Purpose

The purpose of this study is to better understand the declines in doctoral students’ mental and physical health while pursuing their doctoral degrees, by revealing the major themes of students’ voluntary comments following a survey that primed students to reflect on these topics.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study used qualitative thematic analysis to uncover themes in doctoral students’ voluntary comments on a large-scale, web-based survey of graduate students’ motivation and well-being.

Findings

A thematic analysis revealed six major emerging themes: timing in the degree process, work-life balance, health/well-being changes, impostor syndrome, the supervisor and hopelessness.

Research limitations/implications

The themes uncovered in the present study contribute to the literature by highlighting important underexplored topics (e.g. timing in the degree process, hopelessness) in doctoral education research and they are discussed and situated in the context of existing literature.

Practical implications

Implications for doctoral supervisors and departments are discussed.

Social implications

The present study highlights some pressing concerns among doctoral students, as articulated by the students themselves and can contribute to the betterment of doctoral education, thereby reducing attrition, improving the experiences of doctoral students and possibly affording more candidates to achieve a doctoral degree.

Originality/value

The present study makes the above-mentioned contributions by taking a novel approach and analyzing doctoral students’ voluntary comments (n = 607) on a large-scale, web-based survey. Thus, while some of the themes were primed by the survey itself, the data represent issues/concerns that students perceived as important enough to comment about after already having completed a lengthy questionnaire.

中文翻译：

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调查“评论”部分的见解：扩展对博士福祉的研究

目的

本研究的目的是为了更好地了解博士生在攻读博士学位期间心理和身体健康状况的下降，在一项调查后揭示学生自愿评论的主要主题，让学生对这些主题进行反思。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用定性主题分析来揭示博士生对研究生动机和福祉的大规模网络调查自愿评论的主题。

发现

一项专题分析揭示了六个主要的新兴主题：学位过程中的时间安排、工作与生活的平衡、健康/福祉的变化、冒名顶替综合症、主管和绝望。

研究限制/影响

本研究中发现的主题通过突出博士教育研究中未充分探索的重要主题（例如学位过程中的时机，绝望）对文献做出了贡献，并且在现有文献的背景下对其进行了讨论和定位。

实际影响

讨论了对博士生导师和部门的影响。

社会影响

本研究强调了博士生中的一些紧迫问题，这些问题由学生自己表达出来，可以促进博士教育的改善，从而减少流失，改善博士生的体验，并可能为更多候选人提供博士学位。

原创性/价值

本研究通过采用一种新颖的方法并在大规模的基于网络的调查中分析博士生的自愿评论 ( n = 607) 来做出上述贡献。因此，虽然一些主题是由调查本身引发的，但数据代表了学生认为足够重要的问题/担忧，在已经完成了冗长的问卷调查后，可以对其发表评论。