Sink or Swim: Experiences of The Phd Candidate’s Research Journey, Challenges and Opportunities

Introduction & Background to the Study

The academic research journey of a student, whether at undergraduate, master’s or PhD level, is often not a rosy one although the results, when the journey is successfully completed, are sweet. This belief may be attributed to candidates as well as their supervisors. Despite the challenges, it is believed that production of graduates at higher education levels, which partially depends on effective supervision of their research projects, has implications on the economies of developing countries in Africa (Bacwayo, Nampala & Oteyo, 2017). Effective supervision of research projects can lead to quality education and institutional success at college or university level (Bacwayo, Nampala & Oteyo, 2017; Kaguhangire-Barifaijo & Nkata, 2021) and this may lead to job creation and employment which also have ripple effect on the country’s GDP.

When embarking on the research project, the student may ‘sink’ or ‘swim’ through the ‘supervision ocean,’ also depending on the qualities and experiences of the supervisor and other people who may have a say or an input in the academic affairs of the student. Thus, there are challenges and opportunities encountered during, and also after, the research journey (Ngulube, 2021; Swargiary, 2023; Tian & Singhasiri, 2016; Kaguhangire-Barifaijo, & Nkata 2021). From the researcher’s experiences and observations, most post graduate students at a university in Zimbabwe had research challenges and took more than the minimum time to complete their dissertations and theses. This triggered the researcher to study deeply this phenomenon.

Purpose of the Study

This study traces the ups and downs of the PhD candidate’s research journey and investigates the research related challenges and perceived benefits and opportunities of the candidates.

Significance of the study

The results of this study may help to inform policy and practice in post graduate supervision, especially of research and in the African context, and maybe even beyond. In particular, the results would be used in the compilation of a booklet whose title has already been conceived: The research journey of a PhD candidate, challenges, innovations and prospects of supervision.

Statement of the Problem

It would appear, from the researcher’s own observations and from literature, that most PhD candidates encounter research supervision challenges which negatively affect the preparation of their proposal and the production of the final write-up. The problem may be exacerbated by the absence of clear polices and regulations to guide research and supervision, especially in the Zimbabwean institutions of higher learning.

Research questions

The following research questions guided this study:

1. What are the general challenges of PhD candidates throughout their research journey?

2. What are the major roles of PhD candidates during their research?

3. What are the perceived benefits and opportunities of doing PhD degree?

Review of related literature

This review of related literature is divided into the following sections: Theoretical framework guiding students’ PhD research, General Challenges of PhD candidates, Roles of PhD Candidates, Benefits and Opportunities of doing PhD.

Theoretical framework guiding students’ PhD research

This study is guided by the interpersonal relationships theory as propounded by Hary Stack Sullivan (Murphy, 2024; Feist, Feist & Roberts, 2017). According to this theory, most people’s experiences depend on their interpersonal relationships with others. People have different needs and expectations which guide their behaviours and communication when they interact (Janssen, van Vuuren & de Jong, 2021; Mainhard, 2009). This theory guides this research in the sense that if students’ needs and expectations (such as the need to be attached to someone, need for security, need for support and guidance, need for self-esteem, etc.) are not met, the PhD researcher may face challenges. On the other hand, if the needs and expectations are fulfilled the student will have an almost smooth PhD journey and experience further benefits and opportunities even after the journey is accomplished.

In tandem with the above theory is the view that the supervisor-student relationship may be represented by eight types of behaviour which may be viewed in two axes (positive or negative). The types are leadership, helpful/friendly, understanding, giving students freedom and responsibility, uncertain, dissatisfied, admonishing and strict (Mainhard, 2009). On one hand, challenges may be experienced if the supervisor is uncertain, dissatisfied, admonishing and strict while on the other hand the student’s PhD research may be successfully carried out when the supervisor exhibits good leadership styles and is helpful/friendly, understanding, and giving students freedom and responsibility.

General Challenges of PhD candidates

Research as well as personal observations have shown that many university students, including PhD candidates, face a lot of challenges as far as their learning is concerned. Among such are that:

• the supervisor is viewed to be not academically competent and not helpful most of the time,

• the supervisor is not available when needed,

• the supervisor is often harsh and not friendly (Bacwayo, Nampala & Oteyo, 2017).

