The Viva Voce on the Dissertation

What is your most important recommendation, and who would have to act on it? Chapter 1420.

What would you do differently?

And what should the next study do?

The questions that catch the unprepared

Take me to page 47 and explain this table. The answer requires the candidate to know their own document.

Which of your sources did you find least convincing, and why? Impossible to answer for a bibliography that was padded, chapter 1370.

You cite this case for this proposition. What were the facts? Impossible for a case taken from a headnote, chapter 950.

On the third Tuesday, what happened? Impossible for fieldwork that did not occur, chapter 1390.

Your similarity report shows nine per cent. Where is most of that? A candidate who has read their own report can answer in one sentence: the quoted statutory provisions and the case names, which regulation 7 excludes, chapter 1380.

And: you say awareness is low. Compared with what? The question that finds an unnamed standard, chapter 900.

Preparing, in the two weeks available

Reread the whole dissertation once, slowly, with a pen. Most candidates have not read their own work since writing it.

Write a one page summary: problem, method, findings, recommendations. If it does not fit on a page, the study is not yet clear in the candidate's own mind.

Make a list of the numbers, with their bases, and learn them. Nothing improves an examiner's impression faster than a candidate who knows their own figures without looking.

Reread the sources you cite most. Three or four cases and two or three instruments.

Prepare the answer to what would you do differently, honestly, because it is asked to see whether the candidate can evaluate their own work, and a candidate who says nothing has answered badly.

And prepare the limitations, chapter 1280, because volunteering them is far stronger than conceding them under pressure.

Conduct on the day

Answer the question asked. A prepared speech delivered in response to a different question is worse than a short answer.

Say when you do not know. An examiner respects it and will move on; a bluffed answer is pursued.

Do not defend the indefensible. If a defect is put to you and it is real, accept it and say what you would do about it. Chapter 1170's tone: neither apologetic nor triumphant.

Distinguish what you found from what you think. Chapter 1040.

And take the document with you, flagged, so that page 47 can be found.

A worked example

One exchange, twice.

Examiner. You interviewed forty people and say that awareness is low in the district. How were the forty chosen?

Weak answer. They were chosen randomly from the settlements.

Why it is weak. Randomly is being used loosely, and the examiner will ask what the frame was, chapter 1000. The candidate is now defending a sampling method they did not use.

Strong answer. They were not a probability sample. I approached households at three settlements over two weeks and forty of the fifty-two I approached agreed. So the figure describes those forty and I have said so in the limitations; it does not describe the district. If I were doing it again I would construct a frame by numbering the dwellings and take every fifth, which would have taken the same fortnight.

Why it is strong. It is accurate, it volunteers the limitation, it shows the candidate knows the difference between the two methods, and it answers the follow-up before it is asked.

And it would have been available to any candidate who read chapters 1000 to 1020 before designing the study, which is the point of this book's Module III.

Quick revision

MU's marks: dissertation 80 plus 20 viva; interdisciplinary project 50 plus 50 viva, so half the project's marks are earned orally.

Timing: roughly two weeks between submission and the viva, with the schedule displayed on the University's website.

Its purposes: verify authorship, which no similarity report can do; test understanding; probe the method; test the findings; and examine the suggestions.

Ten standard questions: why this topic; the problem in one sentence; the hypothesis and its fate; the method and why; the sample and how chosen; the findings with their bases; what the study does not establish; the most important recommendation and who must act; what you would do differently; and what the next study should do.

Preparation: reread the dissertation with a pen; write a one page summary; learn the numbers and their bases; reread the main sources; prepare an honest answer on what you would do differently; and volunteer the limitations.

On the day: answer the question asked; say when you do not know; accept a real defect and say what you would do; separate finding from interpretation; and bring the flagged document.

Test yourself

1. State MU's marks for the viva on each piece of work and say why the second matters. Twenty of the hundred marks for the dissertation, and fifty of the hundred marks for the interdisciplinary research project. The second matters because half the project's marks are earned in a conversation rather than in the document, which most students discover too late to prepare.

2. What is the principal purpose of the viva that no other part of the assessment can serve? Verification of authorship. A similarity check compares a document against existing sources and cannot detect work that the candidate did not do, whereas an oral examination on the method, the fieldwork and the sources establishes whether the candidate did it.

3. Give four questions that catch an unprepared candidate. Take me to a stated page and explain this table; which of your sources did you find least convincing and why; you cite this case for this proposition, what were its facts; and what happened on a particular day of your fieldwork.

4. Give the strong form of an answer about a convenience sample. State that it was not a probability sample; say exactly how the respondents were obtained and how many of those approached agreed; state that the figure therefore describes those respondents and not the population, as the limitations record; and say what would be done differently, such as constructing a frame and taking every fifth dwelling, which would have taken the same time.