Dr. Steve Tippins describes a graduate student who spent thousands of dollars collecting data after the dissertation committee rejected the experimental design. The student ignored the request to redesign, and the data couldn't be defended because the design was never formally approved. Always get committee approval before you start.
I once served as a committee member for a student who came to defend their proposal, and the committee said, "Your experimental design isn't correct to answer your research questions, so please redesign that." And the student was given some suggestions. And then since I was a third committee member on this, I didn't hear back on anything on this. I assumed the chair was doing things. And a year later, the student submitted a completed study that had never been approved and had never made any changes and had spent thousands of dollars collecting data and hours analyzing the data, but the experimental design was off. So the student had to be told, okay, but you can't defend this because it's never been approved. So this is an important part of your process. Drop the word help in the comments below, and I'll send you the link to my free dissertation help community.