Kaguhangire-Barifaijo and Nkata (2021) have noted that there are often misunderstandings or disagreements between the supervisee and the supervisor on knowledge and skills, and this impacts negatively on the student’s thesis perfection and completion rate. These challenges could be alleviated by choosing better supervision models such as group supervision, also known as co-supervision, team supervision, collaborative supervision or joint supervision (Kaguhangire-Barifaijo, & Nkata, 2021; Agu,& Odimegwu, 2014).

Other student related challenges and their severity (in %) were observed by Swargiary (2023) as students having a negative bond or relationship with their supervisors (25%), insufficient support and guidance (35%), having experienced conflict or disagreement with PhD guide (40%), high level of stress and anxiety (3%), financial issues or difficulties (15%), health problems (10%) and conflict with supervisor (5%). Participants in Swargiary’s study proffered some ways of solving these challenges such as having regular communication, having clear guidelines and expectations, training and mentorship, putting in place formal mechanisms or policies on research supervision, and encouraging collaborative research.

Also, shortage of student resources, time and no clear legislature/policies on research were proffered as other challenges (Bazrafkan, Yousefy, Amini, & Yamani 2019). Do PhD students in Zimbabwe and elsewhere face similar challenges? This study will examine this and other issues.

Roles of PhD Candidates

In the research preparation dynamics, supervisees or PhD candidates have their roles which include managing time, networking with others, having responsibility and commitment to their research (Lim, Covrig, Freed, De Oliveira, Ongo, & Newman, 2019). According to Kaguhangire-Barifaijo and Nkata (2021) supervisors and students have the joint role of publishing together and having open communication. If students execute their roles well, their research journey may be successful, and they may reap benefits and opportunities even after completion. This research hopes to investigate if similar observations are noted in the Zimbabwean scenario and also elsewhere, with the view of coming up with generalizable recommendations.

Benefits and Opportunities of doing PhD.

Netshitangani and Machaisa (2021) opine that students have opportunities to collaborate with peers during face-to-face meetings and sometimes virtually. The PhD supervisor may also assist his/her student to apply for funding from funding agencies and donors (Prazeres, 2017) so that the doctoral journey is without many hurdles. Some institutions do provide scholarships to their PhD students, and this is a great opportunity that lessens the challenges. Gill and Bunard (2008) mention the benefits of doing PhD as career development prospects, acquaintance with different supervisory perspectives, being assisted to acquire research writing skills, and opportunities to acquire both content and methodology aspects from the experts, among others. According to Tian and Singhasiri (2016) the ssupervisee is assisted to explore and construct knowledge with their supervisor and thus becomes empowered.

Research Methodology

This study traces the ups and downs of the PhD candidate’s research journey and investigates the research related challenges and perceived benefits and opportunities of 20 randomly selected candidates from the researcher’s workshop and international conference emailing lists. Data were collected by means of semi-structured and unstructured questionnaires which had been tested for validity and reliability through ‘peer and expert’ checking. Naisola-Ruiter (2022) points out that the Delphi method ensures that data is gathered by asking a sampled group of ‘experts’ who should anonymously make judgements on a specific research aspect. The researcher communicates the responses to the participants and later discusses them in several rounds so that a consensus is reached. Twin (2023) says this method allows the participants to interact with the responses of one another without coercion. They may change or adjust their opinions until consensus is reached and still remain anonymous. In this study the Delphie technique with three rounds was used to collect data. The data were presented in question-by-question format and by giving verbatim vignettes of some of the respondents. The views of individual participants and similar ones from different participants were analyzed for content and also given as themes in a table.

Results and Findings

Question 1 asked about the demographic data of the PhD candidates and the results showed that most candidates were female (75%), were aged 50 years and above and belonged to the education, commerce and applied social sciences departments. It would appear that very few students tend to venture into science, computers or engineering fields at PhD level, an observation which needs to be investigated further.

Question 2 asked the candidates to describe the research or PhD journey they had travelled, citing the dates when they started, acceptance or rejection of their research title(s) and proposal(s) and why, the successes and/or failures of consultations with their supervisors or with other students, oral or written presentations they had made, the challenges they had faced, the triumphs they had had, and the feelings they had felt and experienced, etc. A snapshot of three selected summaries of the candidates is given below.

Candidate 1:

I started my PhD journey in 2021. The first year was spent working on the proposal. It was changed several times until the title got changed and finally the proposal got accepted. When I presented the proposal before the Department and later before the Faculty, a number of changes were suggested, and some panelists did not understand my intention of studying teacher education models in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Some said they cannot be studied because they belong to different institutions in the 2 countries. However, I argued and supported my intention. My supervisor has been supportive all the way. I never missed a consultative meeting as these were mostly virtual. He arranged for me to present at many research conferences and booked me for research workshops online including 3 days writing and publishing retreats.

