“I’ve Been in a Box Too Long and I Didn’t Even Realise That I Was.” How Can We Conceptualise the Subjective Well-Being of Students Undertaking a Part-Time DBA? The IICC Model

Abstract

The well-being of doctoral students is a matter of concern for the Higher Education sector, not least during the Covid pandemic. The challenge of a doctorate is regarded as a test of a student’s capability as an independent researcher and for future career potential. However, this challenge extends beyond the formal examination process to include a test of the student’s resilience and the ability to cope with a multitude of pressures that emanate from a variety of sources. Hitherto, much of the research into doctoral students’ well-being has concentrated on the experience of full-time Ph.D. students. This article reports on the well-being of part-time students enrolled onto a professional doctorate—the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). Unlike full-time campus-based doctorates, many part-time professional doctorates are often remote, take longer to complete, and present a range of challenges that affect work, family life, and health, albeit to varying degrees. This article set out to ascertain how British and Dutch DBA students cope with the challenges of studying for a part-time doctorate. In doing so, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to elicit students’ experiences of their doctoral journey and their subjective well-being. The findings point not only to the stress placed on personal well-being and family life but also the resilience of students and the sense of fulfilment that is associated with doctoral study. This article offers a conceptualisation of this complex phenomenon through the Individual, Institutional, Challenge, and Coping strategies (IICC) model.

Keywords:

• Well-being of DBA students
• professional doctorate
• Doctor of Business Administration
• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
• the IICC model

The issue of doctoral students’ well-being is a major concern for Higher Education (HE) institutions. In the past decade, this issue has generated much interest from governments and academia as research indicates that “people undertaking doctoral research have higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress than a normative population” (Barry et al., 2018, p. 478). Concerns relating to the prevalence and causes of stress, depression, and ultimately drop-outs from doctoral programmes are increasingly influencing the direction of policy. Indeed, students’ well-being is now used as a performance indicator of both institutions and the HE sector as a whole (Hewitt, 2019; Neves & Hewitt, 2021; Neves & Hillman, 2017; Pitkin, 2020; Williams, 2019). However, most of the research into the well-being of doctoral students has focussed on the Ph.D. journey, not that of those who study for a professional doctorate (Gardner & Gopaul, 2012; Williams, 2019). This article reports on the experience of students enrolled on the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree at an English business school both before and during the Covid-19 emergency. Professional doctorates tend to be studied on a part-time basis by students in the United Kingdom (UK) and tend to take up to six years. The professional doctorate is seen as an established work-oriented doctoral qualification, and recruitment in the UK has been more significant than in the United States, Canada, and Australia (Gardner & Gopaul, 2012; Mills et al., 2014). This article adopts a qualitative approach predicated on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology that addresses a fundamental research question: How do students describe the impact of study for a professional doctorate on their subjective well-being? The findings suggest that although there are common challenges involved in doctoral study—not least because of the disruption caused by the Covid pandemic—differences in programme design, student-life histories, and circumstance mean that the way we approach the issue of students’ well-being needs further development. In order to conceptualise this insight, the Individual, Institutional, Challenge, and Coping strategies (IICC) model is provided as an original contribution to the discourse on doctoral students’ well-being.

Literature Review

The Deterioration in the Well-Being of Doctoral Students: An International Phenomenon

The issue of doctoral students’ well-being is regarded as a matter of concern, and much research has been undertaken both by government agencies and scholars in the past decade in the UK (Hewitt, 2019; Neves & Hillman, 2017, 2018; UK Council for Graduate Education [UKCGE], 2019) and more widely in Europe (McAlpine et al., 2020; Pyhalto et al., 2020; Pyhalto et al., 2012; Waight & Giordano, 2018). More particularly in the UK, research suggests that the well-being of students has declined during the Covid pandemic (Neves & Hewitt, 2021; Pitkin, 2020). In 2020 at the peak of the pandemic in the UK, 60% of students reported having suffered from anxiety within the previous day (Pitkin, 2020). Neves and Hewitt (2021) reported that all four measures used to assess student well-being had declined during the pandemic with, for example, “levels of happiness” falling from 19% in 2017 to 11% in 2021 and “life satisfaction” falling 14% from to 6% in the same period. The data generated over the past decade have, notwithstanding the Covid pandemic, identified a clear trend that the reported subjective well-being of doctoral students is deteriorating.

