Table of Contents for Volume 18, 2023, of the International Journal of Doctoral Studies

Aim/Purpose: Graduate students face immense pressures and challenges as part of the graduate school experience, with few avenues to express their frustrations. While the crisis of graduate student mental health is well-documented quantitatively, and the stresses of graduate school are explored on the institutional level, there are few qualitative studies of these issues. Background: This study ai ...

Aim/Purpose: This study examined the perceptions of doctoral supervisors and candidates around how expectations for doctoral supervision are clarified, and the strategies used. Background: Clarifying expectations is recommended in supervisor and candidate handbooks, supervisor training and recognition programme. Formal strategies have been adopted as a blanket approach by some departments, facult ...

Aim/Purpose: Alignment of academic curricula and employer needs is widely discussed yet implementation lags. Research on EdD curricula has universality for other academic programs and may catalyze pedagogical innovation to promote employability in other disciplines. Background: This study contributes evidence-based data to strengthen career relevance of academic programs, align curriculum content ...

Aim/Purpose: To provide a research proposal writing framework to help doctoral students argue and motivate their efforts at furthering the existing knowledge available to understand some phenomenon or theory. Background: I discuss how the cognitive process theory of writing and the science writing heuristic can lead to a set of rhetorical moves and question prompts that students can use to develo ...

Aim/Purpose: Recent research highlights the growing decline in doctoral students’ mental health and wellbeing, caused not only by the pressures, stress, and isolation of doctoral studies but also by existential issues around personal development and future prospects. Consequently, we argue that there is an urgent need to reassess the supervisory process to support doctoral students in addressing t ...

Aim/Purpose: The goal of this essay is to critically reflect on the emerging trend for PhDs by Prospective Publication (PbPP) in Australian Business Schools and to explore its appropriateness for fledgling academics. Background: The PbPP is a relatively new and increasingly popular alternative to traditional PhD by monograph (PbM). It is the idea that a doctorate can be completed by writing a ser ...

Aim/Purpose The purpose of this study is to introduce an instrument that contains a set of exercises intended to help doctoral students align the key sections of their dissertation document. The exercises are developed after providing cognitive analysis of the factors that make aligning these key sections challenging to many, and after discussing pedagogical tools that can be used to address thes ...

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to explore doctoral students’ perceived resilience and the coping strategies they choose to employ to overcome challenging circumstances during their studies. Background: Doctoral students often experience barriers which may include personal, professional, academic, and institutional-related challenges. The students’ ability to recover from any burdensome situations ...

Aim/Purpose: The research reported here aims to demonstrate a method by which novel applications of qualitative data in quantitative research can resolve ceiling effect tensions for educational and psychological research. Background: Self-report surveys and scales are essential to graduate education and social science research. Ceiling effects reflect the clustering of responses at the highest re ...

Aim/Purpose: Scholars and practitioners agree that feedback is critical to doctoral students’ academic writing development, yet effective feedback processes are complex. The purpose of this case study was to examine the role of dialogue in a Writing Feedback Group (WFG) in facilitating the development of the scholarly writing of English as an Additional Language (EAL) doctoral students. The resear ...

Aim/Purpose: Our study explores the factors contributing to the Imposter Phenomenon among doctoral students in the United States. Background: Many studies show that Imposter Phenomenon impacts women doctoral students and students from minority groups, especially if they are enrolled in Predominantly White Institutions. Our study focuses explicitly on contributing factors to the Imposter Phenomeno ...