With attrition rates between 50% and 70% (Ivankova & Stick, 2007; Nettles & Millet, 2006), limited residence and distance education (DE) Doctor of Education (EdD) programs require additional attention from researchers. Understanding the factors stakeholders identify as contributing to the persistence of successful DE EdD students may help current and future students be successful. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to develop a model for an orientation to DE EdD programs based on the perspectives of students, non-persisters, alumni, faculty, and administrators, as well as the perspectives of others as the data reveals their relevance (i.e., family, employers, university staff). Chapter three details the chosen design, participants, programs, procedures, data collection and analysis methods, strategies for trustworthiness, and ethical considerations of this study.
Design
Qualitative inquiry was the appropriate design for this study as I explored the phenomena of doctoral attrition/persistence in DE EdD programs (Carr, 2000; Gravois, 2007; Ivankova & Stick, 2007; Lovitts & Nelson, 2000; Rovai, 2003a) from the perspectives of multiple
stakeholders observed in their natural settings (Creswell, 2007). The use of qualitative inquiry allowed me to address the gap in the literature by developing a model for an orientation to DE EdD programs grounded in the voices of the participants and the data collected (Creswell, 2007).
The appropriate design for this qualitative study was grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) because I was investigating existing theories and linking those theories to a model
(Creswell, 2007; Corbin & Strauss, 2015). For this study, relevant theories included Knowles’ (1980a) theory of andragogy, Tinto’s (1975) theory of persistence, socialization theory (Bragg,
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1976; Weidman et al., 2001), and research on orientations; these concepts were linked to the data collected to generate a model for an orientation to DE EdD programs. Grounded theory was also appropriate because the goal of this study was to understand how DE EdD students persist in the face of challenges that thwarted the degree completion of so many other students (Ivankova & Stick, 2007; Nettles & Millet, 2006). Corbin and Strauss (1990) indicated that grounded theory helps determine how participants “respond to changing conditions and to the consequences of their actions” (p. 5). This design can be used to help uncover the responses and actions that helped persistent students be successful as well as critical influencers of the non-persister’s decision to leave.
Grounded theory was also appropriate because it allowed the voice of the participant to guide the model that was developed (Elliot & Higgins, 2012). According to Corbin and Strauss (2008), “researchers are translators in the form of concepts of other persons’ words and actions” (p. 66). Grounded theory allowed the voices of persistent EdD students (current candidates and alumni), non-persisters, and experienced faculty and administrators to guide this study as they reflected on persistence in DE doctoral education programs.
A systematic grounded theory approach was used for this study because it allowed for data collection and analysis in a well-defined, step-by-step process that more clearly identified when saturation occurred (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). To remain consistent with systematic grounded theory, I collected data through multiple methods, including surveys, interviews, and focus groups. As data was collected, constant comparison was used to refine interview questions, developing concepts, and look for saturation (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). According to Hallberg (2006), constant comparison is a key characteristic of grounded theory because it requires that all
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elements of the data be “constantly compared with all other parts of the data to explore variations, similarities, and differences in the data” (p. 143).
Research Questions The research questions for this study were:
1. How do DE EdD students persist at each stage of the doctoral journey?
2. How do DE EdD students integrate (socially, academically, with their families, and financially) in their programs and universities?
3. What are the necessary components and delivery model for an orientation to DE EdD programs?
Setting
Participants from two DE EdD programs in the United States were selected for this study. As the EdD is transitioning between the first-generation (scholar-focused) program and the second-generation (practitioner-focused) program (Boyce, 2012; Perry, 2012; Santovec, 2008), it was permissible for the participating EdD programs to be first or second-generation EdD
programs, or first-generation programs with second-generation characteristics (CPED, 2018). The participating institutions needed to meet a variety of criteria, including being accredited by an organization recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). For an institution’s EdD program to be considered a DE program, at least 80% of the coursework had to be delivered at a distance (likely online). The program had to include a comprehensive exam or an equivalent benchmark requirement that demonstrated candidacy, and the degree had to require a dissertation or a capstone project (Boyce, 2012; CPED, 2018; Storey & Maughan, 2015).
