Letter to a Young Researcher

Dear X, Although the decade of the 50s is said to be the youth of old age, I have noted that with its dawning intimations of mortality comes a nearly irrepressible impulse to offer unsolicited advice--a habit to which professors are, in any case, particularly disposed and that becomes increasingly pronounced the longer we remain in the business of professing. When offered condescendingly, without due consideration of the values and circumstances of the targeted recipient, by a person held in less than high esteem, or at a time when a student such as yourself is ill-prepared to consider it, advice-giving is often ineffective and even counterproductive. That said, good advice is a key component of quality mentoring. I am honored that you asked me for career advice that might enhance your development and ensure your professional success. First, let us turn to Four questions about doctoral education. You asked, "How should I spend my final two years in the doctoral program?" A few thoughts occur to me immediately. First, it is essential that you dedicate yourself to becoming a true expert in a relatively narrow but substantively important practice issue, such that when you leave the program you are fully conversant with the scientific literature in that area. Such study (which can include the reading of scores to hundreds of scientific reports) will provide invaluable exposure to the research designs, measures, statistical approaches, conceptual issues, and substantive conclusions in your chosen field of research. It is important that the area you select be relatively narrow, because science has grown so rapidly in recent decades that it can be well-nigh impossible to develop expertise in broad substantive domains. For example, there are thousands of alcohol dependence treatment outcome studies; thus, a more appropriate area in which to gain expertise might be brief motivational interventions for treatment of alcohol abuse and dependence. Some students will narrow their interests to a particular client subpopulation, such as pregnant women with cocaine dependence. The end product of this study should be one or more published review articles addressing substantive findings and methodological issues in the selected area of study. This undertaking will also provide a useful introduction to a key orientation that the neophyte scientist should develop: All scientific work should result in published products. You are worried that you will not be able to identify a research question for your dissertation. I assure you that intensive study of published scientific reports in an appropriately selected area will yield more ideas for research than you know what to do with and knowledge of the methods by which to investigate them. Substantive expertise acquired during the doctoral years is an asset that researchers frequently draw on throughout their careers; conversely, failure to acquire such knowledge often constitutes a career-long impediment. In the future, you will be competing for grants and other professional opportunities with professionals who do possess such expertise. It is also critical to consider the long-term implications of your choice of dissertation topic. An ideal topic is one that fits well within the purview of the profession, that is fundable over the near and long term, and that evidences some (but not too much) current research activity. It is easier to build on an existing body of research than to create one de novo, but heavily researched fields like delinquency or substance abuse can be hard to break into because the literatures are voluminous, and it can difficult to determine what has and has not been done before. In addition to substantive expertise, it is vital to acquire certain analytic and technical skills. During your final two years in our program, I recommend that you take a course or otherwise gain expertise in meta-analysis and related methods of data synthesis. …