Doctoral Students’ Perceptions of Barriers to Reading Empirical Literature: A Mixed Analysis

Little is known about reading ability among doctoral students. Thus, we used a multi-stage mixed analysis to examine 205 doctoral students' levels of reading ability, their perceptions of barriers that prevented them from reading empirical articles, and the relationship between these two sets of constructs. Approximately 10% of doctoral students attained reading ability scores that represented the lower percentiles of a normative sample of undergraduate students. A thematic analysis revealed 8 themes (subsumed by 3 meta-themes: Research Characteristics; Comprehension; Text Characteristics) that represented barriers to reading empirical articles and that predicted both perceived and actual reading ability. Combinations of these themes and metathemes were related to both perceived reading ability and actual reading ability (reading comprehension, reading vocabulary). The implications of these and other findings are discussed and recommendations are provided for helping doctoral students successfully negotiate the path of emergent scholarship. Keywords: reading, empirical literature, barriers to reading, mixed research, doctoral students, doctoral students' perceptions, emerging scholar, struggling readers