Authoring a PhD

CORE
Breadth of coverage
sequence of chapters
Figure 3.2
The focus down model

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as unmanageable. Gradually a focus on something resembling
the much narrower final topic is reached. At this point there is
often an interregnum of methodological throat clearing, or a
chapter discussing some underbrush of other ‘confuser’ topics.
By now readers are often deep into the thesis, maybe three, four
or five chapters in. At last the author moves on to presenting
the substance of their own research, which normally concerns
only a small part of their initially sketched topic. These core
results sections come late on in the overall text. After the core
chapters there is often little space or time for authors to do
more than pull together a quick analysis chapter. Anyway most
of the possible theoretical interpretations relevant to the find-
ings have usually been exhaustively discussed already some-
where in the vast literature review zone at the beginning. So the
final chapter is typically scanty, making only brief links from
the author’s own findings or substantive contribution back to
the opening discussion of macro-themes.
The adverse effects of the focus down model on thesis
authors are difficult to overstate. Research students typically
spend far too long on their initial literature reviews or surveys,
trawling previous work, and often becoming engrossed in col-
lecting small argumentative angles or comprehensive refer-
ences. People can waste a great deal of time on gathering and
understanding information about subtopics which later get cut
out of the core focus of their PhD, or on appreciating contro-
versies and viewpoints which then turn out to be tangential to
their eventual research question. In the classical PhD model,
with a ‘big book’ thesis as end product, the efficiency of your
research effort can be measured by the proportion of your total
work that shows up in some form in the finished thesis. The
focus down model makes the normal ‘tip of the iceberg’ prob-
lem much worse, often to the extent of writing off much of a
year’s effort, or even 18 months’ work in extreme cases.
Of course there is often some kind of pedagogic or socializa-
tion rationale for making beginning students ‘cut their teeth’
on a literature review. But more commonly the insistence on a
focus down structure reflects supervisory or departmental
imperatives. Supervisors favour the approach because it allows
them to ‘read themselves in’ on their student’s new and differ-
ent topic more gradually. This way of doing things also has
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‘safety first’ appeal for bureaucratic reasons. Students who are
made to do a big literature review in their first year almost
always generate a reassuring bulk of text, which offers proof of
their application and hard work. Composing it also gives them
practice in writing skills, even if the text produced has (can
have) little original content. This course also makes it easier for
departments to assess beginning students’ progress, following 
a maxim of: ‘Never mind the content, feel the width of text.’
In the classical PhD model, where there was little or no 
formal research training via coursework, literature reviews his-
torically helped socialize new researchers into the discipline.
This past function is increasingly disappearing now, because
virtually all PhD students have masters degrees and most PhD
programmes have strong coursework elements. But what super-
visors did in their youth still tends to influence their current
expectations. Also completing a literature review is now some-
thing that students can conveniently be asked to do while they
are being tied down to stay at the university by the new
coursework demands.
But letting this period of your research go on much beyond
your first four or five months will typically show sharply dimin-
ishing returns to effort. Students often become preoccupied
with perfecting shallow, secondary criticisms of existing work.
This pastime may have little scholarly value, but people get
locked into it because they have not yet begun their substantive
or field research, and hence they still imperfectly understand
the practical difficulties of doing so. Students often write litera-
ture review chapters in a perfectionist tone, fastening terrier-
like on smallish deficiencies of previous work without realizing
the extent to which similar difficulties are likely to recur in
their own research.
The alternative possibility to wasted effort is that once peo-
ple have expended precious research time on extraneous ele-
ments, they may be unwilling to cut this material out. Instead
they try to cram it in somewhere in their final thesis. Students
are understandably reluctant to write off already completed
chapters, even if this work has ceased to connect with their cur-
rent research interests or central question. Instead they feel that
they have to commit more time to keeping their early chapters
integrated into the final thesis, even when the linkage is bogus,
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creates misleading expectations amongst readers, or imperils
the intellectual coherence of their doctorate. Long early sec-
tions, written in their beginning years, are also frequently 
scattered with hostages to fortune, calculated to alienate exam-
iners. Sloppy critical judgements or superficial treatments in
these chapters are often not reappraised later on, partly because
the student’s own accumulating research experience and expert-
ise may no longer relate to them closely.
The implications for readers are equally unfortunate.
Experienced PhD examiners are inured to slow-starting theses.
They will usually page through opening literature review chapters
quite quickly, not expecting to see much that is not already thor-
oughly familiar. But if they get 80, 100 or 150 pages into the 
thesis (or even 200 pages in some instances) without meeting
any value-added material at all, their patience will typically
begin to wear thin. They may begin to question the originality
of a thesis with so much secondary analysis included and to
wonder if it really meets the standard for a doctorate. Students
often imagine that readers will closely scrutinize their small
critical comments and discussions in early chapters and ascribe
them far more importance than they actually will. To get a
more realistic view, think about how you approach books in
your own field. Most of us are quite cynical and critical with
new stuff, prepared to ‘gut’ books for their real value-added 
elements. We are also initially rather sceptical of accepting
authors’ judgements 
until
they have established their credibility
as original researchers. Readers of PhDs are no different. They
will tend to see your secondary analysis commenting on other
people’s work as pretty lightweight or dispensable until you
have established your own credentials as an original researcher.
At an early stage in the thesis they still have no reason to take
you seriously, or to believe that your criticisms are grounded in
an awareness of research realities.
When readers do eventually reach the author’s own research
materials in the focus down model, their narrowness or detailed
specificity may seem quite disappointing after the wide sweep
of work and flashier intellectual themes initially discussed. And
the speedy wrap-up ending to the thesis, inadequately linked
back to the introductory themes, may leave readers asking ‘so
what?’ and struggling to work out what they have learned from
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the thesis as a whole. The whole effect may be that the thesis
ends ‘not with a bang, but a whimper’.