Ranson Sifiso Gwala

University of KwaZulu-Natal | ukzn · Graduate School of Business and Leadership

Many PhD students, however, look to produce research articles from their dissertation rather than a book as the first step in disseminating their research. Converting a dissertation into research articles also requires substantial reworking of dissertation material. This often involves recontextualizing, reframing, reprioritizing, trimming, condensing, and even restructuring. In order to publish a book, the first thing students need to do is write a proposal for the book. There are many factors that need to be considered when submitting a book proposal to a publisher or an article to a peer-reviewed journal. The dissertation needed considerable reworking, and each of the publications needed to be completely rewritten from their original format in the dissertation. (Paltridge, 2016)

Personally, I have produced, a systematic literature review, a literature review (to be published as a book Chapter) and a full journal article summarising the full thesis. On the sidelines of that, I am writing another book Chapter and Conference attendance paper. This has allowed me to diversify my skills and thought process, allowing me to think out of the box and acquire more requisite skills.

Mixed-methods researchers promote pragmatism as a paradigm by suggesting that it is directly linked to the needs of mixed-methods research. Scholars maintain that pragmatism provides a philosophical foundation for social science research, in general, and mixed-methods research, in particular (Morgan 2014a).

Many researchers still believe that mixed methodology should be done separately.

What is the take on the pragmatic approach where mixed methods adopt the use of both methods using one instrument/tool to collect data at the same time? This will either be QUANT+qual or QUAL+quant.

"Construct validity is the extent to which the measure 'behaves' in a way consistent with theoretical hypotheses and represents how well scores on the instrument are indicative of the theoretical construct."

How does it validate results?

How does it validate the methodology?

What does it mean if it is weak?

Covid-19 pandemic has made working very difficult. This includes meeting people accessing sites and getting participants for interviews. Should candidates be given more time to complete their PhD? What additional ethical considerations should be taken into account during covid-19?