The Purpose of this Site

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I'm Dr. Steve Terrell and, for over 30 years, I have taught coursework focusing on research methods and statistics, and helped over 100 students finish their doctoral dissertation. Throughout all of that time, and working with all of those students, I have learned quite a bit about what it takes to help a student successfully finish their doctoral degree. 

My goal here is to use what I've learned to help you start, and finish, your doctoral dissertation. This begins with learning to write a Proposal for your work. To do this, you will learn how to identify and write a Problem Statement to guide your work. It will also include other critical components such as research questions, hypotheses, a review of literature focusing on your area of interest, and a methodology for conducting a study to investigate the problem area you’ve identified. In addition to the information from the web-site, there are downloadable presentations for your use. . 

I focus on the Proposal simply because it provides a "road map" for the research that you want to conduct. In order to help, I've written Writing a Proposal for Your Dissertation - Guidelines and Examples, focusing on the topics I just mentioned and providing "real world" examples from prior student dissertations, the work I've done and other written resources. 

Once your Proposal is completed and approved, resources identified in this web-site will guide you in conducting your research, analyzing the data you collected and reporting your results. These, combined with material from the Proposal, constitute your Dissertation Report, the capstone publication of your doctoral career! 

As my dissertation chair told me, the results of a research study are only as meaningful as a valid plan for your research, and how well it is conducted. I want to help you do both!