Purpose

This study aims to examine how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics doctoral students interact with postdocs within the research laboratory, identifying the nature and potential impacts of student–postdoc mentoring relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of 53 doctoral students in the biological sciences, this study uses a sequential mixed-methods design. More specifically, a phenomenological approach enabled the authors to identify how doctoral students make meaning of their interactions with postdocs and other research staff. Descriptive statistics are used to examine how emergent themes might differ as a product of gender and race/ethnicity and the extent to which emergent themes may relate to key doctoral student socialization outcomes.

Findings

This study reveals six emergent themes, which primarily focus on how doctoral students receive instrumental and psychosocial support from postdocs in their labs. The most frequent emergent theme captures the unique ways in which postdocs provide ongoing, hands-on support and troubleshooting at the lab bench. When examining how this theme plays a role in socialization outcomes, the results suggest that doctoral students who described this type of support from postdocs had more positive mental health outcomes than those who did not describe this type of hands-on support.

Originality/value

Literature on graduate student mentorship has focused primarily on the impact of advisors, despite recent empirical evidence of a “cascading mentorship” model, in which senior students and staff also play a key mentoring role. This study provides new insights into the unique mentoring role of postdocs, focusing on the nature and potential impacts of student–postdoc interactions.

中文翻译：

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指导博士研究生与实验室科学博士后之间的关系

目的

本研究旨在研究科学，技术，工程和数学博士生如何与研究实验室的博士后互动，从而确定学生与博士后指导关系的性质和潜在影响。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用了53位生物科学博士学位的学生样本，采用了顺序混合方法设计。更具体地说，现象学方法使作者能够确定博士生如何理解与博士后和其他研究人员的互动。描述性统计数据用于检验新兴主题作为性别和种族/民族的产物可能有何不同，以及新兴主题与博士生社会化关键成果的相关程度。

发现

这项研究揭示了六个新兴主题，这些主题主要集中在博士生如何从实验室的博士后那里获得工具和社会心理支持。最频繁出现的主题捕获了postdocs在实验室工作台上提供持续，动手支持和故障排除的独特方式。当研究该主题如何在社会化结果中发挥作用时，结果表明，描述了博士后这种支持的博士生比没有描述这种动手支持的博士生具有更积极的心理健康结果。

创意/价值

尽管最近有经验证明“级联指导”模式在研究生和教职员工中也起着重要的指导作用，但有关研究生指导的文献主要集中在顾问的影响上。这项研究提供了对博士后的独特指导作用的新见解，重点是学生与博士后互动的性质和潜在影响。