Readiness of preparing postgraduate students in pursuit of their doctoral programme

AbstractThere is a need to prepare doctoral students with research skills before and during their research work at graduate level, especially in the writing of their thesis. Too often faculty assumed graduate students are prepared for embarking research, especially in using library or seeking knowledge through the use of information technology, the writing of the dissertation, to conduct literature review and the analysis or method of processing data. This paper will report the findings of a study regarding the preparedness of doctoral students to embark on their research studies. It was found that Graduate students generally felt they have yet to acquire the level of research skills in seeking information for their research and are deficient in analytical skills. Some of them have only attained low level information seeking skills, but they need higher level information skills to conduct a PhD research study. Most of them have no experience in doing research prior to their study, and thus require training, such as on analytical skills in processing data. Based on the above findings, a number of recommendations in overcoming these problems are provided in order to improve graduation time and the quality of students doctoral research. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd