Steven S Veach

As part of my Doctor of Theology program at Forge Theological Seminary I am completing several preliminary foundational “seminars,” including reading through several books on dissertation development and production and developing overall research familiarity.

This book in particular, Writing a Proposal for Your Dissertation was one of the first books I finished after starting the ThD program and I will post this review on my ThD e-Portfolio.

So, let’s jump in and see if there are any secrets to writing a perfect dissertation proposal….

Overall Impression of the Book

A dissertation proposal was one of those things I really didn’t know much about before I was admitted into a doctoral program. I certainly wasn’t exposed to them in undergrad, and my Master’s program did not prepare me at all for this kind of work. But, this is the age of the Internet and anything one wants to learn requires a simple Google search to find any number of blog posts, Youtube videos and the like discussing a topic in detail. This is what I did, too. As well as select several books to read on the subject.

This specific book is a little different than most of the titles available today. Rather than painting with broad brushes over the entire PhD process, it instead focuses in on the Proposal itself and does a pretty good job of it.

From Chapter 1 to 7, this manual describes in detail the process of writing a dissertation proposal, from working with the Problem Statement, Research Questions, Hypotheses, to conducting and writing up a Literature Review as well as what kinds of research can be conducted on a given subject.

Many Examples

The book even has examples in the appendixes of each major section. I personally have always found modeling the best method for learning new types of writing techniques and formats so I can see how these back matter material could be very useful.

The author covers in three chapters the different approaches to research, whether Quantitative or Qualitative or a mixture of both and also does a very adequate job of exploring the basic fundamentals of the document overall.

Should Not be Read as You Write

Though this book is quite good overall, it does need to be said, I have not read it completely through, and there is a reason for that. When I started this book I was waiting for my admissions meeting with the Seminary I was eventually admitted to and I had not started my project officially. But a few weeks later I was admitted and the first requirement was the dissertation Proposal.

Needless to say, once I began the research and writing simultaneously with reading through this book, the writing became priority and it quickly overtook the book. Before I even realized it I submitted my proposal and I no longer had a need to read this text anymore. So, needless to say, although I would certainly recommend this book to new doctoral students, I would also suggest reading it before you start actually writing your proposal. If you try to do both at the same time, you will most likely end up with similar results.