As for the triumphs,

(1) I managed to complete my studies in record time.

(2) I managed to present research papers and published a number of journal articles, papers in books of proceedings for conferences. I presented the papers, book chapters and,

(3) I managed to secure a job at a university during my studies, thanks to the doctoral studies.

The challenges that I faced:

I had challenges securing research ethical clearance. When I applied for ethical clearance from the university, the response was so discouraging. I felt so low. They asked me to change a number of things on my instruments. My supervisor helped me to regain my strength and I moved on. I finally got the ethical clearance.

One university in South Africa did not give me the ethical clearance or authority to do research in their institution.

One participant in South Africa showed outright negative attitude and did not like to be interviewed despite the fact that my supervisor helped in negotiating.

I was working under extreme pressure to have at least 2 journal articles published with journals recognized by DHET. I was employed full time, had a research to work on but still had to do other researches and publish. However, publishing early in my studies paid a lot at the end. It gave me a bit more time to work on my thesis without worrying about publications at the last stages of my studies

Candidate 2:

I started in 2019 and was rejected in 2020 and 2021 and accepted 20 November 2022. There was poor communication and feedback from head office. So, I deferred with the hope of resuming later.

Candidate 3:

My main challenges were like this: My supervisor was too busy with administration work or other things and so had less time to read through all my written documents. I had to travel to Campus/Centre with hard copies every time I wanted to see the supervisor, so adding more to the financial and transport challenges.

The other challenges had to do with choice of the research methodology. For instance, I wanted to use the mixed methodology paradigm, but some people in the defence proposal panel said there is no such paradigm! I also wanted to deal with curriculum evaluation issues and use evaluation research, but some ‘big’ people said evaluation is not research! So, if I wanted to change my topic, which topic would suit what I had written in the proposal or chapters? Should I change the topic and start rewriting the chapters? But time and resources were not on my side.

I had hopes, dreams and aspirations for success but it seemed my supervisor thought I was a ‘stick with small brains in the head’ but no human body with feelings because he would just ask ‘..how is research?’ without asking how I felt, etc. This added more to the ‘basket’ of my challenges – inadequate finances, family pressure, university’s administrative hurdles, physical fatigue and mental fatigue.

But I had to soldier on to complete the degree. So, I planned my ‘way forward’ which included

• other students and friends to read my thesis and comment (benefits of networking)

• writing and publishing together with other people (benefits of collaboration)

• I strongly believed that I should personally work hard, and that God would see me through (benefits of dedication, determination and faithfulness).

Question 3 asked the students to state some of their major roles as PhD candidates.

The responses were:

• Co- authoring papers with supervisors

• Part time tutoring at a local university

• Time management

• Networking with other research colleagues

• Facilitating at research workshops

• Doing other ‘non-PhD research’ work (eg., researching on effects of secondhand clothes (mazitye) to the manufacturing industry).

These findings corroborate those of Lim, Covrig, Freed, De Oliveira, Ongo and Newman, (2019) and Kaguhangire-Barifaijo and Nkata (2021).

Question 4 asked whether publication of a research paper by a student is mandatory before the student completes his/her PhD and if so, how many papers are required. The results are shown in the table below.

Table 1 above shows that in most higher education institutions, publication of a research paper during PhD study is mandatory (80%) of which 70% said 2 publications is the norm, while 10% said one paper or more was required. Four participants (20%) said it was not mandatory to publish a paper but if a candidate wishes, they could publish any number of papers. This research notes that publication of research papers during PhD study is a noble thing since the candidate gains academic writing skills and also adds publications to his/her curriculum vitae. Encouraging students to publish (Lim, Covrig, Freed, De Oliveira, Ongo & Newman, 2019) adds to their motivation while sharing knowledge and skills with them also motivates them and allows them to persevere with their studies (Prazeres, 2017).

When further interrogated about publications, the candidates were asked (Q5) how many papers they had published. Table 2 gives the results.

