Lovitts, B., Academe, Nov/Dec 2005, P. 18-23

Table 1. The Characteristics of Dissertations Below are the criteria the focus group members specified for each level of dissertation quality. Outstanding Very Good

• Is original and significant, ambitious, • Is solid brilliant, clear, clever, coherent, compelling, • Is well written and organized concise, creative, elegant, engaging, • Has some original ideas, insight • exciting, interesting, insightful, persuasive, Has a good question or problem that sophisticated, surprising, and thoughtful tends to be small and traditional • Is very well written and organized • Is the next step in a research program • Is synthetic and interdisciplinary (good normal science) • Connects components in a seamless way • Shows understanding and mastery of • Exhibits mature, independent thinking the subject matter • Has a point of view and a strong, • Has a strong, comprehensive, and confident, independent, and authoritative coherent argument voice • Includes well-executed research • Asks new questions or addresses an • Demonstrates technical competence important question or problem • Uses appropriate (standard) theory, • Clearly states the problem and why it is methods, and techniques important • Obtains solid, expected results or • Displays a deep understanding of a answers massive amount of complicated literature • Misses opportunities to completely • Exhibits command and authority over the explore interesting issues and material connections • Argument is focused, logical, rigorous, and • Makes a modest contribution to the sustained field but does not open it up • Is theoretically sophisticated and shows a deep understanding of theory • Has a brilliant research design • Uses or develops new tools, methods, approaches, or types of analyses • Is thoroughly researched • Has rich data from multiple sources • Analysis is comprehensive, complete, sophisticated, and convincing • Results are significant • Conclusion ties the whole thing together • Is publishable in top-tier journals • Is of interest to a larger community and changes the way people think • Pushes the discipline’s boundaries and opens new areas for research

D:\Docs\2018-04-03\0bfd323ee6259ca5d96060e11c61ef80.doc Acceptable Unacceptable • Is workmanlike • Demonstrates technical competence • Is poorly written • Shows the ability to do research • Has spelling and grammatical errors • Is not very original or significant • Has a sloppy presentation • Is not interesting, exciting, or surprising • Contains errors or mistakes • Displays little creativity, imagination, or • Plagiarizes or deliberately misreads or insight misuses sources • Writing is pedestrian and plodding • Does not understand basic concepts, • Has a weak structure and organization processes, or conventions of the discipline • Is narrow in scope • Lacks careful thought • Has a question or problem that is not • Looks at a question or problem that is trivial, exciting—is often highly derivative or an weak, unoriginal, or already solved extension of the adviser’s work • Does not understand or misses relevant • Displays a narrow understanding of the literature field • Has a weak, inconsistent, self-contradictory, • Reviews the literature adequately—knows unconvincing, or invalid argument the literature but is not critical of it or does • Does not handle theory well, or theory is not discuss what is important missing or wrong • Can sustain an argument, but the • Relies on inappropriate or incorrect methods argument is not imaginative, complex, or • Has data that are flawed, wrong, false, convincing fudged, or misinterpreted • Demonstrates understanding of theory at a simple level, and theory is minimally to • Has wrong, inappropriate, incoherent, or competently applied to the problem confused analysis • Uses standard methods • Includes results that are obvious, already • Has an unsophisticated analysis—does known, unexplained, or misinterpreted not explore all possibilities and misses • Has unsupported or exaggerated connections interpretation • Has predictable results that are not • Does not make a contribution exciting • Makes a small contribution

Lovitts, B., Academe, Nov/Dec 2005, p. 18-23

D:\Docs\2018-04-03\0bfd323ee6259ca5d96060e11c61ef80.doc