Dissertation Design – EDCO 900

Course Description

A review of the process of developing research designs and conducting primary research. Students will develop a research prospectus that is anchored in current theory and research in the community counseling context which will serve as a basis for their doctoral dissertation proposal.

Rationale

Counselors are increasingly required to demonstrate the efficacy of their interventions and treatment strategies. Within the helping profession, there is increasing pressure to provide treatments that are evidence-based. It is no longer professionally acceptable for counselors to rely simply on their experience and previous training in a particular theory or approach to counseling to treat specific kinds of clinical problems such as depression, anxiety, and addictions. We are currently in an era of accountability. This accountability also applies to professional Christian counselors, as the profession will face growing demands to demonstrate efficacy. Moreover, the field of Christian counseling and community care makes knowledge claims about human behavior, developmental processes, spirituality and mental health functioning, and the importance of close relationships. If we believe our knowledge claims have practical, real-life applications, Christian academia has a responsibility to demonstrate that these knowledge claims can have practical applications that can be empirically validated. To this end, doctoral level practitioners and academics must be able to appropriately consume the current scientific research such that they can identify potential strengths and weaknesses of research reports and understand how such data can be interpreted and generalized to areas of interests. The purpose of this course is designed to help students acquire an advanced understanding of research design and statistical techniques necessary to not only understand and consume the scientific literature in and around the field of counseling an community care, but to also produce a high quality doctoral dissertation that meaningfully contributes to the scientific literature.

Course Assignment

Course Requirement Checklist

After reading the Course Syllabus and Student Expectations, the student will complete the related checklist found in the Course Overview.

The student will submit the dissertation topic direction which he/she is planning to research and refine.

Quizzes: Article Notes (5)

The student will identify an area of interest, search the online library databases, and carefully acquire and read 50 different peer-reviewed articles throughout the course relating to this topic. The student will select 50 or more peer-reviewed articles related to their topic to create article notes. These may be from EDCO 770 course (previously EDCO 737) bibliography (if the student has previously taken the course). Most of the articles should be relatively recent (last 10 years). The student will create one or more notes for each citation and submit 10 articles per quiz. Notes must include a citation and a few sentences to a paragraph for each article. Each quiz will contain 1 file upload question, allows 1 attempt, and has no time limit.

Literature Review Outline Assignment

Based on what the student found in their article notes, they will create an outline for a potential literature review. The review should include brief statements from at least 20 article notes under appropriate sections of the outline.

Literature Review Draft Assignment

Based on what the student has found in researching their topic (article notes, lit review outline), they will develop a literature review rough draft. The review must be 15-20 pages of empirically-based, critical writing and include at least 25 sources.

Literature Review Final Assignment

The student will update their literature review draft based on the instructor's feedback. The Literature Review Final Assignment should be 15-20 pages of empirically based, critical writing and contain at least 25 sources.

Methods Draft Assignment

The student will write up a draft Methods for their study. The draft should be 5-10 pages in length.

Methods Final Assignment

The student will write a 5-10-page Methods Final Assignment for their developing research project. The student will update their Methods draft based on the instructor's feedback.

Quiz: CITI Training

Students will complete CITI training, which is an online training course on ethics in research. To complete training, follow the instructions on this website: https://www.liberty.edu/graduate/institutional-review-board/collaborative-institutional-training-initiative/

CITI training allows users to select which subjects to complete, and students only need to complete the social and behavioral researchers’ sections for this course. If students have previously completed CITI training within the last two years, they do not need to complete it again if they submit proof of completion.

Quiz

The student will submit the dissertation pairing form in order to be matched with a dissertation chair and reader.