Why This Question Appears in Almost Every Malaysian Viva
One question appears with remarkable regularity in Malaysian postgraduate viva examinations regardless of discipline, methodology, or institution: “If you could do this study again, what would you do differently?” Variations include “What are the main weaknesses of your study and how would you address them?” and “What would your next study look like if you were continuing this research?” These questions are not traps. They are genuine tests of a candidate’s reflective capacity — the ability to step back from years of intimate involvement in your own research and evaluate it with critical honesty.
How to answer “what would you do differently” viva questions well requires preparation that goes beyond knowing your thesis inside out. It requires deliberately constructing a thoughtful, honest, and forward-looking critique of your own work — and being able to articulate it calmly and specifically under examination conditions.
Why Examiners Ask This Question
Understanding what examiners are looking for when they ask “what would you do differently” helps you frame your answer appropriately. They are not asking because they want you to condemn your thesis or because they expect you to produce a list of its flaws. They are asking because genuine scholarly maturity involves the ability to evaluate your own work critically — to see it from the outside as well as from the inside, to understand its limitations honestly, and to think about how research in this area could be strengthened.
A candidate who says “I would not change anything — I am satisfied with every decision I made” signals an absence of reflective capacity that concerns examiners. A candidate who says “The whole study was fundamentally flawed and I should have done it completely differently” signals either false modesty or genuine confusion about what the study accomplished. The answer examiners value is specific, honest, balanced, and constructive: identifying real methodological or design choices that could be improved, explaining the constraints that shaped those choices during the study, and articulating what a better-resourced or better-informed version of the research might look like.
Preparing Your Answer Before the Viva
To prepare a strong answer to “what would you do differently” viva questions, revisit your limitations section from your conclusion chapter. This is where you should already have acknowledged the genuine constraints and weaknesses of your study. Go through each limitation you identified and ask: if this limitation did not exist — if you had more time, a larger budget, broader access, or the benefit of hindsight — what would you have done differently? This exercise generates a concrete list of genuine methodological improvements rather than vague gestures toward better research.
Then consider which of these improvements are most significant. The strongest “what would you do differently” answers focus on the one, two, or three changes that would most meaningfully strengthen the study’s contribution — not every possible improvement, which can make the answer sound like an exhaustive audit of the thesis’s failures. Select the improvements that reflect the deepest and most honest engagement with your research design, and be ready to explain both why the limitation existed and what a different approach would have produced.
Sample Answer Structures That Work Well
Effective answers to “what would you do differently” questions in a Malaysian viva tend to follow a structure: acknowledge what the current design achieved, identify what its constraint was, and explain what an improved design would look like and why it would be better. For example: “The cross-sectional design was appropriate given the timeline available and allowed me to establish associations between the variables of interest. If I were repeating the study, I would design it longitudinally — following the same participants across two or three academic years — because this would allow me to track how the relationship between motivation and performance evolves over time and whether causal patterns can be more reliably identified.”
This answer acknowledges why the current design was chosen, specifies what it cannot do, and explains what a longitudinal design would add and why. It is specific rather than vague, constructive rather than self-critical, and forward-looking rather than merely retrospective. It also demonstrates that you understand the methodological implications of your design choices, which is exactly what examiners are testing.
Connecting Your Answer to Future Research
The “what would you do differently” question connects naturally to questions about future research directions, which are also common in Malaysian vivas. Many of the improvements you would make to your study design if you were starting over are also the design features of the next study that should follow your current research. Framing your answer in this way — not just as a critique of what was lacking but as a vision of how the field should develop — positions you as a researcher thinking beyond the current project toward a sustained research agenda.
This is particularly important for doctoral candidates whose examiners are evaluating not just the thesis but the candidate’s potential as an independent researcher. Showing that you can look at your completed study and identify a clear, motivated path for where research in this area should go next is one of the strongest signals of doctoral-level readiness you can give in the viva. It transforms a question about limitations into a demonstration of scholarly vision, which is a much more impressive outcome than simply acknowledging what your study could not do.
