The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2 - 92

James H. Banning • Linda Kuk

Research focused on the impact of the residential experience on students has shown that residence halls play a large part in student success and in creating a stronger connection between campus life and the institution’s academic mission. As housing and student affairs leaders look to the future development of the residential experience and attempt to adapt to the changing needs, preferences, and expectations of students, continued research in this area becomes increasingly important. One source of cutting edge research is doctoral dissertations, a source that is important in two ways. First, the research is conducted by professionals who have a strong commitment to residence halls, and after completing their doctoral studies they will likely become the future leaders within residence life and housing systems. Second, the topics of these dissertations reveal a great deal about the values and direction these leaders envision for the future, as well as a collective focus on the impact and importance of collegiate housing. The purpose of this study was to examine recent dissertations on the topic of collegiate housing. The research design is based upon a bounded qualitative meta-study using document analysis, which provides the basis for a summary and comprehensive understanding of recent housing-related research. This kind of summary analysis can provide a useful guide for similar research in the future, and the qualitative research methodology can also be used to analyze document-related data sources beyond doctoral dissertations. Such an approach could prove useful to housing professionals with a variety of research and assessment initiatives.

A BOuNDED QuALITATIVE META-STuDy FRAMEwORK
The purpose of meta-analysis is to summarize and link documented research to informed practices, and it is most often implemented within a quantitative framework (Glass, 1976). Within this framework the data from a number of research studies is analyzed and integrated using the statistical concept of effect size (Lipsey & Wilson, 2001). This study, however, uses a bounded qualitative synthesis framework (Banning & Kuk, 2009) which diverges from the traditional quantitative meta-analysis in two important ways. One, the study is bounded by the search of a specific research genre and a specific time period, rather than exploring all available research. Specifically, this study is limited to doctoral dissertations written in the U.S. in the past 5 years related to collegiate housing. Two, the approach to the documented research found is qualitative rather than quantitative (Major & Savin-Baden, 2010; Noblit & Hare, 1988; Paterson, Thorne, Canam, & Jillings, 2001) and uses qualitative document analysis (Altheide, Coyle, DeVriese, & Schneider, 2008) rather than a statistical approach. Within the document analysis, the results are structured by three categories: methods, theory, and findings (Paterson et al.).

RESEARCH QuESTION
We conducted a formal qualitative metaanalysis of research documents—in this case, dissertations—to discover what is happening in recent research related to college and university housing. “What could be learned from the examination of recent doctoral dissertation

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2

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