A thesis is required by each Division.
Submission of an approved thesis is a requirement for entrance to the oral examination.
The thesis need not have been published or accepted for publication upon submission.
1. Four copies of the thesis must be submitted in the proper format along with the completed affidavit form (affidavit form will be provided in September mailing).
2. The thesis must meet the instructions for authors for any one of the following journals:
(1) American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology;
(2) The New England Journal of Medicine;
(3) Fertility and Sterility; or
(4) Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The format chosen must be clearly identified on the cover page of the manuscript, and as a rule, the total pages of the manuscript should not exceed thirty (30).
The thesis must be submitted in type-written form, single-spaced, double-sided on standard 8 x 11 paper (THIS INCLUDES PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS; REPRINTS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE).
The applicant must be the sole or principal investigator and should be the only author listed on the manuscript (do not list co-authors, institutions, or acknowledgments).
No more than one such article is to be submitted and pages must be numbered.
3. The subject should be clearly in the area of gynecologic oncology, or maternal-fetal medicine, or reproductive endocrinology and infertility.
4. The thesis must be on clinical or basic research and NOT a review of work by others. The work must have been performed during or subsequent to the fellowship period.
5. All research involving humans and animals must be reviewed and approved by the human or animal institutional review boards (IRBs).
6. The thesis must be a scholarly effort that most often should consist of:
a. an abstract (200-300 word concise statement of the work performed);
b. an introduction outlining the pertinent background and reasons for doing the work, as well as, when appropriate, a testable hypothesis and a rationale for the hypothesis;
c. a methodology section, including quality control of the methods used (for assays, this should also include precision, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity) and a well-defined control group, as well as a reasonable number of observations;
d. an analysis of results with valid statistical methods;
e. pertinent discussion and significance of the study including an appropriate review of the literature and justification of the conclusion(s) reached;
f. a summary; and
g. references.
7. Book chapters, clinical case reports, meta analysis reports and descriptive series are not acceptable.
8. During the oral examination, the candidate will be asked any one or all of the following questions; however, additional questions may be asked which are not listed in this outline.
a. Hypothesis
1) What were the study objectives?
2) What was the population studied?
3) What was the population to which the investigators intended to apply their findings?
b. Design of the investigation
1) Was the study an experiment, case control study, randomized clinical trial, planned observations, or a retrospective analysis of records?
2) Were there possible sources of sample selection bias?
3) How comparable was the control group?
4) What was the statistical power of the study?
c. Observations
1) Were there clear definitions of the terms used (i.e., diagnostic criteria, inclusion criteria, measurements made and outcome variables)?
2) Were the observations reliable and reproducible?
3) What were the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of the methods?
d. Presentation of findings
1) Were the findings presented clearly, objectively, and in sufficient detail?
2) Were the findings internally consistent (i.e., did the numbers add up properly and could the different tables be reconciled, etc.)?
e. Analysis of the results
1) Was the data worthy of statistical analysis? If so, were the methods of analysis appropriate to the source and nature of the data?
2) Were the analyses correctly performed and interpreted?
3) Were there sufficient analyses to ascertain whether "significant differences" might, in fact, have been due to a lack of comparability of the groups (i.e., age, sex, clinical characteristics, or in other relevant variables)?
4) Was design of the study appropriate for solving the stated problems?
5) Was there an improper use of statistical techniques?
6) Was there mention of the type of test used or the significance level?
7) Was there use of measured sensitivity without specificity?
f. Conclusions or summary
1) Which conclusions were justified by the findings?
2) Were the conclusions relevant to the hypothesis?
g. Redesign the study
If the study could be improved, how would you revise the experimental design in order to provide reliable and valid information relevant to the questions under study?
h. Breadth and depth of subject matter
Each candidate may be asked about references cited in their thesis. The candidate also will be judged based upon their knowledge of the literature related to the subject of their thesis.
