Inside doctoral education in America: Voices of Latinas/os in pursuit of the PhD

Journal of College Student Development, Jul/Aug 2002 by Gonzalez, Kenneth P, Marin, Patricia

Data Analysis

To analyze the data, we, the primary authors, relied on Lincoln and Guba's (1985) inductive method of qualitative data analysis. For Lincoln and Guba, data analysis is a matter of induction not reduction. They stated, "Inductive analysis . . . begins not with theories or hypotheses but with the data themselves, from which theoretical categories and relational propositions may be arrived at by inductive reasoning processes" (p. 333). Starting with data, then, Lincoln and Guba explained inductive analysis as having two main components: unitizing and categorizing. A researcher unitizes his or her data by searching for an element (phrase, sentence, paragraph) that is "heuristic" or "aimed at some understanding or some action that the inquirer needs to have or to take" (p. 345).

Once data have been unitized, units that relate to the same content are grouped together in "provisional categories" (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 347). Categorizing is achieved through the use of the constant comparative method. In other words, units are compared to each other to establish whether they are similar and should be put in the same category, or different and should be put into different categories. Once the categories contain more and more units, the researcher attempts to "put into a propositional statement the properties that seem to characterize" (p. 348) the category. Through this process, researchers can establish the rule for further inclusion of units into the category. Finally, each category is reviewed for consistency, and categories are compared to make sure each is unique. The goal is to have categories that are "internally as homogeneous as possible and externally as heterogeneous as possible" (p. 349). Once the categories were developed, we shared them with the other research participants for the purpose of member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The following section presents the categories that were inductively constructed through data analysis.

FINDINGS

As we initiated the dialogue, a major shift occurred in how we understood our doctoral student experiences. Whereas the construction of the autoethnographies facilitated individual self-reflection, the dialogue served as a mechanism for collective problematizing of our experiences and the very context of the institution in which we found ourselves: the academy. In short, this problem-posing, dialogical process enabled us to achieve a critical consciousness about our experiences in the academy. Critical consciousness was achieved regarding: (a) the nature of the academy, (b) the forces perpetuating the academy's nature, and (c) an alternative framework for doctoral education.

The Nature of the Academy

As an outcome of our dialogue, we came to understand that what was problematic about our experiences was largely a result of the very nature of the academy. We perceived the nature of the academy to be conservative, restrictive, and racist. With each exchange, we began to uncover the academy's conservative, restrictive, and racist nature. A female doctoral student offered the following comment (all student names presented in this article are pseudonyms):