RES 6541 Module 3 Research Review Preparation Example

Ready for Review: Preparing a Qualitative Nursing Education Proposal for the Dissertation Research Review, With Anticipated Questions and Prepared Answers

Student Name

American College of Education

RES6541: Finalizing the Dissertation Proposal

Module 3 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 26, 2026

Introduction

Before a dissertation proposal goes to the institutional review board, it passes through a research review in which faculty judge whether the study is sound, feasible and ready for ethical review. A proposal that reaches the IRB with a methodological weakness tends to come back twice, once from each body. This paper prepares my proposal, a qualitative descriptive study of how part-time clinical instructors experience their first semester of teaching, for that review. It audits the proposal against the criteria reviewers apply, rehearses the questions they are likely to ask, sets out the timeline and site arrangements that show the study can be finished and lists the materials that will be submitted.

What Reviewers Examine

Research reviews generally look at five things. The first is significance: whether the problem matters and the gap is real. The second is alignment, which Module 2 addressed. The third is methodological soundness: whether the design suits the question and the procedures are described well enough to be carried out and judged. The fourth is feasibility: whether the student can recruit participants, collect and analyze data and finish in the time available. The fifth is readiness for ethical review, meaning that risks have been identified and the consent and confidentiality procedures are concrete. Clear writing and correct formatting are assumed rather than graded, but errors in them make reviewers read everything else less charitably.

Self-Audit Results

I reviewed the proposal against each of the five criteria and asked a doctoral colleague to do the same independently. We agreed that significance and alignment were strong. Under methodological soundness, my colleague noted that the proposal described qualitative description accurately but did not explain why it was chosen over interpretive designs such as phenomenology; a paragraph was added. Under feasibility, the proposal named the number of participants but not how many programs had agreed to help recruit; that gap is addressed below. Under ethical readiness, the consent form did not yet explain how quotations would be reported without identifying participants or their programs, and a sentence was added. Formatting errors in reference DOIs and two heading levels were corrected.

Anticipated Questions and Prepared Answers

Why qualitative description rather than phenomenology? The study asks a practical question for program leaders, what the first semester is like and what helps, and qualitative description is suited to producing a straightforward account in participants' own terms with low-inference interpretation (Sandelowski, 2000). Phenomenology seeks the essence of lived experience through deeper interpretation, which is valuable but not what the problem calls for. Sandelowski (2010) later clarified that qualitative description may draw on interpretive techniques while still staying close to the data, which describes my analysis plan.

Are 12 to 15 interviews enough? In an interview study of a fairly homogeneous group, most themes emerged within the first twelve interviews (Guest et al., 2006). The concept of information power offers a second argument: a narrow aim, participants who share the specific experience and strong interview dialogue all reduce the number of participants needed (Malterud et al., 2016). Recruitment will continue past 15 if late interviews are still producing new codes.

Why exclude your own program? I coordinate clinical placements and supervise instructors in my program, so its instructors might feel unable to speak freely or to decline. Excluding them protects voluntariness and the honesty of the data.

Further Questions

How will your own experience shape the analysis? I began teaching clinically as a part-time instructor, which helps me build rapport and understand participants' language but also risks reading my own first semester into their accounts. I will keep, as recommended by Berger (2015), a reflexive journal from the first interview, note where my reactions are strongest and discuss those passages with a peer debriefer who has never taught clinically.

Will participants remember their first semester accurately? Eligibility is limited to instructors whose first semester ended within the past year, and the interview begins with concrete prompts, such as their first day on the unit, which help people recall specific events rather than general impressions. Recall remains a stated limitation.

How will you avoid simply confirming the transition model? Coding will be inductive, and the model will be compared with the themes only after they are developed, so that experiences the model does not describe can surface. The discussion chapter will report where findings departed from the model as carefully as where they matched it.

Feasibility and Timeline

The study is planned over twelve months from research review approval. Months 1 and 2 cover IRB review and any revisions. Recruitment runs through months 3 and 4: deans or directors at six Kentucky baccalaureate programs, none of them my own, have been contacted, and four have provided letters of cooperation agreeing to forward an invitation to eligible instructors; the remaining two are expected before submission. Interviews, held by video at participants' convenience, take place in months 3 through 6. Transcription by a professional service under a confidentiality agreement, and checking of each transcript against the recording, run alongside. Analysis occupies months 6 through 8, member checking month 9 and the writing of Chapters 4 and 5 months 9 through 12. A two-month buffer exists within the program's time limits if recruitment is slow.

Contingency Plans

Reviewers judge feasibility partly by what happens when a plan does not work, so three contingencies are written into the proposal. If fewer than twelve eligible instructors volunteer through the six programs, the invitation will be extended to two Kentucky associate degree programs whose part-time clinical instructors supervise students on similar hospital units, and the change will be submitted to the IRB as an amendment before any of those instructors are contacted. If a participant becomes distressed while describing a difficult clinical day, which is possible because some first semesters include student errors or patient harm, the interview will pause, the participant will be offered the chance to stop or continue later and a list of employee assistance and professional support resources will be provided. If transcription delays threaten the analysis schedule, I will transcribe the remaining interviews myself, which would also deepen my familiarity with the data. None of these changes would alter the research questions or the analysis approach.

Materials for the Reviewers

The submission will include the full proposal with the alignment table as an appendix, the interview guide with each question labeled by the research question it serves, the recruitment message that programs will forward, the consent document, the letters of cooperation received so far, a data management plan describing storage, de-identification and retention, and a brief memo summarizing changes made since the concept paper. Each document has been checked against the proposal for consistent terminology.

Conclusion

The proposal has been audited against the five criteria a research review applies, and four weaknesses found in that audit were corrected. Six likely questions have prepared answers grounded in methods literature. A twelve-month timeline with letters of cooperation from four programs shows the study can be completed, three contingency plans cover the most likely setbacks and the submission package is assembled. Module 4 drafts the IRB application narrative.

References

Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don't: Researcher's position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219-234. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112468475

Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05279903

Malterud, K., Siersma, V. D., & Guassora, A. D. (2016). Sample size in qualitative interview studies: Guided by information power. Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), 1753-1760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732315617444

Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing & Health, 23(4), 334-340. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-240X(200008)23:4<334::AID-NUR9>3.0.CO;2-G

Sandelowski, M. (2010). What's in a name? Qualitative description revisited. Research in Nursing & Health, 33(1), 77-84. https://doi.org/10.1002/nur.20362