The two chosen institutions have DE EdD programs that meet the aforementioned criteria, including accreditation, ratio of online to residential courses, a comprehensive exam or
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benchmark requirement, and a dissertation or capstone project. Students, non-persisters, alumni, and faculty were selected from each site. The dean of each institution’s School of Education (SOE) was invited to participate as well. The majority of the interviews took place over the phone, while others were conducted via videoconference or in person.
Institution A
Institution A is a non-profit private, faith-based liberal arts institution located in the eastern United States (Institution A, 2018). It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, 2018) and has over 100,000 students enrolled. Its education programs are also accredited through the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). Institution A offers two main tracks for the EdD: Community Care and Counseling and
Education (Institution A, 2018). Each track offers multiple specialties, including marriage and family counseling, curriculum and instruction, leadership, and educational law. At the time of this study, participants were recruited from the two main EdD tracks: Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Leadership. These two degrees required 60 total credit hours; twelve of these credits were required dissertation courses (Institution A, 2018). At the time of this study, nine credit hours were required on-campus intensives (Institution A, 2018). This program meets the requirement of being at least 80% online since 85% of the courses in this program are delivered in a DE format. In addition to the required courses, both of these degree tracks require students to meet a benchmark requirement that demonstrates the student’s readiness to progress to candidacy (Institution A, 2018).
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Institution B
Institution B is a public, research university located in the southeastern United States with over 20,000 students (Institution B, 2018) and accredited by the Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (Institution B, 2018). Institution B offers three different online EdD degrees. Each DE EdD at Institution B is 54 hours, which includes nine hours of dissertation courses (Institution B, 2018). Institution B’s EdD in Instructional Design and Technology is offered completely online and the EdD in Instruction & Curriculum
Leadership and the EdD in Higher & Adult Education degrees require one week on campus each summer. The Higher & Adult Education EdD offers two different concentrations: higher
education or adult education. All three EdD tracks include a comprehensive exam with both oral and written components and follow a cohort format (Institution B, 2018). One major distinction of Institution B compared to Institution A is that it follows a cohort model. Students enter the program as a cohort of approximately 6-12 students and progress through an assigned set of courses with their cohort for the remainder of the degree.
Participants
The participants for this study were DE EdD students, non-persisters, alumni, faculty, and administrators from the two participating universities. Because this study focused on students who demonstrated persistence in a DE doctoral program, to participate in this study, students had to have achieved doctoral candidacy, meaning they had all their coursework completed and had passed their comprehensive exam/benchmark requirement. This also means alumni were eligible to participate, but time passed from graduation was limited to no more than three years to protect the integrity of the study and memory of the alumnus. Non-persisters were also included in the
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study; these participants could have departed at any stage of the program, though time passed from departure was also limited to no more than three years.
Theoretical discriminant sampling was used to ensure that participants selected for the study could contribute to the theoretical orientation model (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). After receiving IRB approval from my institution (see Appendix A) and the required approvals from participating institutions, the institutions’ School/College of Education and/or DE EdD faculty contacted potential participants. The department or faculty forwarded an invitation to participate (see Appendix B), to students who had demonstrated candidacy (per their enrollment in post- candidacy research courses) and to graduates from the program from the last three years. Institution A was also able to invite known non-persisters from the previous three years (see Appendix C). This resulted in 55 responses to the study’s Integration and Engagement Survey (see Appendix D).
Of the 55 responses to the Integration Survey, four were incomplete and two people completed the survey twice, resulting in only 49 usable submissions. Of the 49 participants, 15 were male (31%) and 34 were female (69%). Fourteen contributors were between the ages of 30 and 39 (29%), 19 were between 40 and 50 (39%), and 16 were over 50 years old (33%). Thirty- eight participants identified as White/Caucasian (78%), eight as Black/African American (16%), one as Asian (2%), one as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (2%), and one preferred not to answer (1%). Regarding their stage in the doctoral journey, 27 indicated they were in the
proposal development/pre-proposal defense stage (55%), 13 were in the research execution/data collection stage (27%), and nine were alumni or EdD holders that had graduate within the last three years (18%). Thirty-nine of the Integration Survey participants were from Institution A and 10 were from Institution B.
