<p>The non-completion of doctoral degrees has been a concern due to its economic, social, and personal consequences. In the current study, the researchers investigated perceived barriers of select doctoral students in completing their doctoral degrees by utilizing a fully mixed sequential mixed research design. The quantitative and qualitative data were concurrently collected using identical samples (<em>n </em>= 205) via a Reading Interest Survey questionnaire. A sequential mixed analysis revealed 6 emergent themes: <em>external obligations </em>(36%),<em> challenges to doctoral-level researchers </em>(34%),<em> practical/logistical constraints </em>(23%),<em> emotional concerns </em>(15%),<em> program structure </em>(9%), and <em>support for completion </em>(8%). Also, 3 meta-themes were identified (i.e., <em>dissociation</em>,<em> external/internal barriers</em>, and <em>institutional/personal barriers</em>), which aided in explaining the relationships among the 6 primary themes.<em> </em>Implications of the findings are discussed.</p>
Little is known about reading ability among doctoral students. Thus, we used a multi-stage mixed analysis to examine 205 doctoral students' levels of reading ability, their perceptions of barriers that prevented them from reading empirical articles, and the relationship between these two sets of constructs. Approximately 10% of doctoral students attained reading ability scores that represented the lower percentiles of a normative sample of undergraduate students. A thematic analysis revealed 8 themes (subsumed by 3 meta-themes: Research Characteristics; Comprehension; Text Characteristics) that represented barriers to reading empirical articles and that predicted both perceived and actual reading ability. Combinations of these themes and meta-themes were related to both perceived reading ability and actual reading ability (reading comprehension, reading vocabulary). The implications of these and other findings are discussed and recommendations are provided for helping doctoral students successfully negotiate the path of emergent scholarship.
The assessment of validity—or more appropriately known as legitimation—is the most important step in all research studies, whether the research study represents a quantitative research study, a qualitative research study, or a mixed research study. Despite its importance, a significant proportion of authors do not discuss to any degree the legitimation issues that emerged in their studies. It is likely that the prevalence rate among authors of dissertations is even higher, not only because they represent beginning researchers but also because many of their advisors/supervisors themselves do not discuss (adequately) the limitations of findings/interpretations. Thus, in this article we provide a model for presenting threats to legitimation both at the planning and interpretation phases in the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research components of a dissertation. In so doing, we provide an exemplar of the legitimation process, which we believe provides evidence of a comprehensive technique for identifying and addressing threats to legitimation for researchers in general and dissertation researchers in particular
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