The Role of Self-regulation in Doctoral Students’ Status of All But Dissertation (ABD)

Abstract

Doctoral student enrollment and study require significant resources such as faculty time, student time, and funding. However, doctoral student attrition is a serious problem nationwide, especially at the dissertation level. When doctoral students do not complete their dissertations, their potential contributions to society are substantially diminished, which may impact their own personal career goals and life plans. While it seems plausible that self-regulated learning may be one critical factor in the completion of the doctoral dissertation, there remains a paucity of research into the effects of self-regulated learning on doctoral program completion. In our study the results of a hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-regulated learning predicted the time needed for the completion of the dissertation and was also correlated with intrinsic task value.