Generic viva questions

Rowena Murray provides a set of questions for the viva, both in her 2003 book and in this pdf file from Strathclyde. Supervisors sent me a copy of Andrew Broad's Nasty PhD Viva Questions, which you can find as pdf here.
Before my mock viva, I attempted written answers to all of these, which was interesting because of my initial and my thought-out reactions. For example:

What is the area in which you wish to be examined?

Er, no thank you. I don't wish to be examined. No! Start again.

In one sentence, what is your thesis?
My thesis is that engagement between people is a cyclic and self-reinforcing phenomenon that can be analysed in terms of six interacting behaviours and conditions that form cycles, that might be described as threads, banners or wedges.

But these were generic questions so not as useful as the specific questions that my mock examiner thought up after reading my thesis, like for example,

Why is engagement important to be studied in a public sector context?

I addressed such the question of why the public sector here two years ago, because of

"the conviction that government is given crucial work that society very much needs to have performed well"

Why is engagement important to the public sector? Because a common cause of project failure is lack of effective engagement with stakeholders (OGC, 2002) and in the public sector, engagement is “a critical element of a consulting project” (NAO, 2006a).

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Murray, R. 2003. How to Survive Your Viva : Defending a Thesis in an Oral Examination. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
NAO (2006a) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment. IN NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE (Ed.). HMSO.
OGC (2002) Common Causes of Project Failure. National Audit Office and the Office of Government Commerce.

Asking stupid questions

Recently, a world business radio 4 programme interviewed a couple of Icelandic women founders of a new Icelandic investment company called Audur. See Peter Day's comment here. They say that women in business are risk aware, rather than risk averse, so not afraid to ask stupid questions.

Stupid questions are what I think I'm asking sometimes when I'm talking with my research interviewees. Usually, it's a three letter acronym (TLA) that throws me, like:

• 'MOJ' - Ministry of Justice, which is a new government department so not an acronym that I've yet often come across.
• SRM - supplier relationship management. I've known about CRM - customer relationship management for a long time, so from the context I could work out what SRM was.
• Framework agreements - I'd just accepted the term, but when someone talked about 'corofs' I had to stop and ask, so was that a silly question? The interviewee spelled it out for me CALL-OFFs. The accent was different from mine, and I knew too little about procurement to have recognised the term. Once I'd learnt, I looked up call-offs and learnt much more about UK government framework agreements from here and here.
  

But I do feel embarrased and vulnerable when I don't know something or can't hear it. I hardly dare ask because perhaps my interviewee won't share more because I'm so ignorant. But that's why I'm asking people, so I can learn.

So yes, I'm risk aware and I must keep on asking the stupid questions.

A significant contribution?

I worry that my research is not going to make any significant contribution, that my research questions are not worth answering. The more I read, the more I realise how much other people have already done. For example, reading something on Etienne Wenger's web site, shows that he has researched the use of boundary objects in communities, which is useful stuff for me to use, but how does it take my research any further?

I don't ask questions for which I know the answers but others don't. I do some voluntary work on an appeals tribunal. Yesterday, one of my colleagues asked a question of the authority representative, a question for which I already knew the answer, so hadn't thought of asking it. My more experienced colleague however realised that the score of appellants in the room didn't all know the answer, so by asking the question, she shared that knowledge.

So I need to identify the questions with answers that are obvious to me, but not to others.

Question bank

The ESRC provides access to a question bank. I’m looking for techniques that will elicit social networks in a semi structured interview. The ESRC link is a mine of survey information and an excellent resource – for someone else.

It’s for structured surveys, not my approach.

Interview questions about knowledge

I'm planning questions as I read and reread relevant literature. The practitioner literature is best for sensible approaches. You imagine that they've already done the research, but they haven't written it up for academics to analyse.

• How bright are you?

I want to know, because I want to know about value from knowledge transfer. So how bright are the clients and how bright are the consultants?

• Do you have any qualifications?

That seems reasonable to ask, but I'd hope they'd carry on and tell me a bit about their qualifications, though qualifications don't necessarily mean that you're really really bright, but that you're bright enough and worked hard enough.

• What do you do? How do you solve problems? In what ways to you involve others in problem solving?

That relates to knowledge and skills, problem-solving skills and social skills.

• Who do you ask for information? What kind of information?

I got ideas for some of these questions from Czerniawska {Czerniawska, 2002 }

• How do you find people who have dealt with this situation or have relevant experience?

These are questions for the client, rather than the consultant, but there will be parallel questions to ask of consultants.

• What situations have allowed reuse of assets, for example, a proposal written for another situation or context?

I don't know that this question is about knowledge. Here's one about co-ordination and synergy.

• How do you coordinate things? What do you coordinate? In what situations do you combine resources?

Discussing development -

• Who do you discuss development with? Whose opinion do you ask of development?

On documentation of projects -

• What do you write down? When? Why?

• Who do you visit and why? Who visits you?

Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps -

• Who knows what? What are you missing? What other groups should you connect with?

I have a note that {Probst, 2008} said something about managing knowledge, but need to rewrite what they wrote.

I could also ask questions about who an interviewee knows who sees things differently? Where can I find people who don't engage or don't get involved? I think that would address maximum variation sampling that Miles and Huberman talk about.

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Czerniawska, F. (2002) The intelligent client: managing your management consultant, Hodder & Stoughton. 894
Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. (1994) Qualitative data analysis : an expanded sourcebook, (2nd Edn), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks. 758 :28
Probst, G. and Borzillo, S. (2008) 'Why communities of practice succeed and why they fail', European Management Journal, In Press, Corrected Proof. 852