Criminal justice PhD: defending a secondary data design
Derrick, 39 | PhD in Criminal Justice | Public university, South
The challenge
I used NCVS data and one committee member kept asking why I had not collected my own. I did not have a defensible answer beyond convenience.
What we changed
- We built the secondary data justification around coverage, sampling design, and statistical power that no dissertation-scale primary collection could match.
- Every limitation of the dataset was stated before the committee could raise it, each paired with the analytic decision that mitigated it.
- Complex survey weights were applied properly, which the earlier draft had ignored entirely.
The outcome
Passed with the secondary data rationale cited approvingly in the committee's written feedback.
Naming the weaknesses first turned the hostile question into a conversation.