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17 Thesis Defense Questions and How to Answer Them

EditrixJD

A thesis defense gives you the chance to show off your thesis work and demonstrate your expertise in your field of study. During this one- to two-hour discussion with the members of your thesis committee, you'll have some control over how you present your research, but your committee will ask you some prodding questions to test your knowledge and preparedness. They will all have read your thesis beforehand, so their questions will relate to your study, topic, methods, data sample, and other aspects.

A good defense requires mastery of the thesis itself, so before you consider the questions you might face,

1. What is your topic, and why did you choose it?

Give a quick summary in just a few sentences on what you've researched. You could certainly go on for hours about your work, but make sure you prepare a way to give a very brief overview of your thesis. Then, give a quick background on your process for choosing this topic.

2. How does your topic contribute to the existing literature? How is it important?

Many researchers identify a need in the field and choose a topic to bridge the gaps that previous literature has failed to cover. For example, previous studies might not have included a certain population, region, or circumstance. Talk about how your thesis enhances the general understanding of the topic to extend the reach beyond what others have found, and then give examples of why the world needs that increased understanding. For instance, a thesis on romaine lettuce crops in desert climates might bring much-needed knowledge to a region that might not have been represented in previous work.

3. What are the key findings of your study?

When reporting your main results, make sure you have a handle on how detailed your committee wants you to be. Give yourself several options by preparing 1) a very general, quick summary of your findings that takes a minute or less, 2) a more detailed rundown of what your study revealed that is 3-5 minutes long, and 3) a 10- to 15-minute synopsis that delves into your results in detail. With each of these responses prepared, you can gauge which one is most appropriate in the moment, based on what your committee asks you and what has already been requested.

4. What type of background research did you do for your study?

Here you'll describe what you did while you were deciding what to study. This usually includes a literary review to determine what previous researchers have already introduced to the field. You also likely had to look into whether your study was going to be possible and what you would need in order to collect the needed data. Did you need info from databases that require permissions or fees?

5. What was your hypothesis, and how did you form it?

Describe the expected results you had for your study and whether your hypothesis came from previous research experience, long-held expectations, or cultural myths.

6. What limitations did you face when writing your text?

It's inevitable — researchers will face roadblocks or limiting factors during their work. This could be a limited population you had access to, like if you had a great method of surveying university students, but you didn't have a way to reach out to other people who weren't attending that school.

7. Why did you choose your particular method for your study?

Different research methods are more fitting to specific studies than others (e.g., qualitative vs. quantitative ), and knowing this, you applied a method that would present your findings most effectively. What factors led you to choose your method?

8. Who formed the sample group of your study, and why did you choose this population?

Many factors go into the selection of a participant group. Perhaps you were motivated to survey women over 50 who experience burnout in the workplace. Did you take extra measures to target this population? Or perhaps you found a sample group that responded more readily to your request for participation, and after hitting dead ends for months, convenience is what shaped your study population. Make sure to present your reasoning in an honest but favorable way.

9. What obstacles or limitations did you encounter while working with your sample?

Outline the process of pursuing respondents for your study and the difficulties you faced in collecting enough quality data for your thesis. Perhaps the decisions you made took shape based on the participants you ended up interviewing.

10. Was there something specific you were expecting to find during your analysis?

Expectations are natural when you set out to explore a topic, especially one you've been dancing around throughout your academic career. This question can refer to your hypotheses , but it can also touch on your personal feelings and expectations about this topic. What did you believe you would find when you dove deeper into the subject? Was that what you actually found, or were you surprised by your results?

11. What did you learn from your study?

Your response to this question can include not only the basic findings of your work (if you haven't covered this already) but also some personal surprises you might have found that veered away from your expectations. Sometimes these details are not included in the thesis, so these details can add some spice to your defense.

12. What are the recommendations from your study?

With connection to the reasons you chose the topic, your results can address the problems your work is solving. Give specifics on how policymakers, professionals in the field, etc., can improve their service with the knowledge your thesis provides.

13. If given the chance, what would you do differently?

Your response to this one can include the limitations you encountered or dead ends you hit that wasted time and funding. Try not to dwell too long on the annoyances of your study, and consider an area of curiosity; for example, discuss an area that piqued your interest during your exploration that would have been exciting to pursue but didn't directly benefit your outlined study.

14. How did you relate your study to the existing theories in the literature?

Your paper likely ties your ideas into those of other researchers, so this could be an easy one to answer. Point out how similar your work is to some and how it contrasts other works of research; both contribute greatly to the overall body of research.

