The Defence & Viva Kit

What it's for

The examination tests whether the work is yours and whether you can discuss it as a researcher. This is the preparation for that, not for a memory test.

What's inside

1. Decode your examination — Format, panel, duration and your institution's own outcome categories, recorded in its words.
2. Know your examiners — A dossier per examiner and a prediction of where each one will probe.
3. Know the thesis cold — A one-page map of every chapter, the numbers you must have instantly, and a locator for the pages you will be asked to turn to.
4. Articulate the contribution — The claim at four lengths, from one sentence to five minutes.
5. Defend every decision — Design, sampling, instrument, analysis, scope: what you did, why, what you rejected and what it cost.
6. Pre-empt the weaknesses — Name them first, in the pattern that turns a limitation into evidence of judgement.
7. The question bank — Fifteen genres with the question that opens each, and space for your three points.
8. Answer like a scholar — The shape of a good answer, and the phrases for disagreement, partial agreement and not knowing.
9. The presentation — A slide framework built to the time limit, with rehearsal and online-viva checks.
10. Read the room — Six examiner styles, what each is testing, and how to handle the difficult moments.
11. Mock vivas — How to set one up properly, a seven-dimension scoring sheet and a debrief that produces fixes.
12. The day, the outcome, the corrections — What to bring, what to write down in the room, and a corrections tracker that gets sign-off first time.

Swipe cards — the rules, formulas and phrasings worth keeping beside you, on one page to cut out.

Also inside: A page for oral qualifying and comprehensive exams: what transfers from viva preparation, what is different, and the compressed preparation for an examination on a literature rather than your own study.

The Preparation Tracker (Excel / Google Sheets)

• Specifications: format, panel and your institution's outcome categories
• Examiners: one dossier per examiner, and where each is likely to probe
• Question Bank: fifteen genres, your three points, and a readiness flag for anything not yet said aloud
• Mock Scores: two rounds across seven dimensions, with the change between them
• Corrections: every correction in the panel's wording, mapped to the change and the page

Look inside

Low-resolution, watermarked previews of four of the 17 pages.

Who it's for

• Doctoral candidates with a submitted thesis and a viva or defence date.
• Candidates preparing for an oral qualifying or comprehensive exam.

It is not a set of model answers, and it makes no claim about outcomes — it is a structure for preparing your own answers and rehearsing them under conditions.

From the author

Companion to The Viva & Oral Defense Workbook (Mastering Research Series), by Dr. Rafiq Muhammad, MD, PhD.

The kit is the worksheet layer; the workbook adds the method, the worked examples and the field notes behind each step.

Licence and refunds

One purchaser, personal academic use: print and annotate freely; please don't share, resell or upload the files to shared drives or course sites. Refund on request within 14 days if the files cannot be downloaded or opened. Full terms.

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Other kits

• Sample-Size Justification — a computed sample size, a sourced effect size and the justification paragraph.
• Scoping Review Protocol — a search log, screening decisions, a charting form and the flow numbers.
• Data Cleaning & Codebook — a cleaning log, a missing-data record and a codebook for an analysis-ready dataset.

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