Honors Dissertation Abstracts: A Bounded Qualitative Meta-Study
Authors: Debra K. Holman and James H. Banning
Published in: Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Vol. 13, Issue 1
Copyright: 2012 National Collegiate Honors Council
What can be learned from the examination of doctoral dissertation abstracts that focus on undergraduate honors... more
What can be learned from the examination of doctoral dissertation abstracts that focus on undergraduate honors education? To answer this questions, we utilized a bounded qualitative meta-study framework to examine 49 dissertations and their abstracts obtained from Digital Dissertations: ProQuest. All dissertations were produced during the period of 1987 through 2006 and were focused on undergraduate honors education. Three sub-questions focused our inquiry: (a) What are the general attributes of dissertations on honors education? (b) What are the thematic subjects and topics associated with the dissertations? and (c) Have the dissertation findings been published in higher education journals or books? Our research reveals trends in the study of honors education. Our discussion includes analysis of these trends and related recommendations for future research in undergraduate honors education.
Keywords: honors education, qualitative document analysis, thematic analysis
Using NVivo to Answer the Challenges of Qualitative Research in Professional Communication: Benefits and Best Practices, Ryan S. Hoover and Amy L. Koerber
by Amy Koerber
Will be published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, VOL. 54, NO. 1, SCHEDULED MARCH 2011
Recent updates in qualitative data analysis software have provided the qualitative researcher in professional... more Recent updates in qualitative data analysis software have provided the qualitative researcher in professional communication with powerful tools to assist in the research process. In this tutorial, we provide a brief overview of what software choices are available and discuss features of NVivo, one prominent choice. We then use our experiences with the software to discuss how it has benefited our efficiency, multiplicity, and transparency. We end with a compilation of best practices for using the software.
Using NVivo to Answer the Challenges of Qualitative Research in Professional Communication: Benefits and Best Practices, Ryan S. Hoover and Amy L. Koerber
by Amy Koerber
Will be published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, VOL. 54, NO. 1, SCHEDULED MARCH 2011
Recent updates in qualitative data analysis software have provided the qualitative researcher in professional... more Recent updates in qualitative data analysis software have provided the qualitative researcher in professional communication with powerful tools to assist in the research process. In this tutorial, we provide a brief overview of what software choices are available and discuss features of NVivo, one prominent choice. We then use our experiences with the software to discuss how it has benefited our efficiency, multiplicity, and transparency. We end with a compilation of best practices for using the software.
Reconceptualising Conflict and Consensus within Partnerships: The Roles of Overlapping Communities and Dynamic Social Ties (PhD Thesis 2009)
by Katy Vigurs
Partnership is a dominant theme of public policy and service provision in England and in other western countries. It... more
Partnership is a dominant theme of public policy and service provision in England and in other western countries. It is also a concept that remains relatively under-researched and under-theorised, especially with respect to conceptualising underlying relational processes that can shape conflict and consensus within partnerships.
This thesis draws on a richly textured ethnographic study, using an in-depth case study of a voluntarily-founded, network-like, cross-sectoral partnership, which aimed to develop and implement a community learning centre in the village parish of Broadley, located in the English Midlands.
The research sees fieldwork conducted over twenty-four months, using multiple methods of qualitative data-generation including the observation of partnership meetings and activities, semi-structured interviews and the collection of partnership artefacts (meeting minutes, funding bid document, emails). It presents an ethnographic view of the inner workings of one partnership and follows its entire lifecycle. This partnership was not sustained and did not realise the vision to which it aspired.
A central concern of this thesis is to investigate the development of conflict and consensus within partnership practice. The contribution of the thesis is to tease out how these elements are understood. This study challenges naive texts that prescribe simplistic, recipe-based formulas for achieving partnership success. Instead, it illustrates what can happen when partners do not develop sufficiently strong and balanced sets of social ties between one another. Consequently, this thesis sets up a new research agenda focusing more specifically on issues of community overlaps, identities and social ties.
This thesis has value in terms of providing a deeply relational account of challenges facing the development of one cross-sectoral, network-like partnership. It draws together insights from partnership literature, community literature and fieldwork, and provides a strong basis from which further research can be developed.
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