What questions will you have on your Viva?

I believe that an ex-PhD have different situation on their viva. However, I found a basic guidance from PhD training on what questions commonly appear during the viva. In addition to that, you may also challenge yourself to what kind of question could be generated from the thesis report. You can ask yourself the question and you can then answer the question. You can write down the question and answer in a table format, and you can even give the exact location of the answer in if it exists in your reports (for example the page or section location).

You might not have, or even want, all the questions. However, asking yourself some of the questions will make you feel more ready. At least, you will remember, at some points, the answer when the examiner happens to ask a question, which you have on your list.

What questions will you have?

The question can go as much as possible. This following list gives only some common general questions.

• Opening:

Previous education, working background, background influence on research area, etc.

• Definition & Context

Phd set to achieve: objective; how set out to achieving this; main findings/conclusion/output; scope: what’s in? what’s out?; limitation; main unit of study; ascertain what aspect of PhD student is most proud of; what aspect would be seen as the greatest challenge; school of thought à authors with influential role on PhD study; context; definition of some terminology used in the thesis

• Research Methodology

Choice of research methodology; research philosophy; methodology and research techniques; sample choice; how the data obtained?; interview; analysis?; how credibility is your research? à validity, reliability; major challenges in obtaining data?

• Question on thesis

Possible inconsistencies; lack of depth in certain areas; language and typo error

Critical thinking: How different is this research with other; what’s the different of this study with conflicts in Western world context?; previous work in this area?; do you provide enough comparison with similar studies?; how you validate your model/framework?

• Model, Framework, Guidance, Result

Why you choose to develop framework?; How was it developed?; How was the framework validated?; How was the ‘guidance’ validated?; Who are the participants for the verification?; How will the framework & guidance be used?; The benefit of the guidance?; How you link data àconclusion

• Meeting Aims and Objectives

Ensure you answer each aims and objectives

• Main contribution

Contribution to knowledge; contribution to practitioners; contribution to research methodology; etc.

• Conclusion and recommendations

Key conclusion; Key recommendations of research; Propose to take the study area forward; Wider dissemination; What lessons have you learned from doing the PhD?; If I were to do PhD again?

How long will your Viva be?

Well, unfortunately the length of the viva varies. A friend spent only about an hour but another friend had to finish his entire viva for more than five hours. In my case (of some other friends too), the viva lasted for about two hours. During this two hours time, the examiners spent about 1,5 hours on one third part of my report, especially the front part. In other words, we had been discussing for about 80% of the time for only 30% part of the report which includes introduction, literature review, and research methodology. This experience reminds me to an advice from a professor that a PhD students really needs to carefully and seriously develop this part. My supervisor also once mentioned that I would have more confident to discuss the analysis, result, and conclusion part. This is particularly true in my case as I know exactly what I was doing in my research.

Good luck.

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