Guidelines for Preparing a Doctoral Dissertation

Department of Marketing and General Business

New Mexico State University

Spring 1995

1. TITLE

The title should reflect a topic that relates to marketing theory and practice. The title should be concise yet explicit, and reflect the problem under investigation. Good titles contain roughly eight words. If a colon appears in the title, the phrase after the colon should modify the last word or notion that precedes the colon.

1.1 Dedication and acknowledgments are optional.

2. ABSTRACT

The abstract is a brief, substantive summary of your dissertation. It should briefly outline the problem you are investigating, your methodological approach, and your empirical findings.

3. CHAPTER 1: LAYING THE FOUNDATION

Chapter 1 should contain:

3.0 A chapter preview.

3.1. A brief background discussion of the major topic addressed in your dissertation. It should succinctly address why research on this topic is important, as well as what is known and unknown about this topic.

3.2. A statement of the purpose and scope of your dissertation, which should follow from 3.1. This statement should be crystal clear and leave no doubt about the nature of your dissertation.

3.3. A brief overview of your research question(s), which should follow from 3.2.

3.4. An explicit statement of your research hypotheses or research propositions, which should follow from 3.3. This explicit statement should contain:

3.4.1. your major hypotheses, which follow from 3.3; and

3.4.2. your sub-hypotheses, which should be logically related to 3.4.1.

Furthermore, your hypotheses should:

3.4.3. be interrelated and integrated into a cohesive whole;

3.4.4. express the posited relationships between/among the concepts and/or variables of interest;

3.4.5. be testable (i.e., serve as the basis for statistical analysis of your data);

3.4.6. anchor an exhaustive review of the literature about the concepts and/or variables of interest; and

3.4.7. be provocative (i.e., be motivated by more than "no one's examined them before").

(In other words, you should base your hypotheses on a combination of empirical studies and logic.)

3.5. A detailed statement that justifies your dissertation. This statement should address how your research will close a current gap in marketing theory and marketing practice.

3.6. A summary of Chapter 1 and a brief description of the chapters that follow.

4. CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE

Chapter 2 should contain:

4.0 A chapter preview.

4.1. A bridge to the discussion in Chapter 1.

4.2. An exhaustive review of extant literature that:

4.2.1. tightly focuses on the key concepts, theories, or variables, addressed in your dissertation (i.e., avoid exposition tangentially related to your research question(s));

4.2.2. defines key concepts, theories, or variables, addressed in your dissertation (if applicable); and

4.2.3. offers the rationale for your hypotheses. Your review should describe the strengths and weaknesses of the extant literature so that the hypotheses you develop in Chapter 3 will seem logical and obvious.

4.2.4 offer the rationale for undertaking your study.

4.3. A summary of Chapter 2 and a bridge to Chapter 3.

4.4. Notes:

4.4.1. Avoid any exposition about your own ideas (unless they pertain to your cites, e.g., Jones (1995) improved the model proposed by Smith (1985)).

4.4.2. If possible, first summarize the literature in one or more tables, and then identify any interesting patterns (e.g., methods effects, typical research approaches) in your exposition.

5. CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN

Chapter 3 should contain:

5.0 A chapter preview.

5.1. A bridge to the discussion in Chapter 2.

5.2. General conceptual framework, theory or model. Discuss your framework, theory, or model. Include any assumptions that you made. Also explain how you restricted your focus to specific variables and processes.

5.3. Hypotheses. Based on your framework and literature review, systematically develop each hypothesis (using both citations and logic). Explain how your hypotheses, if supported, would verify your proposed model. Only cite literature that supports your arguments. Avoid further review of the literature (because you have already reviewed the literature in Chapter 2).

5.4. Proposed data collection procedure(s). If you collect primary data, describe your collection method(s). If you analyze secondary data, describe the data and the way that it was collected. Also explain why you used these procedures.

5.5. Sample design. A discussion of your sample design should include:

5.5.1. sample selection procedures (including sample frame);

5.5.2. sample size;

5.5.3. sample representativeness;

5.5.4. limitations of your sample; and

5.5.5. justification for your choice of sample design.

5.6. Operationalization of measures. Describe and justify how you measured the constructs presented in your hypotheses.

5.7. Research instrument. Provide a detailed description and discussion of your research instrument. Include any questionnaire pretest results.

5.8. Statistical analysis (optional, and could be shifted to Chapter 4). Indicate the statistical techniques you used to test your hypotheses and/or to analyze your data. Include a brief technical discussion of each statistical method you used and justify its choice; this may require a brief discussion of the type of data that you collected, your research question(s), and prior studies that used similar procedures on similar data.

5.9. A summary of Chapter 3 and a bridge to Chapter 4.

6. CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

Chapter 4 should contain:

6.0 A chapter preview.

6.1. A bridge to the discussion in Chapter 3.

6.2. Data collection procedures. Describe your survey, response rates, problems encountered, and the like. If the response rate(s) were low, explain why. Again, justify your procedures.

6.3. Noteworthy occurrences during and after data collection (e.g., unusual responses, unusual patterns of missing data, subjects unfooled by your cover story).

6.4. Sample. Summarize:

6.4.1 the salient characteristics (e.g., demographics) of your sample (i.e., provide a univariate analysis of your data);

6.4.2 the representativeness of your sample to the population you wished to study; and

6.4.3. the results of any tests that compared respondents to nonrespondents.

6.5. Preliminary analytical issues, such as:

6.5.1. the reliability and validity of your measures;

6.5.2. analytical diagnostics (Report checks for multicollinearity and violations of assumptions underlying the analytical techniques you used, such as normality and heteroscedasticity.);

6.5.3. data transformations (Describe any transformations, such as centering, recoding, creating indices, and the like, that you made based on 6.5.1 and 6.5.2.); and

6.5.4. preliminary runs of your model made to test the stability of parameters and the like.

6.6. Model tests, such as goodness of fit measures, F-tests, and the like. If you test full and reduced models, provide a comparison.

6.7. Hypothesis tests. Provide a detailed description of how each hypothesis was tested and the result. Provide a separate subsection for each hypothesis.

6.8. Summary of results.

6.9. A summary of Chapter 4 and a bridge to Chapter 5.

7. CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Chapter 5 should contain:

7.0 A chapter preview.

7.1. A bridge to the discussion in Chapter 4.

7.2. Discussion of results. Provide a detailed discussion of the results you reported in Chapter 4. If your hypotheses were unsupported, explain why. Your discussion should be thought-provoking and should go beyond a mere restatement of your results.

7.3. Implications of results. This discussion should include:

7.3.1. analytical and methodological implications;

7.3.2. theoretical implications; and

7.3.3. managerial implications.

7.4. Contribution of your study. Summarize the contribution of your dissertation to the marketing and related literatures.

7.5. Limitations of your study. Describe the methodological and theoretical limitations of your dissertation.

7.6. Recommendations for future research. Based on your findings, identify related topics and problems that require further study.

7.7. A summary of Chapter 5 and a brief conclusion.

8. REFERENCES AND APPENDICES

If applicable, your appendices should include:

8.1 All screening questionnaires.

8.2 All cover letters and other ancillary materials.

8.3 All measurement instruments.