Prior to the Covid pandemic, research had identified a number of causal factors involved in the deterioration of doctoral students’ well-being. These causal factors may be categorised into three themes: institutional processes and systems, personal circumstance and disposition, and project-related tasks. Mackie and Bates (2019) encapsulate “stressors” within a general discussion of operation of the doctoral environment, with an acknowledgement that “financial insecurity is usually deemed to be the largest stressor.” Pyhalto et al. (2012, p. 2) consider that the stressful nature of the doctoral environment is a causal factor in drop-outs, and in particular the conduct and effectiveness of the supervision process appears prominently in the literature relating to Ph.D. attrition (Lee, 2009). Indeed, Lee (2009) claims that there is a shortfall in the support provided for doctoral students’ well-being. There is, however, evidence beyond this immediate scholarly environment that also warrants attention. Waight and Giordano (2018) report that “work-life balance was the strongest indicator of psychological distress…. among others such as workload, feelings of inadequacy, isolation, and negotiating both personal and professional relationships” (p. 391). Schmidt and Hansson (2018) consider that research should focus more on a multidimensional approach and not just on the immediate causal factors in order to obtain a holistic perspective. This idea of approaching the issue of student well-being from a multidimensional perspective also infers that we should consider positive enablers as well as stressors. In particular, Stubb et al. (2011) point to inspiration and empowerment as important conditioning factors in Ph.D. students’ well-being, and Pyhalto et al. (2020) highlight the importance of intrinsic interest in the research project itself as an important conditioning factor in doctoral completion. In addition, McAlpine et al. (2020) report on how a balanced life-work balance can work as a buffer against exhaustion. Future research could therefore explore beyond the immediacy of the doctoral community for a more wide-ranging and holistic understanding of those factors that impinge on subjective well-being, especially the impact of a student’s home context.

Changing Conceptions of the Doctoral Qualification

Higher Education (HE) has been transformed in recent decades as national governments strive for more productive populations capable of competing in a globalised economy (Neumann, 2005). One illustration of this is evident in the introduction of professional doctorates. Central government policy initiatives in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (UK) have led to the rolling out of new forms of doctoral qualification that are aligned to the needs of information-rich and advanced societies. Hager et al. (2019) claim that the professional doctorate enables the application of scholarship to professional practice and, in doing so, generates useful knowledge. This emphasis on phronesis (practical wisdom), rather than a narrow focus on episteme (knowledge) through the recognition of techne (skills), is important and central to the idea of the development of professional practice. Such a development infers some change in the way HE views the purpose of doctoral study and the values that underpin the qualification, but to what extent is the professional doctorate student experience different from the traditional Ph.D.?

In contrast to the thesis-only Ph.D., professional doctorates often include a more structured pathway for students, with a defined induction and research training in the first year, as well as summative assessment. For example, at the institution where this research was undertaken, within five months of starting the programme DBA students are required to submit a 4,500-word research proposal, which is formally assessed at doctoral standard. In contrast, Ph.D. annual progression is generally viewed as developmental, and students are not ordinarily expected to have met doctoral standards within the first year of their research. This difference in modes of assessment engenders particular and often intense pressures at differing points for different categories of doctoral students. The potentially deleterious impact of critical points in the doctoral journey is identified in the research literature. In the UK, the UKCGE (2019) points to a number of “pinch points” during the doctoral journey in terms of early, mid, and final stages, with particular personal, supervisory, and project-related challenges. The value in such research is that it points to particular phases that may generate stress for students and encourages universities to target support in order to address this stress.

