Comparison of Academic Achievement of Masters and Ph.D Students in Advanced Educational Research Method and Advanced Statistics Courses

Abstract

Doctoral students are supposed to be more knowledgeable than the masters students in Research and Statistics courses given their exposure to these courses at both undergraduate and masters levels. Cursory observations have however shown that sometimes masters students perform much better than Doctoral students in Research Methods and Statistics courses. Research to substantiate this is rare. This prompted this study which compared academic achievement of masters and PhD students in advanced educational research method and advanced statistics courses in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was made up of 353 masters and 96 doctoral students for the 2018/19 session, 302 masters and 62 doctoral students for the 2019/20 session and 287 Masters students and 52 doctoral students for the 2020/21 session. No sampling was done. Existing data of Masters and doctoral students’ results in Advanced Statistics and Educational Research Method course were collected and analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The findings revealed that Masters students performed better than doctoral students in advanced statistic course across the years under review. The findings of the study further indicated that while masters students performed better in educational research method than PhD students in 2018, PhD students performed better than masters students in 2019 and 2020.Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that concerted efforts should be made by university administrators to ensure that doctoral students in faculty of education are given reasons for being taught advanced statistics course. This is with a view to bridging the achievement gap between them and their counterparts in Masters degree programme.

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