Doctoral degree is one among the most time taking academic programs. Every year hundreds of aspirants join to pursue this program with zeal and rigor, across many prestigious to newly born higher learning institutions. I see almost every week several advertisements for Doctoral Level Courses, where institutions guarantee the award of degree/diploma in a given time frame – and the guarantee motivate aspirants to take-up the doctoral degree program, though it is not the case of state or central universities.
I personally observed that aspirants who join doctoral programs with lots of zeal and hope, and to contribute something in a field, end up with redefining both these words differently when they reach in the middle of their doctoral level program – especially during their dissertation writing phase. And finally they finish the dissertation with a sophisticated literature review section, a hi-fi method/tool section, significantly long but well equipped with table and graph focused result and discussion section and general finding and conclusion section.
Why this happen ? I too don’t know much, though I did my doctoral program and experienced facts mentioned above.
In my more than a decade of experience in academic world, I found scholars struggling tremendously when they try to select a tool or method – which is suitable to the dissertation. Many a times I found they forget the mandate of the course – exploring method or tool OR something else.
The question that remain there always that, what should be prime in a doctoral level research program; the method/tool or the research question?
Greetings
I'm inclined to say the Research Question A Doctoral programme should be about making a contribution to the field.
Following the normal academic pathway students enter the PhD programme from a masters programme. It is in the masters programme that students learn about research and how to do it - i.e. they know the methodological stuff - and apply it.
A Doctoral programme should always be about creating the new material, new knowledge. Learning about methodologies and methods is a master-level thing. By the time a student gets to doctoral level they should know this stuff - it is assumed they do (I hope).
I have observed supervisory staff who have completed programmes in the way you describe, who then think this is the way a programme should happen - and expect students to complete their studies in the same way that they did. I'm not sure what the solution is here.
I have also seen teaching staff run a research design course (which is required for any research based degree) who have little understanding of the field, do not touch on epistemology and confuse methodology with methods ... this does not prepare students to select appropriate research methods or be able to justify those methods on methodological and/or epistemological grounds.
Part of the problem is also a consequence of post-Modernism - which has moved the debate from the research outcomes (are they valid, plausible, do they tell us something important) to a debate about methodologies - If I can justify my methodology, then my findings are necessarily correct .. However, many students are unable to do even that - argue for their research method.
Small rant - I'll leave it there for now.
Greetings
I'm inclined to say the Research Question A Doctoral programme should be about making a contribution to the field.
Following the normal academic pathway students enter the PhD programme from a masters programme. It is in the masters programme that students learn about research and how to do it - i.e. they know the methodological stuff - and apply it.
A Doctoral programme should always be about creating the new material, new knowledge. Learning about methodologies and methods is a master-level thing. By the time a student gets to doctoral level they should know this stuff - it is assumed they do (I hope).
I have observed supervisory staff who have completed programmes in the way you describe, who then think this is the way a programme should happen - and expect students to complete their studies in the same way that they did. I'm not sure what the solution is here.
I have also seen teaching staff run a research design course (which is required for any research based degree) who have little understanding of the field, do not touch on epistemology and confuse methodology with methods ... this does not prepare students to select appropriate research methods or be able to justify those methods on methodological and/or epistemological grounds.
Part of the problem is also a consequence of post-Modernism - which has moved the debate from the research outcomes (are they valid, plausible, do they tell us something important) to a debate about methodologies - If I can justify my methodology, then my findings are necessarily correct .. However, many students are unable to do even that - argue for their research method.
Small rant - I'll leave it there for now.
I really like Ian's answer.
A.K. It's not really a rant!! At the end of the day, the end result (regardless of zeal or aspiration - which is admirable), is far more reliant on rigour and new knowledge (they go hand-in-hand).
I fully agree on methodology - but never convinced on the linear 'post-modernist' debate. While it might seem a little confused - I am fully for the third paradigm of mixed methods research. I like to mix it all up - for a good reason!!
Small rants and frustrations are fine. It depends on the level of the students - but most cannot fully argue their methodology; it's left to dwindling academics to mentor as best they can.
I agree that quality of research findings should be kept in the centre but how you would ensure the right mix of methods, when you have a doctoral program aspirant who wishes to do his dissertation in Social Sciences and having a masters degree in Pure Sciences?
Another, in many postgraduate/masters programs the methodology courses are being run as an optional course; though about 5-10 percent students go further and join doctoral programs. In this case how the institution expect a Doctoral program without methodology course and if it keeps courses on methodology it lead somewhere else. And finally, not much academic contributions come from dissertations- except a few new tools and software based packages to analyse data differently.
I also agree with the above points. I also think it is important to have a passion for the topic under investigation and a desire to further develop one's academic and research skills. I also believe from a health care perspective that the PhD should have meaning in the real world (that is, have practical application and relevance and contribute to positive benefits from patient and clinician perspectives). The choice of methodology and design should flow naturally in context of the research question under investigation, group/cohort and anticipated /actual outcomes.
I agree with you Ian. We started teaching research methods and methodologies in the 3rd year of our Undergraduate degree program. Although not as in depth as the Masters Research Methodologies papers, it does prepare our students for the Masters degree. One of the aspects I include in the research paper in the Undergraduate degree is the difference between a method and a methodology, cultural epistemologies, and of course critical theory and how this fits with Māori research.
A K Dwivedi You ask: "how you would ensure the right mix of methods, when you have a doctoral program aspirant who wishes to do his dissertation in Social Sciences and having a masters degree in Pure Sciences?"
I might suggest that a student with a Masters in Pure Science might have a strionger sense of rigour, which is a good starting point - however, that might not necessarily be true.
In the end, the validity of any research is determined by the discourse (Kuhn, Feyerabend and others. ) And Lakatos suggests that all we can say about research is that it is progressing or not. By progression Lakatos means producing results.
I use mixed methods myself, and suggest that the results tell us something important about the world around us. In Indigenous terms the research tells us something about how we should interact with the world around us.
If research tells us something about the world, then it is useful. I would suggest that (despite the claims of some epistemologies) knowledge fundamentally has a use value, rather than a truth value, as truth can never be known.
Therefore, the judgement of research methods and approaches can always be justified on the use value the research produces. Such a judgement is made by the epistemic community in which the reserach is conducted.
Unfortunately, such an approach lends itself to an "ends justifies the means" argument - so clearly the research methods are moderated by ethics.
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