The Doctoral Challenge: Select Women Students’ Experiences in a Higher Educational Leadership Doctoral Program

There is scant research on the topic of challenges and coping mechanisms necessary to the success of women doctoral students. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess qualitatively the experiences of 3 women doctoral students enrolled at a 4-year university in southeast Texas in an attempt to explore the challenges that evolve while they are enrolled in a doctoral program. Specifically, we examined the lives of these women doctoral students outside of the program and their progression to the completion of their degrees. We attempted to provide insight surrounding the doctoral process, attrition, and completion. A collective case study research design was utilized in this study that was driven by a critical dialectical pluralistic philosophical stance (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013). Specifically, these 3 students were interviewed individually to examine their lived experiences as doctoral students. The verbal interview responses then were subjected to an ethnographic analysis (i.e., domain analysis, taxonomic analysis, componential analysis; Spradley, 1979), whereas their nonverbal responses were subjected to a classical content analysis. The ethnographic analysis of the verbal data revealed the following 2 themes: program perceptions and role inequity. The classical content analysis of the nonverbal data revealed 2 major categories that represented both explicit and inferred forms of communication: types of challenges and survival strategies. Implications of the findings are discussed.