Doctoral Students’ Perceived Barriers that Slow the Progress toward Completing a Doctoral Dissertation: A Mixed Analysis

Eunjin Hwang, Rachel N. Smith, Valerie Tharp Byers, Shirley Dickerson, Leah McAlister-Shields, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie and Cindy Benge

Journal of Educational Issues, 2015, vol. 1, issue 1, 164190

Abstract: 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 (n = 205) via a Reading Interest Survey questionnaire. A sequential mixed analysis revealed 6 emergent themes- external obligations (36%), challenges to doctoral-level researchers (34%), practical/logistical constraints (23%), emotional concerns (15%), program structure (9%), and support for completion (8%). Also, 3 meta-themes were identified (i.e., dissociation, external/internal barriers, and institutional/personal barriers), which aided in explaining the relationships among the 6 primary themes. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jei/article/download/7703/6467 (application/pdf)
https://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jei/article/view/7703 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mth:jeijnl:v:1:y:2015:i:1:p:164190

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Educational Issues is currently edited by Priscilla Ann

More articles in Journal of Educational Issues from Macrothink Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Technical Support Office ().