For non native English speaking students who need more in depth assistance in completing their doctoral dissertation, Organic Academia offers consulting services in the following areas.
- Topic Selection: Organic Academia will assist students effectively identify a topic that is relevant, makes a contribution to his or her field, is appropriate in scope for a dissertation an manageable within a prescribed time frame, for a first time independent researcher.
- Concept Paper/Proposal: Organic Academia will provide coaching and guidance to students in developing and writing their concept paper or proposal. We will also help students devise research questions and testable hypotheses with regard to the theoretical regime of the study and/or a solid overview of the dissertation and the subsequent chapters to be compiled
- Problem Statement: Organic Academia will assist students in establishing a well grounded conceptual basis for the project, based on extant literature findings and scientific knowledge. We will also direct students to identifying relevant ‘gaps’ in the knowlege to develop the problem statement in a timely manner.
- Organic Academia will guide students in developing a manageable approach to review the literature, including searching, selecting, summarizing, critically evaluating, and conceptualizing it into a coherent and theoretically solid summary.
- Methodology: Organic Academia with assist students with developing quantitative, qualitative or mixed method research designs. We will help students design a methodologically sound studies and conduct process such as identifying and recruiting participants, sampling methods, IRB appropriate measures and data collection plans and procedures and provide pertient feedback to students.
- Data Collection and Management: Organic Academia will assist students in navigating IRB human subjects informed consent and attain permissions from survey authors. We will guide you through problem solving techniques, collecting data, identifying and citing source material. Assist in setting up a database for data entry, guiding data entry and inspection/cleaning.
- Instrument Development and Evaluation: Organic Academia will assist in all aspects of scale development, including appropriately wording items, analysis of psychometric properties of the measure, and identifying and discarding weak items.
- Quantitative Data Analysis: We can guide you with the various types of quantitative research designs including descriptive, correlation, quasi-experimental, experimental, sampling, data analysis, regression, etc.
- Qualitative Data Analysis: We can provide you with guidance designing qualitative studies, data coding and analysis, including studies using a mixed-methodology. Guide you to conduct effective interviews, identify a theoretical orientation for qualitative data analysis, enhance the credibility and reliability of your research findings, interpret your findings, and write your results and conclusions. Common approaches to data analysis we are familiar with: grounded theory, phenomenology, ethnography (including auto-ethnography), case study and narrative approaches.
- Discussion: We can assist you to interpret your findings in light of hypotheses and existing literature, proposing alternative explanations, limitations, and future implications.
- Developmental Editing: We can provide an in-depth review of your writing and edit your manuscript for content, style, tone, clarity, level of detail, organization, grammar and punctuation. Edit to ensure that study concepts are adequately developed, tables and figures are used appropriately, and that the story you want to tell comes across clearly. Guide you to rewrite awkward passages and cue you as to where new written material is needed. Offer comments and suggestions to make sure that your document follows a clear path from your thesis statement to your conclusion. Guide you with the use of APA style or other writing-style requirements and the use of appropriate citation style. Developmental editing is conducted in close consultation with you and may require more than one round of editing, as clients may need to add additional materials and make clarifications with the consultant.
- Committee Members: We can guide you to integrate feedback from committee members so that you appropriately address their concerns and ideas. Help you proactively communicate with committee member and problem-solve any issues with them that may arise.
- Oral Defense Meetings: We can help you prepare for oral-defense meetings (both proposal meetings and final defense meetings).