Writing challenges, causes, and strategies to facilitate the doctoral dissertation‐writing process: A qualitative analysis

Abstract

This study grows out of the absence of literature on an in‐depth understanding of dissertation‐writing challenges, facilitating strategies, and causes to develop a more profound understanding of Pakistani doctoral students. This is primarily qualitative research. One of the largest private universities was selected as a case to collect the data. The data were based on 12 Pakistani doctoral dissertations, 49 evaluation reports from 13 countries, mainly from the state‐run universities, and a survey questionnaire responded to by 12 PhD graduates. The data were codified for commonly emerging categories and themes based on the methodological approach of Clarke and Braun (2017). The data revealed that the doctoral students faced challenges concerning mechanics of writing, developing an argument in a coherent whole, and structural organization of the dissertation. The examiners recommended the doctoral students to copyedit/proofread the dissertation to overcome mechanics of writing problems, build the argument logically, use formal language, write transition sentences to knit the texts coherently, embed citations to support the claims, and uniform the structure of the dissertation. Five causes of writing difficulties emerged from the survey questions. Despite a mismatch between the academic resources and research support provided to Pakistani doctoral students, their research work is deemed par with foreign universities, which encourage native‐like English. It is hoped that this study will help doctoral students improve their dissertation‐writing quality.

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