THE VALUE OF USING A RESEARCH ALIGNMENT PLAN IN RESEARCH SUPERVISION - A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Research supervision is an important component in an academic's career and remains a challenging task. Students having to complete a research thesis, dissertation or treatise, generally struggle to complete the research component of their postgraduate studies. Research alignment is a topic discussed in various approaches to research supervision, specifically relating to research methods, guidelines and tools. The supervisors' role is to guide the student during their research process, offering advice in their field of study, providing research direction, setting milestones and monitoring the student's progress. The Research Alignment Plan (RAP) was specifically developed to assist postgraduate students with planning the outline and structure of their Master of Business Administration (MBA) treatise or Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) thesis. The aim of this study was to investigate the students' perceptions regarding the use of the RAP during their studies. The study was qualitative and open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire, which was distributed to the supervised MBA and DBA students. The survey was completed by 25 MBA and DBA students. The findings indicate that the RAP is an effective instrument, which assists students to structure their research, align the research problem with the research objectives, research questions and chapter's outcomes or deliverables. All respondents recommended that the RAP be used by all students in the Business School and be incorporated in the Research Methodology module.