Greetings Members, We are happy to announce our fall 2026 Doctoral Colloquium series. Attached is a flyer with the sessions we will offer throughout the semester. Please forward to any doctoral candidates in your network, like/share my recent LinkedIn post, and mark your own calendars to attend. -Ryan

Greetings Members, I wanted to provide some thoughts on how to approach writing your methodology chapter or section. If you have followed some of my posts from earlier in the summer, I discussed how any methodology chapters will involve three layers of discussion: Philosophical Paradigm This is the most abstract element of the methodology chapter and is grounded a great deal in philosophy of science. It is here where various research paradigms such as positivism, post-positivism, constructivism, pragmatism, and interpretivism come in. These are not merely lofty, nerdy, pedantic (pick your favourite adjective) elements that force you to do extra reading — they serve legitimate and practical purposes for your study. Each research paradigm will provide you a framework for understanding the epistemology (what counts as knowledge and how you obtain knowledge), ontology (the nature of reality), and axiology (what counts as evidence) for your study. Research Design Proper Having established a research paradigm to govern your study, you can then turn to research design. At the most basic level, this involves making a decision whether you will take a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approach. But, beyond those high level labels, you will then have to assess and evaluate a specific tradition within each mode of research. Let's take qualitative as an example. Under qualitative research, there are many designs: case study, phenomenology, grounded theory, etc. These are not convenient labels that you apply to a study characterized by interviews and thematic analysis, but represent entire research traditions that give your study both architecture and lineage. Methodology Proper Here you might ask what is the difference between research design and methodology. The answer is simple — a research design is a framework and the methodology is the practical enactment of your study. Although a dissertation chapter might be labelled "Methodology: overall, methodology specifically refers to the procedures and protocols you will follow to collect data, recruit participants, organize your data, and then analyze it. This is the most concrete element of your study, but if you begin with establishing a research paradigm, understand the architecture and lineage imported by your chosen research design, then the practical elements of your study will emerge with greater clarity.

Hello members! I trust that you are well. Office hours for this week have been posted in the calendar as follows: Saturday 6:00 PM EST Please let us know if you intend to attend and what you would like to discuss. As usual, everyone is welcome. Have a great week!

Dear Members, I hope everyone is doing well. I want to check in with everyone to make sure that summer office hours are being offered at an appropriate time for everyone. I am very flexible as to the schedule, so I ask you to respond to the following poll. Don't forget, as well, to take advantage of the twice-monthly individual sessions (calendar link in the pinned comment at the top of the Community). -Ryan

Good day members! The office hour for this week has been posted in the calendar as follows: Sunday 3:00 PM EST Please let us know if you intend to attend and what you would like to discuss. As usual, everyone is welcome. Have a fantastic week!