PhD viva-anticipated questions

Had a PhD viva last year. I did a lot of preparations, including making a list of anticipated FAQs. Some from workshops attended. Hope it’s useful for postgraduates. Happy viva and hope you get back a normal life soon….hahahaha, you know what I mean, :P

 

Anticipated viva questions

Can you provide a summary of your work?

What is the most important new finding in your work?

Does your work support/contradict previous work? Justify your answer.

What do you think are the strong & weak part of your thesis overall?

Why did you choose the particular research methods you used?

How could your work be extended by further research?

Very briefly, what does your research tell us?

Overall, what have you found out by undertaking this research project?

Can you summarise the key contribution that your work has made to furthering knowledge and understanding in this area?

What do you think are the strongest and weakest parts of your thesis overall?

Are there possible alternative interpretations?

What are the implications of your work?

What are the possible applications of your work?

What further would you have liked to research if you had more time?

What were your motivations for choosing this subject?

What are the key pieces of research from which your thesis has been developed?

Why is your research important to investigate?

How does your work link to the work of others in the same/related field?

What are the key references within your thesis?

What methods did you choose for this project?

Why did you choose this particular method over other methods?

What are the strength and limitation of your methods compared to others?

What weaknesses in the results might arise from the way in which you preferred your data analysis?

With hindsight, would you now choose a different way of presenting your results?

Where are your main findings/results?

How do your results compare/contrast/refute previous research?

How would you rationalise the differences between your results/conclusions and those of previous investigations?

Did you discover what would you thought you would?

How did you come to research this topic in this manner?

What are the main achievements of your research?

Which of the achievement is most important to you and why?

What has your thesis contributed to our knowledge in this field?

What are the major theoretical strands in this area: what are the crucial ideas and who are the main contributors?

What are the main issues (matter of debate or dispute) in this area?

Where is your thesis “placed” in term of existing theory and debate? How would the major researchers react to your idea?

Who in your opinion will be most interested in this work?

What published research is closest to your work? Who are your main competitors and how is your research distinguished from theirs?

Why did you choose the particular research methodology that you used?

Did you consider using any other research methodology?

What were the crucial research discoveries that you made?

If you were doing this research again, what would you do differently?

What do you see as the next steps in this research?

What was the most interesting findings in your results

Isn’t this all obvious?

Were you surprised by any of your results (if so, why and what was surprising)?

What advice would you give to a new student entering this area?

What is your plan for publication?

What haven’t I asked you that I should have done, and what would your answer have been?

If you were doing this PhD again, do you want to take this project?