Methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates in public administration : an interpretive phenomenological approach

Abstract

Being a lecturer and serving in the Higher Degrees Committee of the Department of Public Administration and Management at Unisa for several years, gave me exposure to master’s and doctoral candidates’ scholarly work. I realised that the doctoral candidates, in particular, were facing methodological challenges. This realisation triggered my curiosity in the methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates. My scholarly curiosity prompted me to undertake a preliminary literature review which has identified a number of scholarly contributions on the quality of research in Public Administration. These studies have not established or attempted to establish conceptual frameworks for understanding this phenomenon. I deduced that the lack of scholarly contributions on the methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates indicates a knowledge gap that compromises scholarly understanding of methodological preparedness, both as a concept and a phenomenon. The main purpose of this research was to generate theory, by means of the development of a conceptual framework, in response to the identified knowledge gap in the literature. Consequently, a qualitative theory generating research design was chosen and actualised in three interrelated research phases. Phase 1 provides a theoretical perspective by turning to the scholarly literature and institutional documents to obtain a deepened understanding of the concept methodological preparedness relevant to Public Administration doctoral candidates. This phase serves, firstly, to provide an overview of the characteristics of the doctorate in Public Administration as an immediate context for methodological preparedness, and secondly, to do a concept analysis to identify and describe the meaning of the concept methodological preparedness with reference to a doctoral candidate. Phase 2 aimed to make sense of the methodological preparedness of Public Administration doctoral candidates at Unisa by exploring, through an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), how doctoral candidates and supervisors make sense of this phenomenon. This study makes a methodological contribution by employing the IPA for the first time in the South African Public Administration fraternity. Phase 3 generates a conceptual framework for understanding the methodological preparedness of Public Administration doctoral candidates at Unisa. The framework contributes to the understanding of the under- vi researched concept and phenomenon methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates in Public Administration. This study has shown that a candidate’s methodological preparedness (the state of being competent to independently make a methodological decision relevant to his or her doctoral research project), is not a once-off gate-keeping phenomenon, but an ongoing and fluent state of being.