Capstone Documents:

Doctoral Prospectus Resources

The Doctoral Prospectus Form is a brief and intuitive form for students to complete a discipline-specific, feasible, and aligned plan for their doctoral capstone or project. 

This all-in-one prospectus form provides:

• Step-by-step directions with links to key resources 
• Detailed content guidance and examples in the appendix
• Research design alignment content and support
• Quality rubric standards

Students complete the form, submit to their committee members for formative assessments, and then upload into MyDR for formal rubric evaluation by the committee and the PD Designee Reviewer.

The form should be used as a working document between the student and committee; therefore, iterations should be documented. A clean copy of the prospectus form should be sent for PD Designee review only when the committee members have reviewed it and any revisions requested have been made by the student.

Bookmark the Walden Writing Center’s Preproposal Starter Kit, which contains advice and resources to help you prepare your prospectus and transition from coursework to doctoral capstone writing. Review the Writing Center’s APA resources and Ask OASIS any scholarly writing questions you have. You can even make a paper review appointment to get writing feedback on your prospectus draft. For more intensive support, consider enrolling in SKIL’s Preproposal Doctoral Writing Workshop.

Also visit the Form and Style Page for other capstone resources.  Students should review the Form and Style SMRTguides on Alignment,  Formatting RQ’s and Hypotheses, and Writing the Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations.

If you need help researching your problem, broadening or narrowing your topic, or searching the literature, visit the Walden Library pages: Decide on a Topic, Choosing Your Topic, or schedule a Library appointment, which allows you to have a one-on-one session with a librarian in your subject area to brainstorm and develop effective research strategies for your capstone.You may also wish to bookmark the Library’s Guide to Capstone Literature Reviews which will help as you collect your literature.

Make a one-on-one doctoral research appointment with a ORDS statistics tutor for assistance with data analysis, SPSS, or interpretation of results. Attend Quantitative or Qualitative Methodology Office Hours with questions related to research methodology (e.g., research design, collecting data, analyzing data, writing up results).

Go to the
Doctoral Degree Coach

Students: Please contact your doctoral committee chair.

Faculty: Contact [email protected]