Thesis Defense Questions

1. What have you learned from the study you have done?
2. Why you chose this particular topic or what your inspiration
behind this study was?
3. What is the importance of your study or how will it contribute or
add up to the existing body of knowledge?
4. Summarize your key findings of the research.
5. What type of background research have you done for the study?
6. What are the limitations you have faced while writing?
7. Why did you choose this particular method or sample for the
study?
8. What will you include if you are told to add something extra to
the study?
9. What are the recommendations of your study?
10. Who formed your sample and why you selected this
particular age group?
11. What was your hypothesis and how you framed it?
12. If given a chance, would you like to do something different
with your work?
13. What are the limitations you faced while dealing with your
samples?
14. How did you relate your study to the existing theories?
15. What is the future scope of this study?
16. What do you plan to do with your work after you have
completed your degree?
17. What are the research variables you used?
18. Do you have any questions to be asked?
19. Did you evaluate your work?
20. How would you improve your work?
21. Based on your findings, what will your next research project
be?
22. How would you build on this research?
23. Where do you see this kind of research moving in the
future?
24. What are the openings?
25. How could you improve your work?
26. Who can your research be used in practice?
27. What would you change if you were to do the study again?
28. If you did it again what would you do differently?
29. What would you do differently if you were setting out to do
it today?
30. In hindsight, is there any aspect of the research that you
would do differently?
31. Looking back, what might you have done differently?
32. What are the main weaknesses with what you did and why
are they there?
33. What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?
34. What is the main contribution of your thesis?
35. What have been the significant contributions of your
research?
36. In what ways does this research make a significant
contribution to your particular field of study?
37. What have you done that merits an MS?
38. Summarize your key findings.
39. What’s original about your work?
40. Where is the novelty?
41. What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?
42. What is the implication of your work in your area? What
does it change?
43. Why did you decide to undertake this specific project?
44. What are the motivations for your research?
45. Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
46. What are the main aims, questions, hypotheses?
47. Where did your research-project come from?
48. How did you research-questions emerge?
49. Why are your research questions interesting or important?
50. Comment on and justify your research methodology. Why
have you done it this way? What are the alternatives to your
approach?
51. What are the principal finding of this research project?
52. How do they compare the findings of other projects within
the field?
53. Who are your closest competitors?
54. How has your thinking changed as a result of this research
project?
55. What have your learned from the process of doing your MS?
56. Has your view of your research topic changed during the
course of the research?
57. In one sentence, what is your thesis?
58. What are you most proud of, and why?
59. Where do current technologies fail such that (could) make a
contribution?
60. Where did you go wrong?
61. How have you evaluated your work?
62. How do your contributions generalize?
63. What previous research has been done on the topic of your
study?
64. What does your thesis deal with “what kind of theory is it
based on?”
65. Can you start by summarizing your thesis?
66. Now, can you summarise it in one sentence?
67. What is the idea that binds your thesis together?
68. What motivated and inspired you to carry out this research?
69. What are the main issues and debates in this subject area?
70. Which of these does your research address?
71. Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
72. Who has had the strongest influence in the development of
your subject area in theory and practice?
73. Which are the three most important papers that relate to
your thesis?
74. What published work is closest to yours? How is your work
different?
75. What do you know about the history of (insert something
relevant)?
76. How does your work relate to (insert something relevant)?
77. What are the most recent major developments in your area?
78. How did your research questions emerge?
79. What were the crucial research decisions you made?
80. Why did you use this research methodology? What did you
gain from it?
81. What were the alternatives to his methodology?
82. What would you have gained by using another approach?
83. How did you deal with the ethical implications of your work?
84. How has your view of your research topic changed?
85. How have you evaluated your work?
86. How do you know that your findings are correct?
87. What are the strongest/weakest parts of you work?
88. What would have improved your work?
89. To what extent do your contributions generalize?
90. Who will be most interested in your work?
91. What is the relevance of your work to other researchers?
92. What is the relevance of your work to practitioners?
93. Which aspects of your work do you intend to publish – and
where?
94. Summarise your key findings.
95. Which of these findings are the most interesting to you?
Why?
96. How do your findings relate to literature in your field?
97. What are the contributions to knowledge of your thesis?
98. How long-term are these contributions?
99. What are the main achievements of your research?
100. What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD?
101. What advice would you give to a research student entering
this area?
102. You propose future research. How would you start this?
103. What would be the difficulties?
104. And finally.. what have you done that merits a PhD?
105.