Conducting Research: How to Write the Introduction to Your Dissertation Proposal

A dissertation proposal (the the final dissertation) begins with the chapter titled: "Introduction". Students have asked me: "How do I write the introduction?" The question deserves an answer. Writing the introduction to a dissertation is no more magical than writing any other part of the work. While students have different styles, and professors have different demands and requirements, the opening chapter is literally what it is called, the introduction. I learned long ago that this chapter is designed to answer a simple question: "What is this study about?" I often recommend that my students use this as their opening sentence..."This study is about...." and succinctly in the first sentence, tell us, the readers, what the whole thing is about. When you are ready to do that, you are ready to write the rest of your dissertation proposal.

After stating in clear language what your study is about, a few more sentences to elaborate the opening sentence should provide the reader with the big picture. Then you are on to the rest of the introduction. I ask my students to lay out the big picture in the paragraphs following. Let me use an example. Lets take an example, and say that a student is studying levels of survivor guilt in adult children in alcoholics. The dissertation proposal begins with "This study is about levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics." Adult children of alcoholics are known to take a great deal of responsibility within their families, and some appear to have difficulties that relate to feeling overly responsible for others, and that give rise to feelings of guilt. (Here we make a few unsubstantiated statements that will be developed in detail, with numerous references to the literature in the literature review). Understanding the role of guilt in this population may contribute to our knowledge related to treatment, when treatment is needed.

From here the story is expanded greatly, and we, the readers, are told why it is important to discover this information --namely, how pervasive is this problem potentially, how many people are we talking about? How many alcoholic families are there in the United States (or Europe, or any specific country, or within any specific population, ethnicity, gender etc, depending on the focus of the study). In other words, the student lays a wider net for the story, describing the bigger issue, providing the context for the study. If the population overall has a very low rate of alcoholism, the reader wants to know that. That would tell us that not many people would be affected by whatever you find out in the study. If there is a large alcoholic population, we want to know that as it would imply there may be many people walking around with this specific problem. You go from the broad figures, demographics of alcoholism, to the more detailed picture, perhaps getting into the rates of alcoholism within sub-populations within the larger culture. How many disadvantaged people compared to how many higher socioeconomic class people suffer from alcoholism? Is this a problem that exists across class, race, ethnicity, gender? Or is it particularly relevant for sub-populations.

You might address some common myths about alcoholism and being the child of alcoholics. You don't get heavily in to the literature, except to reference perhaps a few major studies. You get all the government statistics possible, related to your study. You might give a few examples, to bring a story element to light. While you make the text meaningful, avoid any polemics or hyperbolic writing. You only get to polemicize at the end, if in fact your data, once its collected, confirms whatever hypotheses you might hold. This said, the whole introduction in a sense, is telling a big story. "Here is why I am doing this study, this is why it is important, meaningful," is what what you are saying. If there is a history to the story, a sociopolitical context, here is where we write about it. If there is a biological component to your study, you broadly describe that. You are using broad brush strokes so to speak, so by the end of the introduction the reader is into the story, and wants to find out the answer to the question that the dissertation is posing.

In the study of levels of survivor guilt in adult children of alcoholics, part of establishing the big context might involve discussing guilt in general and the history of knowledge about guilt, or excessive responsibility for others. You might get into the whole issue of dysfunctional families, families where communications are altered by the presence of alcohol or other substances; you might discuss the importance of communication in general, in creating functional family life. You might discuss family communication across cultures. You might suggest an evolutionary aspect to your topic. From telling the reader about rates of alcoholism in the nation, or in the world for that matter, in developed nations and developing nations, and in describing big issues involved, the larger context, you get us, your reader involved. This is your aim.

Towards the end of the introduction, you move in again, to the specific study, and you describe briefly what you are going to do. You might briefly describe your over all design, giving the name to the kind of research design you're using. You end the introduction by a restatement of the first question "What is this study about?" with the hopes that your reader knows a great deal more about your study, why you are doing it, what are the major issues involved, and why it is important. Hopefully, you will have your reader with you, eager to go on, and eager to find out what you discover when you collect your data.