Conversations with university students

Nine undergraduate education students from a South African university participated in a qualitative study exploring how historically disadvantaged students navigate academic pathways. The data was generated using autobiographical questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, authored by Pearl Larey and last updated in May 2026. The study's significance lies in its contribution to the discourse of decoloniality within higher education institutions.

Use Cases

• Analyze student narratives of hardship and success based on autobiographical questionnaire data mentioned in the description
• Study institutional disconnect and student navigation strategies based on semi-structured interview transcripts
• Explore themes of critical realism and dialectical acknowledgment in higher education contexts
• Investigate the application of decolonial theory within specific university settings in South Africa

Strengths

• Data is licensed under CC-BY-4.0, allowing for broad reuse and adaptation.
• The study design is clearly described, involving autobiographical questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with nine purposively selected students.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small at 184.2 KB, indicating limited scope and depth.
• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The data format is DOCX, which may require parsing to extract structured qualitative data for analysis.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Pearl Larey.

Collection Method

Data generated via autobiographical questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with purposively selected participants.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-09 06:00:02

Geography

Two campuses of one national university in South Africa.