Dissertation Research in Public Administration and Cognate Fields: An Assessment of Methods and Quality

Transparent Practices: Primary and Secondary Data in Business Ethics Dissertations

“…Considered another way, we found that among all of the dissertations with abstracts that did not mention the presence of data (73% of our sample, N = 35), an examination of their tables of contents revealed that 43% of these (N = 15) actually do offer data-supported research. These results refute the claim by Adams and White (1994) that abstracts are an accurate reflection of an author's work. The implication of this finding is serious: while abstracts are generally included in dissertation-finding tools (i.e.…”

“…We reviewed several components of each dissertation for an indication of the use of either primary or secondary data, utilizing a mixture of manifest and latent coding (Monette et al, 2005). Specifically, we paid close attention to mentions in each dissertation's abstract of data collection and use, acknowledging the assertion by Adams and White that authors ''typically want to represent their research as accurately as possible in an abstract'' (Adams and White, 1994). We also looked at tables of contents, appendices, and the text itself in order to determine the creation (and availability for re-use) of primary data, as well as the presence of primary and secondary data.…”

APSA Pracademic Fellowship: The Third Epoch: A Pracademic View of the EPA’s Office of Policy

“…We are convinced that a sustained working presence in government agencies is essential to a clearer understanding of the public sector more broadly. Participantobservation-driven case studies are costly and time-consuming, and have been criticized as unhelpful for theory building (Adams and White 1994). But we believe that they are essential methodological tools at a time when resource constraints and research appetites tend toward ahistorical Big Data quantitative studies, overly historical documentary research, or studies based on data gathered for other purposes than those of the researcher.…”

The State of Public Administration as an Academic Field in South Africa

“…A number of US studies have assessed the state of the research conducted at the doctorate level. This includes the work by Adams and White (1994), McCurdy and Cleary (1984), White (1986), Cleary (1994 and Stallings (1994). The general conclusion of these studies was that doctoral research was of a poor quality.…”

“…The study found that there had been limited improvement only in the overall quality of research at the doctorate level in Public Administration. Adams and White (1994) conducted a study regarding the quality of doctorate research in relation to five other comparable academic fields. This study indicated that doctorates in Public Administration showed low-quality research and limited conformity to mainstream research methodology compared to the other four disciplines.…”