What classes should I take?
What is most important for a Ph.D. student to know before entering a Ph.D. program depends to a degree on the type of research that the student wants to conduct. The three "tracts" of research can be separated based on whether the student is interested in conducting analytical, archival, or experimental research.
Analytical Skill Sets
Students that are successfull in analytical fields often have engineering, math, or physics undergraduate degrees. If one is to master analytical accounting research, advanced mathematical skills are necessary.
Archival Skill Sets
Experimental Skill Sets
One of the most important skills to develop as an experimentalist is research design. The strength of experimental methodology is internal validity. Experimentalists should rarely if ever sacrifice internal validity to achieve other types of validity; thus, being able to design high quality experiments is very important. To develop this skill, a Ph.D. prep student would benefit from a detailed study of Cook and Campbell, an experimental design class (if they offer one at BYU), and attempting to design an experiment and then seeking feedback from an experimentalist. Experimental research is not as popular in accounting as archival research. Experimentalists must therefore be conversant in archival research methodologies and so developing the skills used by an archivalist will make your life a lot easier in your Ph.D. program.
