Dissertation consulting involves guiding you forward with your dissertation, providing expertise along the way, and helping you to address challenges. It includes much more than editing, but, for ethical reasons, it also does not involve writing material for you. So, what does dissertation consulting entail and what should you expect? To answer these questions, we should keep in mind two important ideas: owning your study and developmental editing.
It is important to remember that your dissertation is just that, yours. Owning your dissertation means that you are ultimately responsible for the choices you make regarding the dissertation. Consultants can help you make decisions by providing information and expertise, but consultants should not make large decisions about your dissertation for you.
Dissertation consulting involves meeting with you to discuss your concerns and to strategize about ways to move forward. Dissertation consulting involves prompt responses to questions about your dissertation and its specific components. Dissertation consulting involves helping you to understand and address committee comments based on consultants’ expertise and experience.
Dissertation consulting also involves developmental editing, which differs from line editing. Line editing includes revising words and phrases at the sentence level to rid the prose of error and help with intelligibility and readability. Developmental editing encompasses line editing, but there’s more. Developmental editing refers to looking at the entire document to see how the parts fit together and how the overall argument or point is being made. Developmental editors help to steward the document toward a developed whole. Developmental editing works on macro and micro levels.
Statistics Solutions offers ethical guidance and dissertation consulting based on professional expertise and years of consulting experience. Feel free to use the calendar on the right to schedule a complimentary consultation to speak with an expert.
Additional resources:
Dissertation Resources – video library
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