Critical thinking is considered to be a rich concept that has developed over the last 2,500 years. The Critical Thinking Community organizes an annual conference on educational reforms and critical thinking to raise the need for critical thinking in education. Academicians and other analysts believe that questioning (critical thinking) plays a vital role in developing thinking, teaching, and learning skills (TCTC, 2015). The Critical Thinking Community’s platform highlights the point of view that if there were no questions asked by individuals the foundation for fields would not be laid. The major factor that helps a field to stay alive is that new questions keep on evolving to continue the process of thinking.
The evolution of questions helps analysts to review the current workings and to improve the quality for future. The majority of questions from a dissertation relate to the structure and format of the dissertation, literature review, validity of resources, and the methodology (The Writer's Handbook, 2014). The next chapter and information available in the dissertation are linked with these important aspects/chapters. The main questions that can be asked by an individual when reviewing an article firstly start with the topic of the dissertation.
Is the topic realistic?
Is there a need to devote sources to investigate the topic?
Would the results help to develop new insights into the research topic or not?
Secondly, the thorough analysis of literature review is compulsory to analyze the overall dissertation. The literature review section must have an introduction, body that includes models, theories, and previous research, and a conclusion (The Writer's Handbook, 2014). The following questions are related to the literature view.
Is the context for reviewing the literature review mentioned in the introduction?
Does the introduction include glance of previous literature work on the subject topic?
Does the body provide relevant and reliable information relating to the topic?
Is the literature helpful to draw the methodology?
Does it have a theoretical reasoning/implication mentioned in the body of the Literature?
Does the conclusion represent a summary of major contributions mentioned in Literature Review section?
Is there an academic or business relevance of the literature?
Are the sources reliable (i.e. journal articles and books)?
Questions relating to the validity of research methods and use of different techniques also play a vital role in determining and evaluating a dissertation. The validity of resources is essential to evaluate the significance in drawing accurate and reliable conclusions (Trochim, 2006). The following questions are related to the research methodology.
Was the proposition valid?
Are the hypotheses for the study correct?
Whether the researcher finds out what he intends to evaluate,/investigate?
Is the quality of the dissertation valid?
The topic chosen for the study is the impact of motivation and training on employee performance. The topic has a high level of significance in the current business environment since employers (managers) intend to develop and design strategies that increase motivation (both intrinsic and extrinsic) and its impact on long individual employee performance.
The research topics are both realistic and important in the current corporate environment, since, employee performance is considered to be a major factor that influences organizational performance.
The nature of the topic and its importance in the business environment allows the researchers to focus and spend their valuable resources on investigating the relationship between the factors.
The results for different regions/areas are different since managers adopt different tools and techniques to motivate their employees. It is significantly important to evaluate the significance of the topic in different regions at the same time.
Tampu (2015) does not present the dissertation in a proper format. There are no proper headings like introduction and others for the literature review. On the other hand study by Khan (2012) has proper formatting and headings.
Both studies by Khan (2012) and Tampu (2015) show a significant level of relevant information from previous researches. There are different headings that are linked with the topic and the methodology.
The study by Khan (2012) presents relevant information relating to the subject topic, but the analysis reveals that there are researches that do not comply with a standard format for dissertations.
The literature review in both the studies helps to shape/design the methodology. The information included in literature review is both accurate and valid.
The researchers have realized the significance of theoretical implication and have provided the main theories and other information that is essential to undertake the study.
Both the studies do not present any concluding paragraph for the literature review. It shows a flaw in the formatting of the dissertations.
The literature presents the importance of previous researches on the subject matter and provides a thorough insight into the topic.
The sources are valid and reliable; mostly the researchers use academic articles and books for their dissertations.
Both Khan (2012) and Tampu (2015) have different propositions for their study. Khan (2012) use a quantitative approach whereas, Tampu (2015) uses a qualitative approach to drawing the conclusions.
The hypotheses presented by Khan (2012) (i.e. quantitative approach) are valid and correct as they are aligned with the overall objective of the study.
The findings of the research papers are also correct since the intended conclusions are drawn from the use of the qualitative and quantitative approach.
Finally, the quality of the dissertation is not valid since both the research papers do not follow the standardized approach to writing a dissertation.
The analysis reveals that there are issues relating to the formatting and distribution of headings between the two identified studies. The need is prominent to follow a standard format to correctly critique on the dissertations all over the world.
References
Khan, M. I. (2012). The Impact of Training and Motivation on Performance of Employees. Business Review, 7 (2), 84-95.
Tampu, D. L. (2015). Impact of Human Motivation on Employees. Internal Auditing & Risk Management, 1 (37), 43-53.
TCTC. (2015). The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/index-of-articles/the-role-of-questions-in-teaching-thinking-and-learning/524
The Writer's Handbook. (2014, August 29). "Review of Literature" UW-Madison Writing Center Writer's Handbook. Retrieved from http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html
Trochim, W. M. (2006, October 20). Introduction to Validity. Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/introval.php
