The Experience of Disseminating the Results of Doctoral Research

Postgraduate study is something of growth industry with, worldwide, a substantial increase in the number of courses offered and students enrolled (Kerlin, 1995). A substantial part of the requirements for the successful completion of a research degree is that the research conducted should be in some way original and also make a worthwhile contribution to knowledge. Given these requirements it would be expected that the dissemination of the results of the research should be a routine part of the process of postgraduate study and its aftermath. However, it would seem that this is not the case and that the progression from completed dissertation to publication is not the universal experience. Certainly, those publications which deal with 'how to' get a research degree rarely if ever specifically address the issue of dissemination at any length. One would assume that supervisors of postgraduate research would see advice about the matter as one of their duties but it is not at all obvious whether this is the case. This article reports the results of two international studies of the experience of 'doing the degree' conducted with samples of 139 and 53 doctoral holders. Specifically, it concentrates on the participants' experiences of disseminating, or otherwise, the results of their research.