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Top 10 Questions - PHD Oral Exam

The document provides a list of 10 common questions that PhD candidates should prepare for during their oral exam defense. These questions focus on demonstrating the original contribution and value of the candidate's research, explaining how the research topic was chosen and how its scope was defined, discussing the methods and data used, relating the findings to the existing literature in the field, and considering implications and future directions for research. Preparing thorough answers to these fundamental questions can help candidates avoid being surprised and effectively communicate the importance and innovation of their work to the examining committee.

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263 views4 pages

Top 10 Questions - PHD Oral Exam

The document provides a list of 10 common questions that PhD candidates should prepare for during their oral exam defense. These questions focus on demonstrating the original contribution and value of the candidate's research, explaining how the research topic was chosen and how its scope was defined, discussing the methods and data used, relating the findings to the existing literature in the field, and considering implications and future directions for research. Preparing thorough answers to these fundamental questions can help candidates avoid being surprised and effectively communicate the importance and innovation of their work to the examining committee.

Uploaded by

mitusic popa
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Top ten questions for the PhD

oral exam
A checklist of ‘viva’ issues that always come up
When you have finally finished writing a PhD dissertation or thesis,
and submitted it to the university for review, you are at the end of a
long period of grappling with dozens of tricky and detailed
problems and issues. For instance, how to upgrade the dodgy
paragraph on page 102; what the sources were for Figure 5.7; or how
to best (re-)phrase your hypotheses or expectations so as to fit the
research you actually did. Perhaps for some weeks after submission
these kinds of concerns will buzz around your head. They may even
prompt you to lie awake at night rehearsing answers to the
examiners, if they should ask about why you did x at one point,
instead of y.

Yet an oral examination of a doctorate (a ‘viva’ in British parlance)


is rarely just an exercise in ‘Spot the problem’/ ‘Frame an answer’
mode. Many PhDers are surprised to find themselves immersed in a
far more generalist (albeit still highly professional) conversation
than they had initially anticipated. To prepare effectively for the big
day and avoid being blind-sided you may need to change mindset a
lot. The oral exam is a crucial session where you almost always need
to reconnect with some fundamental themes and claims in your
work. You need to think ahead to the issues that examiners often
have when they read unfamiliar work, implemented in a way that is
new to them. Their concerns generally revolve around: Is this
legitimate innovation and focusing? Or it it instead somewhat
weird? PhD examiners are guardians of the professional temple, so
these issues weigh a lot with them. (These sit alongside some more
prosaic concerns, like checking you really did the work yourself, and
that you did all that you say you have). The opportunity to meet you
in person is key to assuaging these wider concerns.

Here’s where the Top 10 list of questions below can come in useful,
as a frame to encourage you to think wider and more generally
about the professional conversation to come.

Value-added and originality


• What are the most original (or value-added) parts of your
thesis?

• Which propositions or findings would you say are distinctively


your own?

• How do you think your work takes forward or develops the


literature in this field?

• What are the ‘bottom line’ conclusions of your research? How


innovative or valuable are they? What does your work tell us
that we did not know before?

Origins and the scope of the research


• Can you explain how you came to choose this topic for your
doctorate What was it that first interested you about it? How did
the research focus change over time?

• Why have you defined the final topic in the way you did? What
were some of the difficulties you encountered and how did they
influence how the topic was framed? What main problems or
issues did you have in deciding what was in-scope and out-of-
scope?

Methods
• What are the core methods used in this thesis? Why did you
choose this approach? In an ideal world, are there different
techniques or other forms of data and evidence that you’d have
liked to use?

Data or information
• What are the main sources or kinds of evidence? Are they strong
enough in terms of their quantity and quality to sustain the
conclusions that you draw? Do the data or information you
consider appropriately measure or relate to the theoretical
concepts, or underlying social or physical phenomena, that you
are interested in?

Findings
• How do your findings fit with or contradict the rest of the
literature in this field? How do you explain the differences of
findings, or estimation, or interpretation between your work
and that of other authors?

What next?
• What are the main implications or lessons of your research for
the future development of work in this specific sub-field? Are
there any wider implications for other parts of the discipline?
Do you have ‘next step’ or follow-on research projects in mind?

To put these ideas in a wider context, you might also find it helpful to
read parts of my book: Patrick Dunleavy, ‘Authoring a PhD’ (Palgrave,
2003), especially the chapter on ‘the endgame’ of finishing a doctorate.
On Twitter, see also @Write4Research
WRITTEN BY

Writing For Research


Writing creative non-fiction at a research level is hard, skilled work,
across all disciplines. Here Prof Patrick Dunleavy (LSE) collates some
helpful resources

PUBLISHED IN

Advice for authoring a PhD or academic book


A collection of resources that provide real practical help for researchers
writing creative non-fiction. See also: @Write4Research

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