DISSERTATION WRITING: COMPARING PERSPECTIVES
Joanne Riebschleger (2001) wrote an article that was published in Families in Society, in which she chronicled her personal travails in completing her dissertation. Most of the content of this article belongs either (1) in a personal journal where she can bear her soul to herself about how hard her life is or (2) in a Web blog where she can lash out at an unfair world. Fortunately, she makes a point or two that causes the article to be worth reading. The problem in this context with the Reibschleger (2001) article is that most readers probably will not bother to read enough of the article to find the good points. Additionally, Reibschleger's (2001) is solidly focused on quantitative dissertation research, although in the article, she never acknowledges the existence of qualitative dissertation research. Rather, she was so focused on the theory-hypothesis-deductive reasoning approach that a reader should not be criticized for assuming that she was unaware that any other approach existed.
In contrast to Reibschleger's (2001) article, Melinda Swenson (1996) wrote an article that was published in the Journal of Nursing Education that provides a solid basis to allow a reader to comprehend not only what belongs in a proposal for a qualitative (constructivist/interpretivist) dissertation (the stated focus of the article, but also to provide the reader with an understanding of how a qualitative dissertation differs from a quantitative (hypothetico-deductive) dissertation (which she refers to in the article as a conventional dissertation). In reading this article, a reasonable person is likely to conclude that Swenson (1996) is attempting to justify the conduct of qualitative dissertations, as well as providing an understanding of the elements necessary for developing a formal proposal for the conduct of such research. The problem with the Swenson (1996) article in relation to justifying...