How to write the MA/PhD thesis subject matter expert interview request email: tried and true tips and templates. What to include in your email requests.
I obtained my PhD in Digital Transformation and Innovation in April 2020 from the PhD in DTI uOttawa Program at uOttawa engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). I did my uOttawa PhD thesis (titled Technoethics and sensemaking: Risk assessment and knowledge management of ethical hacking in a sociotechnical society) on the topic of ethical hacking sociotechnology (thesis advisory committee: uOttawa professors Rocci Luppicini, Liam Peyton, and Andre Vellino).
You may also be interested in How to choose a PhD external examiner.
Typically you’ll send email invitations to your prospective subject matter experts asking them to grant you interviews as part of the data collection process for your dissertation or thesis or major research project. In qualitative research at the master and doctoral levels, typically you’d be conducting one-on-one in-depth interviews, and your subject matter experts are typically university professors.
Before data collection commences, you’ve already secured approval from your university’s research ethics board (REB) or office for your research project if it involves human participants or human biological material and which is conducted within the jurisdiction or under the auspices of a university.
So at this point you have your REB approval letter (Certificate of Ethics Approval), which means your data collection instrument (Interview Questions), interview participant recruitment letter (Recruitment Invitation for a Master/PhD Thesis Study) and Consent Form (outlining the rights of and to be signed by the interview participants) have all been vetted and deemed acceptable and ethical for your intended research project by both your academic supervisor(s) and the REB.
An effective approach to go about recruiting interview participants for your dissertation or thesis is to send an email to your target subject matter expert briefly describing your research topic and why you’ve chosen them to participate in your study. You can enclose the aforementioned items with the email. And you wait for a reply. You can try to leave a phone message simultaneously (saying, e.g., that you’ve sent an email and hope to hear from them soon/by date so and so). You can send up to two additional follow-up messages but if you still don’t hear back from them, you should consider moving on to your next prospective interview participant.
Before we part ways, you’re invited to read my letter to uOttawa President Jacques Frémont about how to easily implement policy reforms to prevent supervisor bullying of uOttawa students: uOttawa President Jacques Frémont ignores university bullying problem. You may also be interested in How to end supervisor bullying at uOttawa.
The interview request email templates/format
An effective interview request email will enclose the following documents:
- Your updated CV
- Recruitment Invitation for a Master/PhD Thesis Study (sample/template)
- Consent Form (sample/template)
- Interview Questions (sample)
- Certificate of Ethics Approval (sample)
Related content
How to choose a PhD external examiner
Back to MA/PhD Thesis Writing Resources (templates)
Other content
1st Annual University of Ottawa Supervisor Bullying ESG Business Risk Assessment Briefing
Disgraced uOttawa President Jacques Frémont ignores bullying problem
How to end supervisor bullying at uOttawa
PhD in DTI uOttawa program review
Rocci Luppicini – Supervisor bullying at uOttawa case updates
The case for policy reform: Tyranny
The trouble with uOttawa Prof. A. Vellino
The ugly truth about uOttawa Prof. Liam Peyton
uOttawa engineering supervisor bullying scandal
uOttawa President Jacques Frémont ignores university bullying problem
uOttawa Prof. Liam Peyton denies academic support to postdoc
Updated uOttawa policies and regulations: A power grab
What you must know about uOttawa Prof. Rocci Luppicini
Why a PhD from uOttawa may not be worth the paper it’s printed on
Why uOttawa Prof. Andre Vellino refused academic support to postdoc
