Abstract:

In order to provide candidates with effective advisement, it is important for the advisor to continue to practice positive professional relationships and provide relevant academic support to candidates. The advisor should work closely with other faculty members and to listen to the voices of candidates to ensure candidates’ success. What should an advisor do overall for doctorate candidates? The advisor should provide candidates with developmental sessions, utilize the value of peer support, give relevant feedback and assessment timely and give a review of doctorate program expectations before and during the dissertation process. Too many candidates have struggled during the writing process, for example, of the dissertation proposal, because candidates enter the program with limited skills in technical writing. Therefore, a graduate writing center with competent faculty to facilitate such areas of support as basic writing skills for the behavioral and social sciences, manuscript structure, writing clearly and concisely, formatting and style, composing and displaying data results, and citing references properly so that candidates do not participate in plagiarism during the writing of the dissertation would be invaluable and relevant support to candidates. A session by the advisor should be dedicated to time management. It appears that too many doctorate candidates do not recognize that writing the dissertation requires a lot of time and time management is crucial in order for candidates to stay on top of their research and writing requirements. Appropriate advisement to candidates early on regarding writing the dissertation could perhaps help candidates experience success during the dissertation process.
This study will focus on the role of the advisor, candidates’ views about advisement based on candidates’ experiences, a simplified view of outcome results, research designs with clarity, what is feedback, clarity with frequent feedback makes a difference, using plagiarism checking research services and evaluation of candidates’ written work. The benefit of this study is to share with the broader community of doctorate program advisors and faculty committee members the need to provide the best quality experiences in advisement and instructional services to doctorate candidates to ensure their success in completing the doctorate degree program.

Keywords:

Advising, Candidate, Research Design, Feedback, Checking Research Services, Evaluation.