Steps to Complete a PhD Dissertation Plan By Lori Garrett-Hatfield, After a doctoral student completes coursework, and passes the comprehensive examination, they will need to develop a dissertation plan, also called the proposal, in order to write the dissertation. A good dissertation plan provides the framework for a good dissertation & bad dissertation plan makes it difficult to write a dissertation that is cohesive and understandable-which makes the time to graduation that much longer.

1. Selecting An Area Of Interest The first step in a student's dissertation plan is to select an

area of interest, or a topic, to research. Keep in mind that whatever topic a student chooses, he will be immersed in that topic for a few years, so he should choose a topic that interests him. Students who are having a difficult time selecting a topic should ask their adviser, and do a literature search to see what research has been done in the area of interest, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).

The Problem

The first section in the dissertation plan is the problem chapter, also called the introduction and background chapter. In this section/chapter, according to the APA, the doctoral student will introduce the general problem that she is trying to research, give the background, and introduce the research questions. The research questions will help the student guide her research. It is important to think about how the research will change the current situation, or help to understand the problem better. Also, while the problem section is the first section in the dissertation plan, it doesn't have to be the first section a doctoral student writes. The student may want to write the literature review first, and then write the problem section.

The Literature Review

The APA identifies the literature review section within the dissertation plan as the section for discussing the topic, introducing key concepts related to the topic, and reviewing the existing literature associated with the topic. The student will need

to be prepared to do a large literature review of books, journals, and the internet on the topic she selected. In many dissertations, the literature review is the longest chapter, so when writing the dissertation plan, keep in mind this section may become a bit unwieldy. GradMatters, a graduate student advice site at Tufts University, suggests using a note-taking program, such as Endnotes or Refworks to keep up with references.

The Methods Section

In the dissertation plan or proposal, the methods section is an outline of the methods the student plans to use to research the topic. By this point, reports the APA, the doctoral student in education or the social sciences should have determined whether or not the dissertation research will be qualitative (which may consist of interviews, observations, or artifacts) or quantitative (which may consist of statistical analysis of surveys). The student will need to have information on who she will research, where, when, and how the data will be collected and analyzed. In the hard sciences, however, the dissertation plan, especially the methodology section, is a bit different. Many times, according to Science Magazine, the doctoral student has completed the research, but needs to write up the research into dissertation plan format. For these students, the methodology part of the plan is actually the easiest to write.