By Don Chigumba | I had a chance to go through the online PhD thesis alleged to be that of Dr. Grace Mugabe and therefore want to take this opportunity to report my observations to the public. For those who may want to verify you may follow this link to get the online thesis https://www.scribd.com/
The author of this piece has more than 10 years of teaching and supervising research thesis at university level for both graduate and undergraduate students. The author is also an experienced mixed methods research specialist.
Research Title: The Changing Social Structure and Functions of the Family
1. Research Questions and Objectives
An observation was made that there was no link between some research objectives and the research questions. The thesis had 6 research questions and 3 research objectives and a close analysis has shown that only research questions number (a) and (d) are linked to objectives number 1 and 3 respectively. The remaining four research questions are not linked to any of the research objectives. According to the international standards of writing theses, research questions should be drawn from the research objectives. Research objective means what the researcher should achieve by the end of the study and should therefore be converted to questions. The thesis had three objectives and was technically supposed to have three research questions linked to those objectives. I didn’t get the chance to check the thesis guidelines for the program of sociology at UZ, I felt that research objectives were supposed to precede the research questions.
2. Statement of the Problem
In short, statement of the problem means the description of a problem that provoked the study. The paper focused on experiences from Herald, Sunday Mail Newspapers and what the former president said about the moral fibre. The statement of the problem is a bit weak though there is some insignificant provocation. The PhD statement of the problem should be empirical literature backed and derived from the background to the study. The fact that the former president Mugabe said there is a moral decadence in Zimbabwean societies does not qualify it to be a strong statement of the problem. This may force some readers to believe that the study was built upon a weak foundation.
3. Background to the Study
Chapter one of every study should have a strong background to the study, trying to build the problem in context. The background to the study should be backed by global/ international literature (America, Asia/Europe), continental literature (literature from selected African countries) and local literature (from Zimbabwe). The student of the thesis only focused much on the local literature a mistake that is found in chapter two (review of literature). For one to be awarded a doctorate, he/she should know everything happening locally, continentally and internationally in areas related to the study title. Therefore, the background to the study should have been improved.
4. Review of literature
The student cited the Bible when supporting her literature review Genesis 2:18, 2:24, 1:28, Colossians 3:18, Proverbs 22:6. This brings a lot of confusion because we don’t know whether the scholar was studying biblical morality or African traditional morality or Islamic morality etc, the operational definitions are not clear with the definition of morality too. When dealing with such kinds of scientific research the Bible is not taken as a genuine source of literature for research. In universities that I worked under, we discouraged students to cite the Bible as a source of literature unless one is studying a research title related to the Bible. In sociology morality is broad and not only limited to the biblical morality and the university professors under the faculty of sociology should give us direction on this.
The theoretical literature were discussed i.e. the structural functional perspective, the conflict perspective, the feminist perspective, symbolic interaction perspective but the major problem was on a detailed application of the stated theories to the study context. How are the theories related to the study? The student should have addressed this well.
The empirical literature sections has a lot of problem. According to the best practice of writing thesis, the sub-headings of the empirical literature section should be the research questions or objectives because that is what the literature review should answer. 90% of the research questions were not answered the student talked much on the land reform programs of Zimbabwe since 1980 which were not well linked to the title and the objectives. I was expecting to see some key findings obtained from literature but nothing like that happened.
As I said earlier on, the empirical literature is mainly locally backed and little was put on international or global literature I was expecting to read the latest literature from America, Europe, Asia etc answering the research questions/objectives before narrowing down to the study context. This area made me to doubt the credibility of the thesis.
The literature did not expose the research gap(s). She concluded chapter two by saying ‘the literature review therefore revealed gaps which this study sought to fill’ but I haven’t seen the alleged gaps and no one knows the gap(s) which the study closed. This is another problem for a PhD thesis.