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According to Corbin and Strauss (1990), “in grounded theory, representativeness of concepts, not of persons is crucial” (p. 9), so individuals who could provide data informing the central concepts necessary for generating theory on the topic were purposefully selected. Of the 49 participants, the first five potential participants from Institution A were contacted with a follow up email requesting an interview (see Appendix E). These participants were selected because they included a variation in age, ethnicity, and stage in the program and indicated a willingness to participate in a follow up interview. After each interview was completed, it was transcribed and coded so that it could be compared the new data that came in with subsequent interviews. This process of constant comparison is an essential component of grounded theory research that allows the incoming data to shape the data collection process throughout the study (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). This permitted perpetual assessing of new data against existing data for themes and patterns (Hallberg, 2006) and a clear marker for saturation (Corbin & Strauss, 1990).
This study sought to understand the concepts participants attributed to doctoral
persistence, rather than the participants themselves. Theoretical discriminant sampling allowed sampling to become “more specific with time because the purpose [was] to fill in gaps in properties of concepts and add variation” (Corbin & Strauss, 2015, p. 137). This means that as concepts surfaced, this sampling method allowed me to find further support or to reject the concept based on a lack of support.
Because the private nature of departure made it difficult to identify non-persisters, snowball or chain-referral sampling was used to help identify potential non-persisters who were eligible to participate (Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981). Each person interviewed was asked if they knew of any non-persisters who fit the criteria for the study and might be willing to participate.
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Faculty also assisted in inviting non-persisters by reaching out to non-persisters they had previously chaired post-candidacy. This ensured that participants were recruited by the
“respondents rather than by researchers” (Heckathorn, 2002, p. 13) to mitigate potential ethical concerns regarding disclosing private information about potential participants. Identifying and eliciting the participation of non-persisters proved to be very difficult throughout this study.
Over time, additional potential participants were contacted with a request for an
interview, resulting in a total of eight interviews with current students, alumni, and non-persisters at Institution A and six interviews with current students and alumni at Institution B (See Table 1). Half (50%) of the participants interviewed were male and the other half were female. Forty- three percent of participants were between 30-39 years old, 28.5% were between 40 and 50 years old, and 28.5% were over 50. Regarding ethnicity, 57% of interviewees identified as
White/Caucasian, 21% as Black/African American, 7% as Asian, 7% as Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and 7% as prefer not to answer. At the time of their interview, 14% were in the
proposal development stage (pre-proposal defense), 50% were in the data collection/research execution stage, 21% were graduates from the previous three years, and 14% were non- persisters. Interviews were requested until data analysis made it clear that saturation had
occurred (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Creswell, 2007; Saldaña, 2013). Saturation is complete when new meaning ceases to emerge from the data collected (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Swezey, 2014). This means that once the analysis of data collected is only confirming prior information
collected, no new data is needed. Table 1
Student, Alumni, and Non-Persister Participant Summary
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Candace A Female Over 50 Prefer Not to
Answer
Data Collection
Chuck A Male Over 50 Caucasian Alumnus
Tonya A Female 30-39 Caucasian Alumna
Burt A Male 40-50 Native
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
Proposal Development
Doug A Male Over 50 Asian Data Collection
Jake A Male 30-39 Caucasian Non-Persister
Courtney A Female 40-50 African
American
Data Collection
Timothy A Male 30-39 Caucasian Non-Persister
Julia B Female Over 50 Caucasian Proposal
Development
Keith B Male 40-50 Caucasian Data Collection
Jackie B Female 30-39 African
American
Alumna
Amy B Female 30-39 Caucasian Data Collection
Jillian B Female 30-39 Caucasian Data Collection
Jonathan B Male 40-50 African
American
Data Collection
In addition to student, alumni, and non-persisters, faculty were also valuable participants in this study. The faculty who participated were instructors in the two DE EdD programs. Rather than doing individual interviews with each faculty member, focus groups were the preferred method of engagement. Smaller sized groups allowed quality interaction to occur without stifling the voice of any one participant (Morgan, 1997). After the initial focus groups occurred at both institutions, it was clear that the perspective of an additional faculty member would be helpful to ensure saturation so an individual interview was conducted with that faculty member. Each faculty member had at least one year of experience teaching in a DE EdD program, though most possessed far more than the one-year minimum. Several of the faculty members taught
