Experienced dissertation consultants are well aware of a handful of what they consider “dreaded comments” from committee reviewers. These are the committee comments that typically require extensive reworking of the developing dissertation manuscript to fully address—hence the dread factor. For example, weeks if not months of rewriting the literature review chapter are often required to address the single, odious comment: “This reads like an annotated bibliography. Needs synthesis.” Given that most of our dissertation consulting clients are already juggling the multiple demands of work, family, and graduate studies, the prospect of doing a total rewrite of this 30- to 40-page chapter has understandably sent some running for the hills! 
Another one that resides near the top of the “Most Dreaded Comments” list goes something like this: “Your topic does not align with a qualitative research method. Change your proposal to quantitative.” If you have received this comment yourself, you know how cringe-worthy this one is! The instruction to change research method is more common than you might imagine, and it is NOT a welcome comment to receive—especially if you’ve completed all three of your proposal chapters and are hoping for the green light to apply for IRB approval any day.
In fact, we’ve heard more than once from our dissertation assistance clients that they were on the verge of quitting their doctoral programs because they were so stressed out by facing this horrid comment. We can definitely sympathize, but we encourage you to persevere—there is hope! Most of our dissertation assistance clients who were instructed to change from a qualitative research method to quantitative (or vice versa) weren’t sure where to start. So, we’ve put together this compilation of advice from our dissertation coaches on how to handle this unpleasant comment. We hope this helps!
Dissertation Coach Tip #1: Keep As Much As Possible!
As novice researchers, doctoral candidates are often unsure of what a change of research method will actually entail. Some of our dissertation consulting clients were completely overwhelmed, as they were under the impression that they needed to rewrite their proposals completely (perish the thought!). Some were less fazed, believing that they just needed to revise the purpose, research questions, and a few sections of the methods chapter. The truth is that the required revisions typically lie somewhere between these two poles, so if you find yourself facing this challenge and are fearing a total rewrite, rest easy.
The bottom line is that because you have invested so heavily already, you definitely want to retain as much of your work as possible. And you can! But, whether you are changing from a qualitative research method to quantitative or the other way around, a change in research method will almost certainly affect how your topic itself is conceptualized and presented. Because alignment is required throughout all aspects of your proposal, from introduction through literature review through methods, changing your method will require topic-related revisions that go beyond merely changing your purpose and research questions. Unfortunately, some of your previous work will need to be scrapped, but our dissertation coaches have shared advice on how to make your revisions as surgical as possible.
Dissertation Coach Tip #2: Start With Revising the Problem Statement
As the problem statement is the foundation for your whole study (Ellis & Levy, 2008), it makes the most sense to start your revisions here. Although the problem statement does not specify the method and design in most cases, the way it is constructed does have implications for the methodology employed. Our dissertation coaches suggest that considering the following questions may help you to assess your problem statement.
Question: If switching from a qualitative research method to quantitative, do you need to specify any additional variables? Because qualitative research is more exploratory than quantitative research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015), it is likely that the phenomenon of interest you had constructed for your qualitative exploration will need further definition in terms of quantifiable variables. Let’s consider an example, imagining that you were originally planning a qualitative phenomenological exploration of childcare workers’ interpretations of how supervisor fairness affected their experiences on the job.
| Problem Statement Excerpt: Qualitative Phenomenological |
Revised Problem Statement Excerpt: Quantitative Correlational |
| Additional research is needed to better understand how childcare workers perceive supervisor fairness and how this influences their experiences on the job. | Additional research is needed to determine the relationship between organizational justice and job satisfaction among childcare workers. |
As the result of this change in research method, qualitative analysis of perceptions of “supervisor fairness” and “experiences on the job” has shifted to statistical analysis of the relationship between two established quantitative variables (i.e., organizational justice and job satisfaction). Because the focus of your study has not changed drastically, it is possible that you had already discussed concepts related to organizational justice and job satisfaction previously in the problem statement; however, you will need to revise the statement as necessary to ensure that the problem and its adverse effects reflect the latest research on these specific variables, not just concepts related to these variables.
