| Doctoral skill progression requires students to develop advanced cognitive abilities in order to successfully synthesize existing literature, conduct independent research, and connect findings to generate new knowledge and complete their dissertations. The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to assess the effects of online doctoral applicants' writing skills and gender on dissertation progression. Psycholinguistic theory and transformative learning theory served as the theories informing this study. The study sample consisted of 389 students' admissions essays, which were analyzed for their writing style scores using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) computerized content analysis software. Nine research questions examined differences among student gender and writing-style groups in terms of student success, as measured by the dissertation milestones progression. Writing styles were analyzed in terms of four features: categorical and dynamic elements, cognitive mechanisms, and complexity. The results of Chi-Square tests showed that the dissertation progression was significantly affected by categorical writing (p=.031 for the whole sample and p=.001 for females), dynamic writing (p=.026 for the whole sample and p=.005 for females), and cognitive mechanisms (p=.016 for males only). Universities can assess doctoral students' writing to offer the personalized support their students need to complete a written dissertation and graduate.;Keywords: Online doctoral programs, doctoral attrition, dissertation writing skill assessment, LIWC, content analysis, dissertation milestone progression. |
