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Dissertation Research--Planning, Researching, Publishing

This guide was created to help GWU doctoral students in researching and writing their dissertation

Choosing Your Topic

In his book, Writing the Doctoral Dissertation (pp. 61-63), Gordon Davis (1997) identifies several useful sources for identifying your topic:

  • Current events
  • Suggestions for research from past dissertations
  • Suggestions for research by authorities in the field
  • Expressions of need for research by practitioners in a field
  • Generally accepted, but unproved, suppositions
  • Unproved or weakly proved assertions by an authority in the field
  • Theories and concepts without supporting research
  • Different approaches to testing of important results

Other Helpful Research Guides at GW Libraries

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