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.

You Need Consistent Research Questions

30 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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0:57

In this brief instructional segment, the presenter emphasizes three key practices for dissertation methodology sections: (1) consistently restating the approved research problem, purpose, and research questions using identical wording throughout the document to avoid committee confusion; (2) clearly describing the overall research design, specifying whether the study is quantitative, qualitative, or mixed; and (3) providing a strong justification for why the chosen design is the most appropriate for answering the stated research questions. The speaker also invites viewers to join a free dissertation help community for further assistance.

Chapters

In your methodology, you're definitely going to restate your problem and your purpose. Now, I want to say restate. That means cut and copy. Exactly. I actually reviewed a document today where the research questions were different everywhere they were put in the document. And that gives questions to the committees. Whoa, you're not doing this. Or were you going that way? So you want to make sure that if you have a research question or a problem or a purpose that's been accepted by your committee, then everywhere you do it, you're using the same words every time. The next thing you want to do is describe your research design. Is it going to be quantitative? Is it going to be qualitative? And why is the approach you're taking the best approach to answer the questions you're asking in your dissertation? If you want help with your dissertation outline, join our free dissertation help community. I'll see you inside.