THE CONTRIBUTION OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH TO ADULT-EDUCATION - ADULT-EDUCATION-QUARTERLY, 1969-1988

The purposes of this study were to determine the extent to which gradu ate students contributed to the body of research through publication i n Adult Education Quarterly (AEQ) and to shed some light on aspects of knowledge production and dissemination processes in graduate adult ed ucation programs. Graduate student contributors to volumes 19 through 38 were identified from two mailed surveys conducted ten years apart. The surveys sought information on the content of graduate research. th e graduate programs and faculty who supported it, and the levels of gr aduate study involved. In addition. the surveys sought information on the characteristics of the student authors, including their sex, level of graduate study, motivation for undertaking non-required research, research dissemination activities and current professional occupations and duties. An overall survey response rate of 88.5% was achieved. Th e data revealed that 113 students, as authors and co-authors, publishe d 128 articles in the journal over the 20 year period under study. For ty six percent of all journal articles published were written by gradu ate student authors. Seventy articles were written by lone authors, 50 were written with one other person and eight were co-authored with tw o other persons. The study findings confirm that graduate student cont ributions to AEQ have been underestimated by prior studies and that ad ult education departments mediate die influence of the field of educat ion on the development of the discipline and knowledge building to a g reater extent than previously recognized. Graduate publication activit y in AEQ was associated with program location and gender was associate d with research content and dissemination activities. Implications for further research into the processes by which knowledge is produced in adult education are presented.