Journal Review

Journal Review

April 2007

The article entitled Challenges confronting community college Deans aimed to discover the issues and concerns that community college administrators anticipate would significantly impact their role and institution within a projected five year period . Data were collected using a three-round Delphi survey instrument among 102 administrators at occupational training and continuing education community colleges within four Southern States in the U . S . The issues raised across the states and individuals were categorized and further ranked

The article is professionally formatted adhering to good paragraphing and alignment

. The language is clear and the information presented flows smoothly with ideas linking to each other . Transitional headings are used to facilitate easy reading and following of the research delineating relevant sections such as methodology , results , conclusions and implications . The authors provide an abstract but this appears to be quite lengthy given the comparative length of the remainder of the article . The abstract does , however , give an appropriate overview of the purposes of the study being reported , the methodology used as well as the findings made

Among the strengths of the article are

The major strength of the research is its choice of data collection instrument and methodology . A three-round Delphi survey instrument was used . The Delphi technique , as noted by the authors , has been in use for several decades and has proven to be one the most efficient methods of gathering expert views that are predictive in nature and to establish lines of concurrence . In the first round questionnaire is open-ended allow respondents to supply their individual views , in the second round issues are correlated and grouped and respondents rate their relevance on a Likert scale and in round three major categories are ranked in terms of importance

Another strength of the article is in its selection of the regions to include in the survey . Four Southeastern states , Florida , Maryland North Carolina and Virginia , that are relatively homogenous in terms of their emphasis on skills training were selected . The avoidance of random sampling ensures that results would be truly reflective of the insights of administrators who truly value this type of training . In other regions where the focus may be on other types of education administrators may not be as forward thinking about this vocational training

An additional strength is in the choice of respondents . Even though respondents were voluntary they are all experts in their field and thus would be more au fait with changes and developments that could present challenges in the near future . A related positive is that the initial sample size , particularly for the first two rounds , was quite representative of the population . The final positive is that strict and professional procedures were followed in analyzing the data at all three rounds . Particularly , the use of professionals in the field from related institutions outside of the survey region , were utilized

The research also has a few weaknesses . The investigative framework of the research begs questions of its reliability . The administrators were required to identify those issues...