40 Questions often asked @ the PhD Proposal Defense

1. What is the research problem? What phenomenon are you trying to explain/understand?
2. What is happening "out there" (in the business world) that makes your research worthwhile? What practical problem are you trying to solve?
3. What contribution do you expect to make from this research? What theoretical gaps are you trying to fill?
4. What are your research questions? Would answers to these research questions provide answers to your research problem?
5. What are your research objectives? Have you stated them clearly? Can you achieve the understanding of your research problem through these objectives?
6. Have you defined the important terms used in your proposal? Whose definitions are you using? Why?
7. Is this subject of current interest? Why?
8. Have you collected and reviewed enough literature? Have you been exhaustive in your literature search?
9. Is your literature current (up-to-date)?
10. Have you included the seminar works in this area?
11. Have you obtained the local literature on this topic?
12. Have you reviewed and not merely copied the literature?
13. Have you written the literature coherently?
14. Have you included in the literature the major theories, concepts, factors, and variables connected with your research?
15. Where did you get your research framework? Is it your own? Why this framework?
16. How do you justify this framework?
17. What's the governing theory/theories underlying your framework?
18. What are your dependent variables?
19. How do your dependent variables reflect the phenomenon under study?
20. How do you measure your dependent variable/s?
21. What are your independent variables?
22. How do you measure these independent variables? Whose measurements are you using? Why?
23. Are there moderating variables? Why these moderators?
24. Are these intervening variables? Why these intervening variables?
25. What are the expected relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variables? Why do you expect these relationships?
26. Do your hypothesis statements reflect the relationships shown in your research model/framework?
27. Are there any define directions in the relationships between your dependent variable and independent variables, emerging from the literature/previous writing?
28. What is the unit of your analysis? Individual? Organizational? Group? Transaction?
29. Are your measurements referring to the same unit of analysis?
30. What is the population of your sample? What list/directory are you using?
31. What sampling technique are you going to use? Why? How are you going to choose the sample from the population?
32. Are there alternative ways of measuring your variables? If there are, why choose this one?
33. Why use a five-point scale? Seven-point scale? Why not use objective data?
34. If you use interval values in your measurements, what is the significance of the intervals? (e.g 1-50, 51-100)?
35. Are there duplicating measurements/variables? Why?
36. How are you going to code each variable?
37. Isn't your questionnaire too short/too long?
38. What statistical tool/s are you using to test each hypothesis?
39. Why do you think this tool is appropriate?
40. Who is your respondent? Is he/she the most appropriate? Why? Is he/she in a position to give valid answer? Wouldn't he/she be biased?

Source: Prof. M.S