it should be scaled back; if too simple, depth should be added. The sweet spot—where the methodology is sufficiently rigorous yet feasible—lies in the middle ground, which maximizes the chance of finishing. He concludes with an invitation to comment “help” to receive a link to a free dissertation help community.

Chapters

Most of the time methodologies are too simple, not too complex. But whether it's too complex or too simple, it all really comes down to one thing, which is doability. Can you actually execute this with the time, resources, and data that you have available? Your dissertation doesn't need to be groundbreaking, it needs to be finished. So think of your knowledge like a pile. Every piece of research adds a little bit more. We don't take huge leaps away from the pile, we just add a little bit more to it. If your methodology is so complex you can't realistically complete it, then you gotta scale it back. But if it's too simple to add meaningful contribution, then you need to add depth. Find the middle ground because that is where completion lives. And comment "help" and we will send you the link to our free dissertation help community. You've got this!