Methodological Quality and Publication of Doctoral Dissertations in Education: An Evaluative Study of Ten Years of K-12 Doctoral Dissertations in the United States
Despite an increase in the numbers of K-12 educators pursuing doctoral degrees, it is unclear if the field of education has been significantly impacted by the research resulting from their doctoral dissertations. Accordingly, the quality of doctoral programs and dissertations and rate of publication after defense, warrants examination.
There have long been discussions regarding concerns about the quality of doctoral dissertations that come in concert with an increase in degrees awarded. This paper presents findings from a study examining dissertation quality for K-12 education doctorates awarded over a ten-year period in the United States.
The researchers randomly selected and evaluated the methodological quality of more than 500 dissertations during the last ten years from the Proquest dissertation database using a rubric adapted from Ronau et al. (2014). Using this rubric, the team described the quality of dissertations with respect to sampling, design, and validity.
A new rubric was developed and tested to assess the quality of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies. These results provided large-scale data on dissertation quality that may be used to guide doctoral programs in implementing program changes.
Although the majority of the dissertations studied used qualitative methods of inquiry, quantitative research had significantly higher quality scores. Regardless of the methods used, many studies failed to employ rigorous validity controls.
Doctoral programs may wish to make use of these results to improve programming, particularly in methods courses. These results may also be used to guide dissertation advisors and dissertation committee members, along with increasing publication rates among doctoral students.
Researchers may wish to extend this study by looking more closely at the methodological quality in specific subject areas. Research is also needed to improve the rubric developed for this study further and to determine other metrics of impact beyond publication.
Stronger methods sections may lead to more publications of dissertation studies, which can improve impact on educational practice and evidence-based decision-making.
Future research should assess the quality of research in the context of usefulness, impact on practice beyond publication, and topic currency. Further, the motives behind publishing dissertation work in fields that do not require publication should be examined.
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