One important feature of professional doctorates is the number of academics who study at their place of work (Hager et al., 2019; Mills et al., 2014). This trend is particularly evident in post-1992 English universities where those established staff who do not hold a doctorate are required to study for a DBA or an Ed.D. (Goodall et al., 2017; Mills et al., 2014; Stoten, 2019). In addition to its emphasis on the development of professional knowledge, purpose, and intended outcomes, the professional doctorate often attracts a different student demographic (Simpson & Sommer, 2016). Often those who decide to undertake research for a Ph.D. do so following their honours or master’s degrees and have relatively little work experience. According to HESA (2019), the majority of doctoral students are below the age of 30 years, i.e., 51,000 from a total of 92,000 students in 2017–2018, with 48,000 identified as male and 45,000 as female (HESA, 2019). This particular demographic contrasts with those who are attracted to a professional doctorate such as the DBA. Since a professional doctorate is intended to meet the occupational needs of mid-career practitioners (Lee, 2009; Simpson & Sommer, 2016), the age profile of DBA cohorts tends to be somewhat older, and the students are often at a different stage in their personal and professional lives. All participants involved in this study were over 30 years of age and averaged in the late forties as a cohort (see Table 1).

Table 1. A summary of those participants interviewed.

Gender	Full-time academic staff and studying for a DBA	Full-time employed outside of the university and studying for a DBA
Male		Pierre-
		In his mid-forties. An international student, with extensive professional experience as a manager.
		Juan-
		In his late fifties. An international student, with extensive commercial experience, now working as a lecturer in a Dutch university.
Female	Jenny-	Alice-
	In early her forties. An experienced lecturer with work experience in building surveying.	In her mid-forties. An international student, with experience of teaching in Mexican Higher Education, now working as a lecturer in a Dutch university.
	Caroline-	Maria-
	In her early forties. An experienced accountant who had recently entered teaching in Higher Education.	In her mid-forties. An international student working full-time at a Dutch university.
	Laura-
	In her late fifties. Formerly a manager in a large retail chain.

In addition to the demands of the doctorate itself, role conflict is reported in the literature on students’ experiences. Students enter a doctoral programme having established a number of personae through identity construction, as well as the roles that they perform through social interaction (Goodall et al., 2017; Rayner et al., 2015). In particular, DBA students combine study with full-time employment, often in demanding leadership and managerial positions, and with familial responsibilities. Students undertaking a professional doctorate are often confronted with the challenges associated with work and family obligations (Goodall et al., 2017). For Gable and Haidt (2005), this social context to well-being highlights the importance of maintaining a sustainable balance between self-image and the range of roles that are practised during interaction with others. Headey and Wearing (1989) suggest that equilibrium theory can usefully inform the discussion of emotional balance and well-being. Equilibrium theory postulates that individuals aim to maintain a state of equilibrium as part of their maintenance of self-image but that this balance may be destabilised through personal challenges and crises (Cummins, 2010). When placed alongside the research into “pinch points,” this idea of equilibrium offers a useful conceptualisation of the problems and responses adopted by doctoral students as they progress through their doctoral programmes. Schmidt and Umans (2014) highlight the challenges presented in relation to doctoral students with care work. Haynes et al. (2012) describe how the demands of being a caregiver and homemaker placed on female doctoral students impact significantly on their general well-being. Schmidt and Umans (2014) report that female students are not only confronted by more diverse challenges but also lack sufficient support from their institutions to meet their needs. Importantly, Thorley (2017, p. 14) reported that “in England young women are now almost three times more likely than young men to experience a common mental health condition” [and] “in Scotland, young women are also more likely than young men to experience mental illness.”

Clearly, given the volume of research from across the globe, an understanding of individuals’ doctoral experience should be contextualised within their wider social context, life history, and aspirations. Pychyl and Little (1998) explain:

The personal project [a doctorate] is personalized in content and is embedded in the context of the individual’s life. At the same time, a project is representative of higher-order meanings which reflect both broad cultural features and specific aspects of the individual’s social ecology. (p. 424)

In short, we should recognise that the process of studying for a doctorate influences an individual’s self-efficacy and self-worth. Importantly, although studying for a doctorate is an inherently personal endeavour, Pychyl and Little (1998) suggest that ultimately we should view well-being in terms of a trade-off between an individual's aspirational goals and what is practical given their life context. Little and Ryan (1979) offer a conceptualisation of this social reality through their social ecological model of personality that integrates biological, environmental, and social-cultural contexts within a person’s life. In developing the idea of a social-ecological model in understanding the doctoral experience, Hager et al. (2019) suggest that psychosocial support is essential for success as a doctoral student. Given this perspective, research should aim to elicit rich insights into the nature of psychosocial support and its relevance for those enrolled on a professional doctorate.