Question: If switching from a quantitative to qualitative research method, are there variables that no longer apply? As we saw in the above example, quantitative studies require that you identify previously defined, quantifiable variables for your statistical analysis (Bernard, 2013). With qualitative research methods, however, the phenomena of interest typically revolve around participants’ perspectives and experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015), which may or may not relate to established variables. For this reason, if you are tasked with changing your quantitative dissertation proposal to qualitative, you might need to eliminate some of the variables you have specified. It may help to consider another example, this time of an originally quantitative correlational approach that the committee wants changed to a qualitative research method.
| Problem Statement Excerpt: Quantitative Correlational |
Revised Problem Statement Excerpt: Qualitative Case Study |
| Additional research is needed to determine the relationships between ethical leadership, psychological contract breach, and retention among nurses. | Additional research is needed to better understand how nurses perceive ethical dimensions of the workplace as influencing their decisions to remain in their positions. |
As with the previous example, the research topic stayed in the same “ballpark” after the change to a qualitative research method. You are still interested in nurses’ perceptions of ethicality and how this influences their decisions to stay in their jobs, and so your previous discussion of ethical leadership and retention in your problem statement may still align with your new focus. But, references to psychological contract breach no longer make sense within the problem statement, and so any previous reference to this variable will need to be removed.
Question: Do the sources you have cited for your research gap still apply? A viable research gap is an essential for gaining approval of your proposed research topic, and you substantiate the research gap by citing at least three studies in which researchers made recommendations for future research in areas related to your topic. Provided that your topic stays generally the same, you may be able to use some—maybe even all—of the research gap sources from your original gap statement. A tip from our dissertation coaches, however, is to not make this assumption.
Instead, go back to your research gap sources to see what exactly the researchers recommended in terms of future research. In some cases, researchers make recommendations for future research using specific methods to fill in knowledge gaps left by their studies. For example, researchers may specifically recommend future statistical analysis to test the relationships between variables that were suggested by their qualitative analysis findings. In such cases, you clearly cannot use a recommendation for statistical analysis for your gap statement if you plan to use a qualitative research method to explore the topic.
Other cases are less clear-cut. Examples may help to clarify, so let’s go back to our previous hypothetical dissertation topic example of nurses and retention. Imagine that one of your gap sources stated this: “Future research may be conducted to clarify the factors that influence nurses to remain in their positions.” This would apply to both the quantitative and qualitative research topics, as both generally focus on factors that influence nurses to stay in their jobs.
On the other hand, what if the recommendation for research referred to specific variables? Perhaps it read: “Future research may be conducted to clarify whether psychological contract breach impacts retention and turnover in nurses.” As your qualitative focus phenomenon of interest pertains to “ethical dimensions” of the workplace as these influence nurse retention, you would no longer be able to use this source to support your research gap. You will need to find a new source to replace this one.
Dissertation Coach Tip #3: Align Purpose and RQs to New Problem Statement
The next logical step is to revise your purpose statement and research questions so that they align with your newly revised problem statement. The nice thing about this revision is that you have already been through the technical steps of writing a purpose and research questions, and so you should have a good sense of the basic components of each. To create alignment between the problem statement, purpose, and research questions, remember that you need to use the exact same terms when you refer to: population, variables (if using statistical analysis), phenomenon of interest (if using qualitative analysis), and region, if applicable.
In addition, switching from a qualitative research method to quantitative, or the reverse, will also involve some finesse when choosing your operative verbs. Yes, the wrong choice of verb can misalign your purpose statement—shocking but true! To provide some examples, verbs such as “examine” or “investigate” align with a quantitative method. When using a qualitative research method, however, you should pick verbs like “explore” or “develop understanding.”
Qualitative Purpose
The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to explore the lived experiences of childcare workers, with a focus on their perceptions of how supervisor fairness influences their experiences on the job.
Quantitative Purpose
The purpose of this quantitative correlational study is to examine the relationship between organizational justice and job satisfaction among childcare workers.
As you revise your research questions, keep in mind that question words should be chosen to align with a qualitative research method’s exploratory nature (e.g., “How do participants describe…?”), or with a quantitative method’s definitive nature (e.g., “What is the relationship between…?”). As beginning researchers, many of our dissertation assistance clients are unaware that certain terms imply statistical relationships and therefore should not be used in qualitative research questions. For example, “relationship,” “impact,” “affect,” and “predict” all have meanings that align with different types of statistical analysis and quantitative methodologies. So, using them in qualitative research questions creates misalignment (note that “perceived influence” does align with a qualitative method). Similarly, questions related to “perspectives,” “experiences,” and “descriptions” do not align with quantitative methods in most cases.
Aligned with qualitative method
RQ. How do nurses perceive ethical dimensions of the workplace as influencing their decisions to remain in their positions?
Misaligned with qualitative method
RQ. What ethical dimensions of the workplace impact nurses’ decisions to remain in their positions?
Why is this misaligned? The second research question is misaligned with a qualitative research method because (a) asking “what ethical dimensions” suggests that you are simply seeking a list of responses, but qualitative studies should be more exploratory, eliciting rich, detailed responses; (b) use of the word “impact” suggests that statistical analysis will be used to determine causal or predictive relationships between variables; and (c) there is no reference to nurses’ perceptions, which are central to the phenomenon of interest in this study.