residential courses as well as online courses, but DE EdD students were the primary population in all of their doctoral level courses, even the courses they taught residentially. Since the faculty were working with the population of students completing the online degree, they were all able to
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inform the topic of this study. The faculty chosen to participate were also varied based on the courses they instructed to elicit information from a variety of types of courses (i.e., foundation, research, specialization, and dissertation) and phases of the doctoral journey to provide a quality picture of the different skills, knowledge, and dispositions required. Faculty who chair
dissertations were purposefully included so they could speak to student readiness for self- directed learning and the skills and knowledge needed for dissertation completion. These stipulations resulted in a focus group of three faculty members and one individual faculty
member interview at Institution A and a focus group of two faculty members at Institution B (see Table 2). It is relevant to note that Institution B’s online program was much smaller than
Institution A’s, so while only two faculty members were included in the focus group, the focus group included most of the faculty from that program.
Table 2
Faculty Participant Summary
Pseudonym Institution Gender Ethnicity Stage(s) Instructed
Dr. Longfellow A F Caucasian All
Dr. Johnson A M Caucasian All
Dr. Fox A M Caucasian All
Dr. Valentine A F African
American
Coursework & Dissertation
Dr. Armstrong B F Caucasian All
Dr. Anderson B M Middle
Eastern
Coursework & Dissertation The administrators invited to participate in this study were deans, chairs, or program directors of the DE EdD programs at the participating institutions. This population was invited to participate in the delivery survey regarding when and how different support should be delivered within the program. Only one dean from Institution A elected to participate in the delivery survey. The survey elicited 35 responses, though one submission was incomplete, leaving 34
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valid submissions. In addition to the one dean, the delivery survey participants included six faculty members, 13 current EdD students, and 14 alumni. Thirty-one of the participants were Caucasian and 3 were African American.
Procedures
After receiving IRB approval from my institution, I reached out to the Deans of the Schools/Colleges of Education and other relevant stakeholders at institutions offering a DE EdD to request permission to use their program/site and affirm their participation. This led to two sites that met the study’s criteria and had the resources to participate. After IRB and other relevant approvals were received and sites were secured, I recruited participants by following the guidelines set by the individual institutions and through providing an informed consent and survey email (see Appendix G). This was delivered through the School/College of Education or appointed faculty/staff member to doctoral students who met the selection criteria. An invitation to participate through the survey link was posted in the courses students enroll in after passing their comprehensive exam or benchmark requirement (dissertation proposal, dissertation
research, and dissertation defense courses). When students consented to participate in the study, they completed the initial integration and engagement survey (see Appendix D).
The Researcher's Role
I served as the human instrument in this study (Creswell, 2007). I collected and analyzed the data but aimed to limit my influence on the data as much as possible. My influence on the research could only be reduced once my own “assumptions, beliefs, and biases” were disclosed (Creswell & Miller, 2000, p. 127). One of the methods Creswell and Miller (2000) recommend to define the experience of the grounded theory researcher is to use the process of bracketing as it originated in phenomenological research. According to Fischer (2009), bracketing is the
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“investigator’s identification of vested interests, personal experience, cultural factors,
assumptions, and hunches that could influence how he or she views the study’s data” (p. 583). Through reflection and writing memos, I bracketed out my experience as a DE instructor and as a student in a DE EdD program both before research began (see Appendix F) and through memos as data collection occurred (Creswell, 2007). As Corbin and Strauss (2015) suggested, I practiced self-reflection and reviewed memos written during interviews and focus groups to be sure I was not influencing the data. To be sure my opinions and ideas did not taint the data, I avoided asking leading questions or suggesting responses. During focus groups, I refocused the conversation only when it evolved too far off topic and I did not participate in the discussion.