Table 2 shows that on the whole, male candidates published more papers than female candidates, and that the education and applied social sciences departments had more papers than the commerce, natural sciences and engineering departments. Candidates in the education department published 24 papers per year indicating that some of the candidates published more than one paper each. According to these candidates it was not possible to publish even one paper per month. The reasons for low or no publication were given (see Q6 below) but could not be attributed to the departments nor to gender. One could suggest that the reasons for not publishing could also be attributed to students’ challenges as observed by Swargiary (2023) cited in this study. Also, Lubbe, Worrall, and Klopper (2005, p. 258) support the view that students should publish by saying:

Many graduates, especially those outside academia, fade into obscurity because they donot pursue further research in the field, because they do not publish, because they do notpresent at conferences, and because they do not network with other researchers in the fieldand to gain recognition for one’s work, one has to be visible. Use it or lose it. While peerrespect is the greatest accolade an academic can achieve, it is difficult both to win it andsustain it.

In relation to Question 5, Question 6 asked the candidates to state the factors that have hindered them from publishing. The factors were stated as:

• Publishers take time to publish

• Cost of publishing high

• Balancing time between work, thesis and writing publishable material

• Time and commitment

Questions 7 and 8 asked the candidates to rate their supervisors according to ‘being helpful or not’ and ‘knowledgeable or not’ in research.

Table 3 shows that, from the point of view of the PhD students, majority of the supervisors (70%) were very helpful to the students and very knowledgeable in research. Ten percent of the students considered their supervisors as not helpful and not knowledgeable in research while 20% were somewhat neutral (3 to 4 rating). It would be interesting to see how these ratings could be associated with the PhD students’ challenges as indicated in Table 4 below.

Questions 9 and 10 asked the candidates to state their challenges and suggest possible solutions to them. Table 4 below summarizes the findings.

These findings agree with those proffered by some of the participants (e.g. Participant 1) when they were describing their research journey. A small number of candidates (20%) pointed out that their supervisors were not supportive, agreeing with 10% in Q7 who rated them as not helpful. Despite the small number of participants giving such ratings, there is need for supervisors to be trained more on post graduate supervision. These ideas support the views of Kaguhangire-Barifaijo, and Nkata (2021) as well as Bazrafkan, Yousefy, Amini and Yamani (2019).

Queston 11 requested the participants to state the benefits and/or opportunities they could gain as a PhD Candidate. They stated the following:

• Opens research and employment opportunities

• Becoming a critical an analytical thinker

• ….knowledge

• You are directed by someone who has already gone through the process.

• Being directed to know the right track

• Supervisors are promoters or mentors; one cannot do without them. They have the experience in research and should help one to gain research confidence.

These benefits and opportunities agree with those of other researchers such as Gill and Bunard (2008) and Tian and Singhasiri (2016), among others.

Question 12 asked participants to write any other comments or suggestions related to the topic being investigated. Some participants did not write anything but only two summaries of those who wrote something are given here.

P1: In order to enjoy the PhD journey a candidate has to work extra hard, meet deadlines and take orders from the supervisors. Attend to feedback and participate in all conferences and workshops organised by one’s supervisor. I happened to have an over supportive supervisor that my experience may be a bit different from others.

P2: Students are being allowed to stagger fees and being allowed to defend workshops on first instalments and this is good.

Thematic Analysis of Findings

Important findings from the candidates’ data resulted in some emerging themes which are summarized and presented in the table below. The themes, however, are not meant to be exhaustive nor disjoint since some are related.

Key: ST = Student related or pertaining to the student, SUP = Supervisor related or pertaining to the supervisor. Capital letters denote ‘of major importance,’ small letters refer to ‘of minor importance’

The above themes can be used to generate a tentative theory on PhD research and supervision, which can also be used to propose policies to guide such research (see Zimbabwe Open University, 2023 policy for post-graduate research, for example).

Conclusion

This study narrated the experiences of some PhD candidates’ research journeys and investigated the challenges and opportunities of doing PhD. The theory of interpersonal relationships guided the study. The availability of good supervision policies and regulations could also help to overcome some of the students’ (and also supervisors’) challenges, so that they can swim and not sink in Lake Dissertation (Cassuto, 2010). Results and findings of the study would be used in the compilation of a booklet whose title has already been conceived: The research journey of a PhD candidate, challenges, innovations and prospects of supervision.

Recommendation

Based on the results and findings of the study, the following recommendations are made:

• PhD candidates’ research journeys should be made smooth by having clear policies and regulations that guide the research and supervision.

• PhD candidates should be given the necessary support, mentorship and resources to aid them on their research journeys and avoid or minimize the challenges they face.

• Supervisors and candidates should work together to publish articles so that the candidate becomes creative, motivated and a problem solver who perseveres in his/her work.

• Further research on postgraduate studies and supervision could be carried out at different levels and in different contexts.