5. Methodology
The student seemed to have little knowledge of research designs and approaches. There is evidence to indicate that she didn’t know qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods designs. Instead of narrating and justifying designs to be used, she started talking about divorce rates and that she grew up in rural area in a struggling family etc, information that is not totally acceptable under research designs, read what she wrote below;
3.4 Research Design
Research design, which may also be referred to as conceptual framework, involves making decisions regarding what topic to be studied, among what population, with what methods and for what purposes (Babbie, 1983: 74, Miles & Huberman 1994:20). The selection of my research topic was influenced by three factors. First, I observed what was going on in the social world around me and my own life. There were numerous reports on baby dumping, divorce and family instability as explained in Chapter One. This caused me to wonder whether our society still valued human life, particularly the lives of infants. Secondly, the topic was of concern and interest to me as a mother, as well as a founder of a children’s home. But did I have sufficient knowledge and understanding of what parenting involved and meant to the development of children? Did our society have adequate understanding of the relationship between family stability and baby dumping for example? The third factor concerned my life experience. I grew up in a rural setting in a family which struggled to make ends meet. Seeing abandoned, orphaned and vulnerable children touched my soul but I did not have sufficient knowledge on how to handle such issues. Before deciding on the research topic, I consulted a number of written sources (Baker 1994, Babbie, 1995, Miles and Huberman, 1994) and also spoke to relevant researchers and intellectual comrades. I was then encouraged and convinced that I could tackle the research topic
The Vice Chancellor of UZ and well as the President of Zimbabwe who is the Chancellor should read the above section of research design and if possible question the credibility of the supervisors and committee that approved this work. A research design is the oxygen of the study, without it the study becomes null and void. She could have opted for designs like survey, case study, correlation, phenomenology, grounded theory etc depending with the research approach but what you can read from above is a disaster.
The data collection methods used were observation, interviews and focus group discussion giving an impression that the research approach could have been qualitative but the demographic characteristics/sample sizes of those answering the instruments were not clear. The student talked about observation method as a data collection method but did not specify the type of observation (participant or non participant observation). I did not see the section in chapter 4 where the data obtained by observation was analyzed except some few photographs. The interview guide and focus group discussion samples are attached to the annex of the document but the observation guide is not there (we do not know what she was observing)
6. Ethics
That is another area of concern, and a lot of questions are being raised about the researcher’s adherence to the research ethics. No consent agreement forms attached to the annex or prepared, the study was done with minors who were less than 18 years of age staying in orphanages and the law of Zimbabwe and research ethics dictates that consent agreement should be signed when dealing with children. This will make the research invalid if ethics for children were not properly observed. Children in research are endangered species and need extra protection and care.
I went through the entire document up to chapter 7 and observed quite a lot of problems. For example in chapter 6, the researcher was supposed to have the discussion of findings but did not understand the requirements of that chapter and justice was not done. Empirical and theoretical literature could have been discussed with the study findings, a task not done.
7. Reference
The references are outdated (old) but I don’t have problems with that because she was studying the contexts from as far as 1980s and she made use of old and classical theories, therefore the justification to use old references was fair. She should have only tried to look for the latest references for empirical literature.
Conclusion
I am looking for the softcopies of the PhD theses of the following people for me to make an evaluation; Vice President Chiwenga, Joyce Mujuru, Jonathan Moyo and Gideon Gono. Please share the link to me via comments.
I am convinced that the PhD of Grace Mugabe was below the expected standard if the alleged online thesis is her property. UZ is therefore requested to clarify on the quality of their PhDs, if we are to take UZ seriously, explanations should be given by authorities. The image of UZ can only be cleaned by revoking such sub-standard PhD papers, otherwise UZ may be change to become a ZANU PF G40 University.
Don Chigumba is a Mixed Methods Research Specialist Based in South Africa
Read Dr Teurairipo’s 12 page dissertation and you will quit this business of reviewing dissertations. I have been on at least 10 dissertation committees. Honestly, I was traumatized just reading such child’s play. Be advised. Grace’s was about number if pages and excel charts. As a rule of thumb, view with suspicion anyone who tells you in social circles that they hold a PhD, a DPhil, or ScD. A real PhD humbles a person, and earning a PhD marks the beginning of a process not the end.
If i were Grace Mugabe i would tell the critics to invite me so that i could go through a viva voice examination just to prove that am the original researcher. This will silence the doubting Thomases.
HERS IS AN EXTREME CASE. THERE ARE MANY ZIMBABWEANS WITH FAKE PHDS.MOSTLY FROM UNCREDITED BOGUS UNIVERSITIES!
Sometimes too much criticism of something blurrs the point. If the president of a country laments a fall of moral decadence surely its based on evidence on the ground. The writer seems to suggest that even the utterance of the president on the issue was a lie. such provocative criticism cannot go unchallenged.