Aligned with quantitative method
RQ. What relationship, if any, exists between organizational justice and job satisfaction among childcare workers?
Misaligned with quantitative method
RQ. How are childcare workers’ perceptions of organizational justice important for cultivating job satisfaction?
Why is this misaligned? The second research question is misaligned with a quantitative method because (a) use of the question word “how” suggests an exploratory approach; (b) organizational justice itself is the variable of interest, not “perceptions of organizational justice”; and (c) use of the phrase “important for cultivating satisfaction” fails to clearly convey the fact that statistical analysis will be used to determine the relationship between the two variables.
Dissertation Coach Tip #4: Align Literature-Based Portions of Proposal
Next, you can move on to the remaining literature-based portions of the dissertation proposal, including the introduction and background in Chapter 1, the theoretical framework, and the literature review chapter. The great news about these revisions is that, regardless of whether your study will use a quantitative or qualitative research method, much of what you have already written should still be applicable, provided that your topic remained generally the same.
What our dissertation coaches suggest is that you consider the changes to variables and phenomena of interest you made while reworking your problem statement, and then make sure that all other literature-based sections mirror these changes. This may include adding new sections on newly added variables, reorganizing existing literature discussion to de-emphasize or recontextualize variables that are no longer central to your analysis, and deleting discussion of variables or phenomena that are no longer relevant to your dissertation topic. In most cases, the theoretical framework will still apply, but definitely review this carefully to make sure this is so.
Again, it may help to consider how this might look for one of our previous examples. In our hypothetical study of nurses and retention, recall that we shifted from statistical analysis of variables of ethical leadership, psychological contract breach, and retention to a qualitative research exploration of nurses’ perceptions of ethical dimensions of the workplace. In this case, there would surely be existing sections in the literature review chapter focused on ethical leadership and psychological contract breach, which are no longer central to your topic.
They may still be relevant as context, though, so to keep as much of these sections as possible, you would need to (a) reframe the discussion of ethical leadership as one of multiple ethical dimensions of the workplace, and (b) tie psychological contract breach in with your existing discussion of factors that affect retention, as retention is still relevant in your newly reframed qualitative research topic. Of course, you would need to add content to the literature review on other ethical dimensions of the workplace (e.g., organizational culture, policy adherence) that might influence nurses’ decisions to leave or stay, as your focus on ethics is no longer constricted to just leadership.
Dissertation Coach Tip #5: Revise Methods Sections of Proposal
The last step in changing your dissertation proposal from a qualitative research method to quantitative, or the other way around, is to revise the methods sections of your proposal. This is where the heaviest work is required, as quantitative and qualitative research approaches are clearly quite different from each other, and so most sections of your methods chapter will need to be rewritten. You may be able to retain previous work on the population, although the sampling procedure and sample size adequacy determination procedures will differ. For example, quantitative studies rely on power analysis (Murphy et al., 2014), while qualitative studies use data saturation to determine adequate sample size (Mason, 2010). Similarly, the ethical considerations section should still apply, perhaps with minor revisions to informed consent administration (e.g., in person before interviews versus via SurveyMonkey prior to surveys).
You should plan to completely rewrite sections on the rationale for method and design, data collection instruments and procedures, and data analysis. For example, conducting qualitative analysis of interview transcripts is drastically different from conducting statistical analysis of survey data. So, it is not realistic to expect to salvage any of your previous work in these areas. Also, don’t forget to revise the assumptions, limitations, and delimitations sections that are usually part of Chapter 1—these vary based on your method.
Dissertation Coach Tip #6: Ask for Help if You Need It!
In closing, our dissertation coaches encourage you to reach out for assistance from the experts if necessary. Many of our dissertation consulting clients choose their methods based on their own competencies—some have a flair for statistical analysis, and some are more adept with conducting interviews and qualitative analysis. Facing an unexpected change of method to please your committee may mean that you’re being thrust into a methodological arena that doesn’t mesh with your own talents and training. If so, our statisticians and qualitative methods experts are happy to help as you rework the methods of your dissertation proposal. We’d love to hear from you!
References
Bernard, H. R. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage.
Ellis, T. J., & Levy, Y. (2008). Framework of problem-based research: A guide for novice researchers on the development of a research-worthy problem. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 11, 17-33. https://doi.org/10.28945/438
Mason, M. (2010). Sample size and saturation in PhD studies using qualitative interviews. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(3), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-11.3.1428
Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons.
Murphy K. R., Myors, B., & Wolach, A. (2014). Statistical power analysis: A simple and general model for traditional and modern hypothesis tests. Routledge.