What Counts as Data in a Dissertation?

22 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this instructional monologue, Steve Tippins Ph.D. explains that data collection is a fundamental step in any dissertation or research project, but data are not limited to numerical values. He expands the definition of data to include people's thoughts, words, and any textual material that can be analyzed, such as novels, newspaper articles, or political coverage. He highlights content analysis as a common qualitative method for examining existing written sources. Tippins emphasizes that the choice of data collection techniques must flow from the research problem and the methodological approach chosen to address that problem, underscoring the link between problem definition, method selection, and the type of data gathered.

Chapters

In order to do a dissertation or research really of any kind, you have to collect data. That does not mean always that you're collecting numbers. It could be that you're collecting people's thoughts or words. And sometimes the collecting of data is things like content analysis or analysis of things that have been written by others, whether it be novels or newspaper publications about politics, things like that. Somewhere, somehow, you've got to come up with data because in research we're basically creating new knowledge. And since we're creating new knowledge, it means we have to take something, synthesize it, analyze it, however we're doing it, in order to get those results out there. So when we're talking about data collection, it depends upon your method that you're going to be using. And your method, just to go before data collection, is going to be based on the problem you're researching.