A fundamental expectation for dissertations is that the problem that will be studied is an important one. It should be one that is worthy of substantial inquiry, one that is warrants investigation due to its centrality to the field of study or to issues of practice. The problem may, for example, be a significant one due to it's contributing new knowledge to a central question in the field, its relationship to an important problem of practice, its having implications for social policies, its creating a new instrument for addressing a question, or for a range of other reasons 2 . A second expectation for dissertations is that they will be thoroughly embedded in the research literature on the topics selected for investigation. The specification of the problem will reflect a deep understanding and analysis of the research literature.
Research involves an element of discovering new knowledge.
Hence, a third expectation is that all dissertations will involve original investigation. This may mean the collection and analysis of original data, re-analysis of existing data, or other forms of original analysis related to the problem selected for investigation. Research designs may take many forms for discovering new knowledge. They may be descriptive, exploratory, or experimental, for example, and may use many types of qualitative or quantitative data 4 . A fourth and related expectation is that a dissertation will set out to find new answers to the question being explored.