Background: Doctoral attrition has been the subject of significant research over the past several years (Bair & Haworth, 2004; Cohen & Greenberg, 2011; Gardner, 2008; Lovitts, 2001). Prior research on doctoral students has focused on substantive differences in the Ed.D. and Ph.D. in education degree programs, rather than on potential differences among the students themselves. Purpose: To assess whether there are baseline differences in motivation and subjective well-being among the three groups of doctoral students in education: Ed.D. and Ph.D. students, part-time enrolled and full-time enrolled students, and first-year and secondyear students. Setting: University of Central Florida, College of Education Subjects: First-year and second-year students drawn from all three doctoral programs offered in the College, including Education, Ed.D., Education, Ph.D., and Educational Leadership, Ed.D. Data Collection and Analysis: A 131-item electronic survey to assess student motivation and subjective well-being was distributed to all 142 enrolled first-year and second-year doctoral students, of which 28.2% responded (n = 40). Cumulative motivation and separate subjective well-being scores were calculated for each participant, and MannWhitney tests were performed to compare the distribution of student scores within each group (Ed.D. and Ph.D., part-time enrolled and full-time, and first-year and second-year). Findings: No statistically significant differences were found in motivation and subjective well-being among the three groups of students. However, some findings on measures of motivation did approach statistical significance between Ed.D. and Ph.D. students. iv Conclusions: These findings may demonstrate that relative well-being and similar levels of intrinsic motivation exist among several groups of doctoral students. Recommendations for future research include an increase in the sample size by expanding the study to multiple institutions offering doctoral programs in education, as well as a modification of the instruments from ordinal scales to Likert-type instruments
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-3556 |
| Date | 01 January 2013 |
| Creators | McAfee, Morgan |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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