15. What is the future scope of this study?

This one is pretty easy, since most theses include recommendations for future research within the text. That means you already have this one covered, and since you read over your thesis before your defense, it's already fresh in your mind.

16. What do you plan to do professionally after you complete your study?

This is a question directed more to you and your future professional plans. This might align with the research you performed, and if so, you can direct your question back to your research, maybe mentioning the personal motivations you have for pursuing study of that subject.

17. Do you have any questions?

Although your thesis defense feels like an interrogation, and you're the one in the spotlight, it provides an ideal opportunity to gather input from your committee, if you want it. Possible questions you could ask are: What were your impressions when reading my thesis? Do you believe I missed any important steps or details when conducting my work? Where do you see this work going in the future?

Bonus tip: What if you get asked a question to which you don't know the answer? You can spend weeks preparing to defend your thesis, but you might still be caught off guard when you don't know exactly what's coming. You can be ready for this situation by preparing a general strategy. It's okay to admit that your thesis doesn't offer the answers to everything – your committee won't reasonably expect it to do so. What you can do to sound (and feel!) confident and knowledgeable is to refer to a work of literature you have encountered in your research and draw on that work to give an answer. For example, you could respond, "My thesis doesn't directly address your question, but my study of Dr. Leifsen's work provided some interesting insights on that subject…." By preparing a way to address curveball questions, you can maintain your cool and create the impression that you truly are an expert in your field.

After you're done answering the questions your committee presents to you, they will either approve your thesis or suggest changes you should make to your paper. Regardless of the outcome, your confidence in addressing the questions presented to you will communicate to your thesis committee members that you know your stuff. Preparation can ease a lot of anxiety surrounding this event, so use these possible questions to make sure you can present your thesis feeling relaxed, prepared, and confident.

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How to Prepare for the Oral Defense of Your Thesis/Dissertation

© Paul T. P. Wong , Ph.D., C.Psych.,  Former Research Director, Graduate Program in Counselling Psychology, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada

Use the following steps when preparing for the oral defense of your thesis/dissertation.

1. Evaluation of oral examination is based on your presentation and your answers to questions from the examining committee.

2. Be well prepared for your presentation—academically, mentally and physically. Try to be well rested and focused before your oral defense.

3. In your preparation, don’t try to memorize all the studies cited in your thesis, but you do need to know the details of the few key studies that form the basis of your investigation.

4. You need to be familiar with larger issues, such as the basic assumptions, theoretical framework, paradigm, cross-cultural perspectives, Christian integration, etc.

5. More importantly, you need to have a deep understanding of the nature of your research problem and the major issues involved.

6. You may bring with you important materials for easy reference in the course of your defense; these may include key articles, computer print-outs of results, etc.

7. Your presentation is evaluated in terms of content and clarity as well as style.

8. Don’t speak too fast and don’t read from your notes.

9. Treat your presentation as a public address because there may be non-psychologists present at your defense. Therefore, don’t use too many jargons and don’t pack it with details. You need to tell people in simple, concise language:

  • What you did,
  • Why you did it,
  • How you did it,
  • What you found, and
  • What the results mean.

10. Prepare handouts or power-points. Typically, they should include

  • An overview or outline of your presentation,
  • Introduction (including research question, rationale and hypothesis, if any, and definition of key constructs),
  • Method (including design, methodology, sample, instruments or questionnaires, and procedure,
  • Results (including tables or figures summarizing your findings), and
  • Discussion (including reasons for new or unexpected findings, contributions and limitations, and practical implications).

11. Make sure that you space yourself well. Don’t spend too much time on one section. For example, you should not spend more than 5 minutes on introduction, since you are allowed only 20 minutes for your presentation.

12. Most of the questions are rather general and broad, dealing with substantial methodological, theoretical and application issues. However, some questions focus on specific points regarding sampling, statistical analysis, or some questionable conclusions.

13. Be prepared to clarify or elaborate on your assumptions, theoretical positions, methods, and conclusions. Often, an examiner plays the devil’s advocate to see how well you can think on your feet and defend yourself.

14. Occasionally, an examiner may ask a question which is unfair or cannot be adequately answered. After a few futile attempts, feel free to say that you don’t know the answer. You may even be bold enough to say, “Since none of my answers are acceptable, I would really appreciate it if you could give me some pointers or tell me what would be a correct answer.”

15. Here are some common questions:

  • If you were to do it all over again, what changes would you make?
  • What specific aspects of your findings can be utilized by counselors or psychologists in their practice?
  • What is the most important contribution of your thesis? Can you say it in one or two sentences?
  • What are some of the competing hypotheses? Could you think of an alternative interpretation of your findings?

16. Don’t rush to any answers. It is perfectly acceptable to think for a couple of seconds, or ask if you are on the right track. If you are not clear about the question, you are entitled to ask for clarification.

17. Try to be concise and to the point, but at the same time demonstrate that you have a good grasp of the complex issues involved. In other words, do not give superficial answers, but at the same time, do not go all over the map.

18. Put up a good defense without being defensive. Be confident without being cocky. A good defense means that you can provide strong logical arguments as well as empirical support o defend your position or conclusion. However, don’t be defensive when people criticize your study. If they are able to point out some real flaws or weaknesses in your study, accept their criticisms with humility, grace and gratitude.

19. Before the oral defense, talk to your advisor about areas of concerns based on external examiner’s comments. Then, discuss with your advisor how to best address these concerns. (Your advisor cannot tell you the specific questions the examiners will ask, but s/he can direct your attention to issues or areas that require some thinking or additional research.)

20. After the oral defense, meet with your advisor for debriefing and seek advice on how to revise your thesis.

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Assistant Professor, National Centre for Audiology and Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Health Sciences

Dr. Mary Beth Jennings worked clinically at The Canadian Hearing Society for 12 years where she developed and implemented individual and group aural rehabilitation (AR) programs (the Hearing Help Class curriculum) for adults. She began her academic career in 2004 and teaches courses and seminars on Counseling and AR and supervises students who facilitate group AR programs. Her areas of research include the assessment of group AR outcomes, the use of Goal Attainment Scaling, the impact of self-efficacy on rehabilitation outcomes, barriers and facilitators to the use of hearing assistive technologies for older adults, stigma of hearing loss, assessing workplace accessibility for older workers with hearing loss, and Universal Design for Hearing. Past projects have included program development and outcome measurement in homes-for-the-aged and in community-based settings, as well as a hearing accessibility audit of university classrooms.

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The connection between hearing and overall health, course: #35243 level: introductory 1 hour, cbd and essential oils for hearing loss, tinnitus and balance disorders, course: #34543 level: intermediate 1 hour, assessing auditory functional performance: goals and intervention considerations for individuals with hearing loss, course: #33024 level: intermediate 1 hour, 20q: changes to auditory processing and cognition during normal aging – should it affect hearing aid programming part 2 – programming hearing aids for older adults, course: #39168 level: advanced 2.5 hours, implementation of cochlear implants: enhanced candidacy criteria and technology advances, course: #37377 level: intermediate 1 hour.

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  1. Thesis 'Design Hearing'

    Download to read offline. Thesis 'Design Hearing'. 2. CHAPTER 1. Introduction Developing countries have superb educational systems that contributed much in the welfare of their people (Hardcastle, 2010). 3. SINGAPORE. 4. CHAPTER 1.

  2. Video Presentation for Thesis Design Hearing

    Proponents:Amarille, JesheronGilo, John MichaelMontañez, ClyzzaMoscare, Willcie MariePavo, RichelleVeeo, Danilo

  3. Checklist for Thesis Design Hearing

    Application for Thesis Design Hearing; Certification and Recommendation for Thesis Design Hearing; Application for Thesis Final Defense; Certification and Recommendation for Dissertation final Defense; Certification and Recommendation for Thesis Final Defense; Certification and Recommendation for Tactical Plan Oral Defense; Application of ...

  4. 17 Thesis Defense Questions and How to Answer Them

    A thesis defense gives you the chance to show off your thesis work and demonstrate your expertise in your field of study. During this one- to two-hour discussion with the members of your thesis committee, you'll have some control over how you present your research, but your committee will ask you some prodding questions to test your knowledge and preparedness. They will all have read your ...

  5. How to Prepare for the Oral Defense of Your Thesis/Dissertation

    2. Be well prepared for your presentation—academically, mentally and physically. Try to be well rested and focused before your oral defense. 3. In your preparation, don't try to memorize all the studies cited in your thesis, but you do need to know the details of the few key studies that form the basis of your investigation. 4.

  6. Scoring Rubric For Design Hearing Final

    Scoring Rubric for Design Hearing Final - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. This is a teacher-made rubric used for the design hearing of the practical research students in the Senior High School Department.

  7. PDF Listening In: an Exploration of Forms for Hearing Aid Design

    LISTENING IN: AN EXPLORATION OF FORMS FOR HEARING AID DESIGN

  8. Hearing From You: Design Thinking in Audiological Research

    In conclusion, using a needs-based, collaborative design thinking approach to conduct development in hearing health care research is a viable and novel option to produce innovative, relevant, and translational hearing health solutions that address stakeholder needs. We anticipate that such an approach will be used more frequently in hearing ...

