Group+One+March+26

Group One: Melissa B. Christine, Amy, Melissa P., Meghan


 * Benge, C., Onwuegbuzie, A.J., Mallette, M.H., & Burgess, M. L. (2010) Discussion**

**The researchers feel the study is important because there are (no studies on doc students) not many studies focused on the level of reading proficiency of doctoral students. The theoretical framework was the Construction Integration Model of Comprehension. The researcher used a theory to explain processes of emergent readers to explain how doctoral students are emerging readers of research articles (emerging scholars). A mixed-methods approach was used to answer the research questions: Quantitative: 1)What is the level of reading comprehension of doctoral students? 2)What is the level of reading vocabulary among doctoral students? Qualitative: 3)What are the perceived barriers to reading empirical articles of doctoral students? Mixed Methods: 4)What is the prevalence of each of the conceived barriers to reading empirical articles of doctoral students? 5)How do these perceived barriers of reading empirical articles relate to one another? 6)What is the relationship between reading ability (reading comprehension and vocabulary) and perceived barriers of reading empirical articles of doctoral students? 7)Which perceived barriers predict the levels of perceived difficulty doctoral students experience in reading empirical research articles?**
 * I. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY**

The researchers used a 13 step model to approach their research questions. Steps 1-5 were in the formulation stage. The rest of the steps were embedded in the planning and implementation, methods, results, and discussion sections. The researchers used Concurrent design using identical samples as their design for the study. Equal status with given to both the quantitative and qualitative data for three main reasons: 1. both approaches were used in many stages of the study 2. both types of data were collected simultaneously 3. both types were equally valued. The replication of the 2006 framework of Collins, Onwuegbuzie, and Sutton was approached in a 'meta' way opening addressing the parts of the framework as they were being fulfilled - this did result in some recursiveness that might have felt redundant to a more experienced researcher but that served this particular novice well...I wonder if that was why they were doing it too - to keep them on point in their replication of someone else's framework? While participants were all drawn from the same university which does limit generalizability a bit, the sample did represent 32 doctoral degree programs and a decent balance of gender and ethnicities as well as including EdD and PhD students. I would have liked a more thorough description of the NDRT as a measure of grad student reading comprehension.
 * II. CRITIQUE OF RESEARCH METHODS**
 * (There were 205 doctoral students enrolled in either a mixed research design or an advanced qualitative research course in the College of Education at a large Tier 1 university in southern US. There were 32 doc programs represented. ) **


 * III. CRITIQUE OF DATA ANALYSIS**

The sample of doctoral students in this study had statistically significantly higher scores on the reading comprehension (interpreted as a moderate effect) and reading vocabulary (considered a large effect) than did the normative sample of undergraduate students. The sample also had The researchers were disturbed that approximately 10% of doctoral students attained reading comprehension and reading vocabulary scores that represented the lower percentiles of Brown et al.’s (1993) normative sample of undergraduate students. This particular finding needs discussion. Eight emergent themes were identified that represented perceived barriers to reading empirical literature : time (most endorsed theme), research/statistics knowledge, interest/relevance, text coherence, vocabulary, prior knowledge, reader attributes, and volume of reading (least endorsed theme). Excluding time as a theme while explained is not convincing to this graduate student ....so rushing through empirical articles does not impact reading comprehension? This approaches literacy as did the old school IQ believers - that it is a fixed entity rather than a skill set more affected situationally.
 * statistically significantly higher reading comprehension and reading vocabulary scores than did the master’s-level students in Onwueg-buzie et al.’s (2004) investigation;
 * statistically significantly higher reading vocabulary scores than did the master’s-level students in Onwuegbuzie and Collins’ (2002) study;
 * lower reading comprehension scores than did Onwuegbuzie and Collins’ (2002) master’s-level students (but the researchers note that the difference was not statistically significant).

Recognized threats to descriptive, interpretive, internal, and external validity. Also the study was limited by a sample of doctoral students from only one institution which makes generalizing problematic. They used multiple strategies to improve legitimation. Results were linked with theories and previous research. Doctoral students were found to be emerging readers of empirical texts with the need for opportunities to interact with texts with guidance. Future research should focus on providing strategy instruction to students like Lundeberg (1987) did for law students. The conclusion that "readers' self-reported beliefts about their attributes as readers might be indicative of their metacognitive and metalinguistic abilities and their ability to construct meaning from text" is thrown out there but not really substantiated by the data in a transparent way. Another confusing finding suggested is that 'if doctoral students perceived the barriers to exist in the text, they were less likely to attribute any barriers to their own capabilities as readers" when a later finding suggested that students with lower vocabulary levels DID perceive it as a weakness in THEIR reading skill and yet also identified vocabulary as a textual barrier to comprehension. This finding contradicts the earlier one. Perhaps the construct 'reader attributes' was perceived by the researchers as not one related to the text whereas reader attributes for the student participants were related to their abilities to consume the text? **(There were three meta-themes: research characteristics; comprehension; text-based characteristics.) **
 * IV. CRITIQUE OF DISCUSSION**

**I recognize I am biased since I am a doctoral student, however, the fact that 36% of doctoral students saying empirical articles are hard to some degree doesn't seem to prove to me that doctoral students are struggling readers, as pointed out in the previous sentence.** What about the NDRT results? **I did not see where the researchers told how far into the program the students were. It seems a first semester student would have different perceptions of difficulty than a third semester student based on experiences with classes that could build background knowledge needed to read the articles.**  **(Great point!!)** The question of 'how reading ability might debilitate performance' brought up in the beginning - is it answered really? Also, could excluding the number one barrier of 'time' because it's not a literacy skill issue undermine the findings? I wonder how many grad students might seem to not be understanding the articles as a literacy issue when actually they only have __time__ to "read like a grad student" or in other words skim the intro, headings, and findings and go from there? It seems that the majority of the discussion focused on the qualitative portion of the data and the conclusions drawn from the data would have been more compelling if the balance between the quant and the qual was more even?
 * V. ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS (QUESTIONS/CONFUSIONS??)**