The "Succeeding in the 21st Century" research project attempts to answer the question of what skills and abilities are needed to succeed in the next century.

     In order to answer this question, Dr. Carlos Zalaquett (Assistant Professor, University of South Florida) has designed a study that asks people, seen by their peers as successes in their respective fields, to list the skills they feel are necessary for college students (and everyone else) to have in order to succeed in the twenty first century. The question posed to them was: "What are the skills and abilities university and college students should acquire to succeed in the 21st Century?"

     Each person interviewed via phone conference or mail correspondence brings with him/her different perspectives and life experiences that guarantees a well rounded range of opinions. With so many vastly different backgrounds (ranging from politics to brain research) it was expected that there would be a wide range of significantly different answers to the question regarding what are the skills and abilities university and college students should acquire to succeed in the 21st Century. However; using the grounded theory of qualitative analysis on each response, it was found that each answer had a common thread that bound it to the others.

     The Grounded Theory of Qualitative Analysis was originally developed by Glaser and Straus to help researchers gain access and insight to the realm of qualitative data (Rennie, 1994). As described by Rennie et al., grounded theory is a method of analyzing qualitative data (usually textual in nature) by first systematically dividing the responses into meaning units through constant comparison based on a single idea (Rennie et al., 1988). These meaning units are then subcategorized into representative subheadings with each unit having a shared bond with the others listed within the subgroup. Commonalties between categories are conceptualized as higher order giving rise to a hierarchical pattern by which each has properties of all those that subsume it. A supreme higher order category (core) is made up of all subsuming categories as well as the meaning units that fall within each of them. At the final stage, the patterns that make up the hierarchical structure of the core categories give rise to the formation of a theory; therefore, the theory is grounded in the data under study. This is analogous to the structure of a pyramid; the highest unit (core) is built upon smaller units that increase in number as it gets closer to the foundation (data), with each layer built upon the previous one.

    Using this method, the data was first broken down into main ideas (meaning units) and listed together according to commonalties. They included the following: communication, multicultural awareness, teamwork, ability to adapt, ability to discern objective from subjective information, self esteem, creativity, stress management, work ethic, self discipline, computer skills, interactive skills, cyberspace knowledge, grammar skills, logical reasoning, economic/business sense, and mathematical skills. Once this was accomplished, each separate group of common units was placed under one of four categorical headings: Interpersonal, Intrinsic, Technological, or Fundamental. It soon became apparent that these categories had some common traits and thus were combined to form the higher level core categories: Education and Attributes. Therefore; the two core categories were based upon, or grounded in, each category that subsumed it. Without the data as foundation for the higher level categories, the theory would fall, just as the pyramid would tumble without it's base units.