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FREE Webinar – Why Should Readers Care? Why Should They Believe You?
Why Should Readers Care? Why Should They Believe You? Two Key Questions High-Quality Dissertations Have to Answer
🗓️ Wednesday, August 13 , 2025
⏱️ 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Eastern (New York Time)
Taught by: Alison Reusser, Ph.D.
What if two deceptively simple questions could guide your entire dissertation process, from proposal to final defense? This session will help you recognize the foundational importance of answering “Why should your readers care?” and “Why should they believe you?” in every stage of your research and writing.
This webinar will help you craft a dissertation that is not only methodologically sound but also meaningful, persuasive, and deeply credible. We’ll explore how strong dissertations justify their value and signal their trustworthiness through coherent argumentation, methodological transparency, and rigorous use of sources.
What You’ll Learn:
- This session is designed to help researchers center their work around the core values of significance and credibility:
- How to make the case that your research matters. We’ll look at strategies for articulating the value and implications of your work.
- How to demonstrate that your claims are trustworthy. This includes using primary sources, choosing appropriate methods, ensuring transparency, and acknowledging limitations.
- How to keep both questions in focus across all dissertation chapters. From the framing of research questions to the presentation of findings.
- Common pitfalls to avoid. Vagueness in significance, over-reliance on secondary literature, unclear methodology, or unsupported claims.
- Examples of effective and ineffective ways students handle these two questions in actual dissertation excerpts.
Who Should Attend?
- Doctoral candidates designing or revising their dissertation structure or research questions.
- Graduate students preparing proposals or entering the writing phase.
- Students struggling to define the purpose and impact of their study or clarify their methodological credibility.
Format
- 50 minutes of presentation and guided examples
- 10 minutes for Q&A
We look forward to helping you build a dissertation that both matters and earns your readers’ trust!