I did not give any presents to the internal and external examiners after or during my viva,, I did give, however, a present to my supervisor, which was the book I got published based on my thesis. Not sure if it is appropriate to give present to the examiners?

A standard thesis should be as follows, where you use present, future and past tenses depending what you are describing. For example, present tense in chapter 1, past tense in chapter 4, etc.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Research Aim and Objective, Literature Review

Chapter 3: Methodology, Research Approach and Data Collection Techniques

Chapter 4: Research activity

Chapter 5: Research Findings

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Recommendations, future work

References and Bibliography

I hope this will help!

Hi Nige, I would suggest you to look at the Professional Doctorate options, which is a better choice for somebody like you with a good amount of working experience. There are a lot of good programmes in the UK where the practitioner is situated outside the Academia, (i.e. in a working context) with three major stake holders, the Candidate, the University and the Employer. It is surely a better route for you and it is not unusual to find candidate in their 50's. Good luck!

As a general rule, you should be able to answer at these questions:

1) What?
2) Why?
3) How?
4) So what?

I also suggest a mock presentation with a critical friend, this would be highly effective in preparing yourself for the 'real thing'. Good luck!

Looking at your research topic, I would think that you want to use a quantitative approach. Bear in mind that you must have a pretty good idea of your research methodology, and in the proposal phase you need to be ready to explain why you choose it. In short, a good proposal should cover the followings:

Introduction
Aim(s)
Main Research Question(s)
Research Approach
Ethical Consideration
Data Collection Techniques
Research feasibility
Research report/Product
Reference

Good luck!

The short answer is if you want to remain within the Academia, go for a PhD, if you are looking for an experience in the industry/practice go for a DProf , mind you that the latter should be underpinned by some working experience.

Of course you can, just need referencing. The more you publish, the better.

hello,

why don't you contemplate the Professional Doctorate (DProf) at the Middlesex University in London (http://www.mdx.ac.uk/wbl/courses/dprof/dprof.asp) aimed for full time working professional, I believe it is very applicable to your situation. Its peculiarity is to make a valid contribution to the practice, rather than generate pure knowledge. The yearly tuition fees is about £ 3,400.

I am enrolled in the programme, just finished the 1st semester and I am now working on my proposal.

Good luck!

In my opinion, there is no perfect proposal research, but having said that you can write a decent one addressing the important aspects in about 4,500/5,000 words, excluding references, as follows:

Introduction
Aim(s)
Main Research Question(s)
Research Approach
Ethical Consideration
Data Collection Techniques
Research feasibility
Research report/Product
Reference

Good luck!