A Critical Observation on Methodologies of Select Doctoral Research Studies

Abstract

The present article aims to critically observe and interpret the methodological deficiencies as found in randomly selected 14 doctoral theses submitted to two different universities in India. Despite their serious deviation from the expected methodological standards, all those theses were accepted and approved by the universities and scholars concerned conferred with PhD degrees. Undoubtedly, those theses kept in the reference sections at the respective university libraries would potentially misguide and mislead the future researchers. Some of the common technical deficiencies, as have been noticed, include (1) absence of careful thoughts in framing research titles, (ii) biased method of data collection, (ii) absence of logical explanation in favour of sample size and sample selection process, (iii) designing and execution of instrument for data collection, (iv) theory formulation in terms of framing of objectives, hypotheses and operational definitions etc. The article attempts to present the critical observations on case-to-case basis so that their conceptual, instrumental and procedural deficiencies and deviations are easily understood by the academicians, researchers and students. The content of this article is divided in to three broad sections. The first section deals with an introduction to quantitative and qualitative research methods and their advantages and limitations. The next section deals with the review of the selected theses followed by conclusion and suggested remedial measures. The objective of this article is purely academic and its scope is limited to enhancement of quality of future research studies in the domains and related fields.