After having reviewed many dissertations over the past 15 years, I have noticed an emergent scholar-practitioner trend of extracting data from quantitative dissertations in order to support an argument or conclusion - which may, or may not be, the most accurate assessment of your work. Moreover, the author of the dissertation may also need to copy/paste the tables into a scholarly article at some point in their academic career. For these and other reasons, be sure to label your data tables well! The following guidelines are offered to remind the scholar-practitioner of the importance of well labeled data tables.

                Be sure to include (at least) the:

1)      Definitions of all terms used in the tables.

2)      Purpose/title of the table.

3)      Source and date of the data and analysis.

4)      Sample size and the population from which the sample was taken.

5)      Confidence level used in t-tests.

6)      Exclusion of any "outlier" or strange/incorrect data.

7)      All data collection techniques, and relevant analyses, of any conclusions included in your dissertation tables.

This is, of course, a very rudimentary list of the necessary components of data analysis. However, if you remember to follow these seven points, your quantitative dissertation will be off to a great start in regard to meaningful and value-added data analysis!

Daniel J. Smith, MA, MBA, PhD

[email protected]

480.861.8851 (cell)