  9. Hearing From You: Design Thinking in Audiological Research

    design approach, this is also likely to help "close the 17-year gap" (Munro & Savel, 2016). One example of a participatory approach within hearing health care is the co-design and co-production of an online multimedia education program for first-time hearing aid users known as C2Hear: https://www. c2hearonline.com (Ferguson et al., 2018 ...

  10. Practical Research 2

    This is a session discussing about how to prepare for the senior high school students' Design Hearing.

  11. Dignity and Design: Architecture for the Vision and Hearing Impaired

    Final Model (1.278Mb) This thesis is aiming to design better for those with hearing or sight loss. Since these are sensory disabilities they directly affect the way in which people experience architecture. With the numbers rising of people experiencing hearing loss earlier in life as well as an increasingly aged population with deteriorating ...

  12. Research Design Hearing Presentation by Ralph Candare on Prezi

    The study followed Creswell's (2009) six steps during the data analysis process. Step 1: Organized and prepared the data for analysis (p. 185). In this step we have reviewed the answers of the participants and provided code names for confidentiality. Step 2: Read through the data (p. 185).

  13. UKnowledge- University of Kentucky Libraries

    UKnowledge- University of Kentucky Libraries

  14. Universal Design for Hearing: Considerations for Examining Hearing

    Editor's Note: This article is an edited transcript of the course presented live on AudiologyOnline on November 4, 2009. To view the original presentation, register here. Introduction This presentation will discuss work that we have been doing in the area of Universal Design for Hearing and its application to workplaces, especially considering adults who acquire a hearing loss during their ...

  15. Listening in: An Exploration of Forms for Hearing Aid Design

    Motivated to inspire more proactive hearing aid adoption and retention, this thesis explores how to generate new forms for OTC hearing aids. In the process of doing so, the opportunity gap between the success of consumer audio hearables and the lack of proactivity for hearing aid adoption is investigated.

  16. Certification and Recommendation for Thesis Design Hearing

    File name: QF-GS13_Certification_and_Recommendation_for_Thesis_Design_Hearing.pdf. 6704 526 0 193.11KB.

  17. PDF Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing

    To explore this thesis, I followed an iterative human-centered process in my research ranging from formative studies to design and evaluation of prototypes in controlled environments to deployments of full systems in the field (Figure 1.1). Figure 1.1: My research explores sound accessibility for DHH users through an iterative design process from

  18. PDF Low Noise Amplifier Design and Noise Cancellation for Wireless Hearing Aids

    consumption compared to other CMOS LNA designs keeping in view frequency and NF. The design also meets requirements on noise, linearity and gain for 0.9 GHz low power applications, specifically for CMOS wireless hearing aids. The tested LNA performance. is promising be embedded in earpiece of wireless hearing aids.

  19. Voicer: a Sign Language Interpreter Application for Deaf People to

    hearing, the reason of losing hearing, and etc. Commonly, the most used labels among deaf community are "deaf", "Deaf", and "hard of hearing (HOH)" . ... In this thesis project, the mainly applied design methodology is the Double Diamond Process. Therefore, this part will be divided into four parts. Each part will be described in ...

  20. (PDF) Design Thinking to Familiarize Hearing-Impaired Architectural

    Design Thinking to Familiarize Hearing-Impaired Architectural Drafting Students with Human-Centered Design Concept June 2020 Iconarp International J of Architecture and Planning 8(1):62-87

  21. Designing for a Multi-Sensory Experience Beyond Vision

    Therefore, this thesis intentionally focuses on designing for touch, smell, hearing, and vision as a means of creating experiences that effectively disperse the intake of information across multiple. senses. In particular, it aims to investigate how interactions. with everyday technology can be designed to effectively engage the senses beyond ...

  22. PDF Design and Implementation of an Interpolation Filter for Hearing-Aid

    Design and Implementation of an Interpolation Filter for Hearing-Aid Application Pere Llimós Muntal Supervisors: Dr. Erik Bruun and PhD candidate Peter Pracný Abstract - In this master thesis the design and implementation of an interpolation filter for hearing-aid applications will be discussed. The aim of the design will be to minimize the

  23. Deaf-First Architecture: An Educational Design Framework for Deaf and

    Architecture has yet to respond to the needs of the deaf in a meaningful way. This thesis was built from over a dozen interviews with members of Deaf culture, instructors and students of deaf education. In exploring modified space, a framework emerged that can inform the designer of priorities and strategies when designing for the deaf. These ...