HS860 Unit 9 Doctoral Committee Response Memo Example

Three Comments, Three Answers, One Polite Refusal: A Unit 9 Committee Response Memo for a Lymphedema Surveillance Proposal

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HS860: Doctoral Project I: Project Proposal

Unit 9 Committee Response Memo

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The committee, its comments and the project are composite; the sources cited are real.

To, From, Subject

To: Doctoral committee. From: Doctoral candidate. Subject: Responses to committee comments on the proposal draft, with changes made and one suggestion declined.

Comment One, From the Methodologist

The comment: "The records review can show where women leave the pathway, but it cannot show why. The proposal's language sometimes suggests the records will explain departures."

What the comment gets right: it is correct, and two sentences in Chapter 1 overstated what the records strand could do. The records will show at which step women leave and whether departures differ by age, surgery date, insurance or distance from the center. They will not show reasons.

Change made: the two sentences have been revised. Research question one now asks only where and for whom; research question two, answered by interviews, asks why. The integration section explains that patterns in the records, such as higher losses among women living farther away, will guide interview questions but will be interpreted only through what women and staff say. This follows the logic of the explanatory sequential design, in which the second strand explains the first (Ivankova et al., 2006).

Comment Two, From the Content Expert

The comment: "Many programs now surveil all women treated for breast cancer, including those who had sentinel node biopsy only. Limiting the study to women with axillary dissection may make the findings less useful."

What the comment gets right: practice varies, and some programs do surveil all women, partly because sentinel node biopsy with radiation to the nodes also raises risk. The comment is also right that a broader population would describe more of the center's pathway.

Decision: declined, for three reasons. First, the center's pathway, the subject of the study, applies only to women with axillary dissection; including women not on the pathway would mean studying a service the center does not offer them. Second, incidence after sentinel node biopsy alone is roughly a quarter of that after dissection (DiSipio et al., 2013), so including those women would dilute the population the pathway exists to protect. Third, the feasibility appraisal shows the interview strand already depends on reaching women who left the pathway; adding a much larger group would stretch recruitment beyond what one candidate can manage.

Declining a committee member's suggestion is acceptable when the reasons come from the project's own purpose and limits, and when the suggestion is preserved as future work rather than dismissed.

What is offered instead: Chapter 5 will discuss whether the center should extend its pathway to women with nodal radiation after sentinel node biopsy, as the expert panel recommendations allow for women at elevated risk (McLaughlin et al., 2017), and will name this as a question for later study.

Comment Three, From the Chair

The comment: "You manage the lymphedema clinic. How will you prevent your role from influencing what women and staff tell you, and how you interpret the records?"

What the comment gets right: the concern is real on both counts. Women may soften criticism of a clinic whose manager is asking, and staff may defend their own steps. The candidate may also read the records in a way that favors the clinic's own step.

Changes made: invitations and consent will be handled by the breast program's research coordinator. Interviews with women will be conducted by the coordinator, trained by the candidate, with the candidate absent; transcripts will be deidentified before the candidate reads them. The candidate's own clinic staff are excluded from the interview sample. For the records, a second analyst from the analytics office will run the step counts independently, and any difference will be reconciled and reported. The candidate will keep a reflexive journal recording decisions and reactions during analysis, and the proposal now includes a positionality statement.

Summary of Changes

Chapter 1: two sentences revised to separate where from why. Chapter 3: recruitment, interviewing and analysis procedures revised to separate the candidate from data collection; positionality statement added. Chapter 5 outline: new section on extending the pathway. No change to population.

Request

Please confirm whether the declined suggestion is acceptable with the stated reasons, so that the proposal can proceed to final review.

References

DiSipio, T., Rye, S., Newman, B., & Hayes, S. (2013). Incidence of unilateral arm lymphoedema after breast cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Oncology, 14(6), 500-515. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70076-7

Ivankova, N. V., Creswell, J. W., & Stick, S. L. (2006). Using mixed-methods sequential explanatory design: From theory to practice. Field Methods, 18(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05282260

McLaughlin, S. A., Staley, A. C., Vicini, F., Thiruchelvam, P., Hutchison, N. A., Mendez, J., MacNeill, F., Rockson, S. G., DeSnyder, S. M., Klimberg, S., Alatriste, M., Boccardo, F., Smith, M. L., & Feldman, S. M. (2017). Considerations for clinicians in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of breast cancer-related lymphedema: Recommendations from a multidisciplinary expert ASBrS panel: Part 1: Definitions, assessments, education, and future directions. Annals of Surgical Oncology, 24(10), 2818-2826. https://doi.org/10.1245/s10434-017-5982-4