2.9.4 The Major Characteristics and Trends in Doctoral Dissertation Research in Gifted Education (2006-2016)

Given that the doctoral dissertation research uniquely provides a window of renewed perspective and extensive understanding of evolving trends, capacities, patterns, and gaps, our research focused on analyzing 10 years of the dissertation study (2006-2016). The most frequent topics involved special populations (25%), followed by research & evaluation (18%), curriculum studies (13%), and conceptual foundations (10%). The second level of topic popularity (5% - 9%) are parent & community (8%), special schools & programs (7%), counseling & guidance (5%), and professional development (5%). The most prevalent topics of study within special populations are ethnic minorities (45%) and twice-exceptional (25%). Followed by this huge portion, underachievers (9%), ELL students (5%), low-income families (3%) were studied. The doctoral candidates almost equally employed both quantitative (40%) and qualitative (39%) analyses in their dissertations. However, even if the total amount of the analysis was comparable, a strong and statistically significant positive correlation was found between year and the frequency with which qualitative analysis were used in dissertation (r = .72, p < .05). When collecting data, more than 80% of the candidates used primary data, 7% for secondary data, and 12% used both primary and secondary. Over ten years of period, a statistically significant positive correlation was found between year and the use of primary data in dissertation (r = .86, p < .05) and negative correlation for combining both of primary and secondary data sources (r = -.74, p < .05). More than half of the candidates used only one instrument (52%), 20% used two as combined, 21% for three, and 8% applied more than four instruments. To be specific, interviews (25%), survey (19%), and the scale (10%) were used the most. The second level of instrument popularity (5% - 9%) were observation (8%), descriptive data (8%), official test score (6%), achievement test score/grade (5%), and experiment (5%). In terms of participants, students were most frequently occupied (50%), followed by teachers (28%), parents (7%), administrators (7%), and the others (8%). After completing their dissertation studies, some candidates summarize their findings and submit the manuscript to the journals. We found that a total of 50 dissertations were led to the journal articles from 2006 to 2016 with an average 4.6 articles per year. Among the studies that were published in gifted education journals, JEG took the largest portion that was 40% (n = 14), followed by GCQ (17%), RR (17%), JAA (14%).

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