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[mazerunner]

Congratulations on making it this far.  My dissertation took me 18 months to finish, and I had a full-time job.  I'm in the social sciences.

How long the dissertation takes you depends on several factors:  Do you work?  Are you married?  Do you have kids?  Is your dissertation chair a stickler or more hands-off?  How easy is it to coordinate meetings with your subjects/participants for data collection or observation?  Are you a good writer?

I thought I could get my dissertation finished in a year, but I had several setbacks. My committee changed its opinion on how I should gather/code my data, for example.  That set me back about three months.  I also had trouble training coders and dealing with well intentioned people who were not able to see their role in my dissertation through to completion.

There are really a lot of obstacles to completing a dissertation.  These beasts really aren't about how smart you are, but how willing you are to put up with these barriers.  I think 2 years is a reasonable goal to take a dissertation from start to finish.  I don't subscribe to the idea that you should write a little every day.  Just write when you feel like writing and are able to concentrate.  At least this approach worked for me.  When you start taking more than 3 years to finish, that's when you have to be careful because it becomes easier to lose your focus and...not finish.

[drnobody]

I'm in ed, PhD at top-ranked R1. Did a qualitative. No family or full time work (just adjuncting off my MA while I did it). Finished in 3 years, which was a bit fast, but 4 was normal anyway. I had a committee that had no problem with me finishing fast if I could do it well (no games or hoops). It probably helped that one of my chairs (I had co-chairs) was retiring and no one wanted to delay it. My master's is in humanities and my interested have always crossed both fields, so when the decision came down to which to do a PhD in, besides my greater interest and the job situation, a factor I considered was my friends who stayed in humanities who took so long--and it wasn't all their fault but the nature of humanities PhD programs.

[merinoblue]

Also remember to factor in some "thinking time" - as in, data analysis. You don't step right from collecting data into writing up the results, but you have to consider, organize, reorganize, write up and rewrite sections, etc.

Everyone forgets the thinking time (and sometimes, unfortunately, people get caught up in an endless cycle of thinking and not writing) - 2 years sounds reasonable to me (but then, I'm one of those too slow humanities folks).

Yup.  Don't forget that qualitative studies, particularly ethnographic, can go sideways.  Access to informants isn't possible or takes forever, or the data isn't there, or new questions pop up that you hadn't considered.  Analysis can take a very long time.  Transcribing interviews, if you're planning to do it yourself, is time-consuming (budget 4-6 hours per hour of interview).  And then there's that element that no one seems to talk about when planning data gathering and writing in a rational fashion: life and the curves that it can throw at you. 

[lohai0]

Also remember to factor in some "thinking time" - as in, data analysis. You don't step right from collecting data into writing up the results, but you have to consider, organize, reorganize, write up and rewrite sections, etc.

Everyone forgets the thinking time (and sometimes, unfortunately, people get caught up in an endless cycle of thinking and not writing) - 2 years sounds reasonable to me (but then, I'm one of those too slow humanities folks).

Yup.  Don't forget that qualitative studies, particularly ethnographic, can go sideways.  Access to informants isn't possible or takes forever, or the data isn't there, or new questions pop up that you hadn't considered.  Analysis can take a very long time.  Transcribing interviews, if you're planning to do it yourself, is time-consuming (budget 4-6 hours per hour of interview).  And then there's that element that no one seems to talk about when planning data gathering and writing in a rational fashion: life and the curves that it can throw at you. 

+1 one of the three studies my committee insisted on is an ethnography. Right now, I feel like I'm doing a good job getting all the data sorted into a folder for a week and putting the folders in a box. This summer is going to suck.

[westcoastgirl]

Average in our field (humanities/history) is about 8 years. All of my cohorts (nine years) are still out, save one, who happens to be my husband. The rest of us are still working or have dropped out. My university has the largest amount of ABDs in the entire country though. I have heard 8 to 10 years as standard from first class to defense.

[wilcoxlibrary]

As long as it takes just as long as you get it done before the institution pulls the plug.  If you can do it, go full time at the course work, get the orals done, then carry on with your life and enjoy the research as a part timer.  There is a bunch of us who had to pay our own way which makes the walk all the more enjoyable even if it took a few years to make it.

[helpful]

1. did your comps prepare you for your proposal, or allow you to write any part of your proposal, or were they more about the general nature of your field and not related at all to your research question?
2. What kind of dissertation does your institution and committee require (as there are many approaches to a dissertation, including ones where you have to write 3-5 publishable articles)?