The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2 - 99

College Housing Dissertations

could be very useful to housing organizations planning construction or renovation projects in the future. Another major change during the past 5 years has been the increasing involvement of parents in the lives of students. Studies looking at this trend with a goal to help discover the positive and negative aspects of parental and family involvement in the lives of their residential students would be of interest to the housing field. This research could be helpful in both the policy and programmatic aspects of this phenomenon. Finally, the concept of sense of place is becoming a frequent topic of interest in college and university planning (Reeve & Kassabaum, 1997) as well as in understanding the campus environment (Bott, Banning, Wells, Haas, & Lakey, 2006), but there were no identified dissertations addressing these developing areas of interest. Given that the concept of sense of place focuses on a person’s attachment to a physical setting, the topic has special relevance to student satisfaction with housing. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated the use of qualitative meta-analysis and how it might be used to highlight collective trends related to research that both informs practice and guides future research. This study focused on housing-related dissertations, providing insight into what topics had been the focus of this research over the past 5 years. Through this analysis, themes related to the findings of housing research were uncovered and highlighted. Five overarching research themes were uncovered that have implications for the refinement and support of programmatic practice. Administrative themes related to outsourcing, staff training and development, and the use of

technology were also found but not as frequently as other themes; they were clearly not a major focus or trend for housing-related research. This research approach was also used to identify other important administrative housing-related issues omitted from recent doctoral research. These missing topics related to housing construction and renovation planning and processes, the housing needs of special populations, the increased involvement of parents in the student residential experience, and the concept of a sense of place and its role in understanding college and university housing. The authors believe these omitted topics should be considered as possible research areas by those housing professionals who currently are or will be engaged in the doctoral journey.

REFERENCES
Altheide, D. L. (1987). Ethnographic content analysis. Qualitative Sociology, 10(1), 65-77. Altheide, D. L, Coyle, M., DeVriese, K., & Schneider, C. (2008). Emergent qualitative document analysis. In S. N. Hesse-Biber & P. Leavy (Eds.), Handbook of emergent themes (pp. 127-154). New York: Guilford Press. Astin, A. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Banning, J. H., & Kuk, L. (2009). The student affairs organizational dissertations: A bounded qualitative meta-study. College Student Journal, 43(2A), 285-293. Barbour, R. S. (2000). The role of qualitative research in broadening the “evidence base” for clinical practice. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 6(2), 155-163.

V o l u m e 3 7 , No. 2 • 2 0 1 1

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

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2