The importance of targeted support for students enrolled onto a professional doctorate is identified in the literature (Hager et al., 2019; Lech et al., 2018). However, Barry et al. (2018) suggest that despite its perceived benefits, there is insufficient support for mental health. Williams et al. (2015, p. 2) report on how the provision of support in English universities has increased in response to demand but conclude that this was a “work in progress rather than a finished article.” The literature suggests that HE has generally prioritised undergraduate welfare rather than that of doctoral students, in response to the massification of the sector and to the National Student Survey as a driver of institutional policy (Waight & Giordano, 2018). There are numerous reasons that may explain why students enrolled on a professional doctorate may not be able to access support, not least the logistical problem of distance, with many only able to pay fleeting visits to the university during intense study blocs or periodic supervision meetings. Indeed, as Heagney and Benson (2017) suggest, mature and doctoral students are especially disadvantaged in terms of access to support, often because they are simply not aware of what is available.

Those issues identified above have been highlighted in the immediate research undertaken during the Covid-19 emergency. In particular, research reports on how the shift to home working and the loss of some facilities on campus has impacted not only the nature of doctoral research but also students’ well-being. Neves and Hewitt (2021) reported that 51% of students felt that there was insufficient interaction with staff and 49% believed that they had not received enough support during the pandemic. The issue of spatial dislocation from a normal study environment is reported by Brinkert et al. (2020) and Lambrechts and Smith (2020). In particular, the lack of access to suitable workspace and library facilities is identified as a significant causal factor in rising levels of stress. Cox and Brewster (2020) also draw attention to the importance of libraries in providing support for doctoral students and how the closure of libraries has impacted mental health. In their study of UK-resident doctoral students, Brinkert et al. (2020) report that 82.7% of doctoral students thought that their mental health had been affected by the dislocation caused by the Covid-19 emergency and the problems caused in data collection and supervision. Importantly, as institutions increasingly shift their teaching to online provision, Mullen (2021) has called for a more wide-ranging and integrated approach to support and the recognition that shifting study online is inadequate in meeting the diverse needs of doctoral students.

Research Methodology

This research exercise involved the use of semi-structured interviewing, which was aligned to the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2012; Smith et al., 2009). This approach has been adopted by a range of researchers because it is anticipated to produce a richer understanding of the phenomenon under study and has been used extensively in research into mental health (Pankow et al., 2021; Stoll & McLeod, 2020). In an educational context, IPA has also been used to explore students’ mental health and well-being concerns in a range of contexts across the globe (Daga et al., 2020; Wagner & Bunn, 2020). IPA draws from a number of philosophical traditions, most notably that of Husserl’s (1970) phenomenology and Heidegger’s (1962) hermeneutics. Furthermore, as Miller and Minton (2016) describe, IPA methodology adopts an idiographic approach. In this respect, unlike nomothetic research, IPA engages in a double hermeneutic cycle within which participants explore and make sense of their experiences, and then the role of the researcher is to engage with the participants and interpret that understanding (Kettell, 2020). This inter-subjective relationship has important implications for how we view the role and impact of the researcher in the research process. An important goal within IPA methodology is to elicit reflection on behalf of the research participants that provides cognitive and emotional insights into their experiences of the phenomenon. In this respect, the focus for IPA interviewing is concerned with questions related to how a phenomenon is interpreted rather than defining what the phenomenon is (Miller & Minton, 2016).

IPA interviewing is influenced both by the need to be attentive to the participants and their personal stories, and for the researchers to reflexively acknowledge that their own interpretation is involved in the analytic process. In specific terms for this study, interviews were supported through a schedule of questions, which corresponded to the questioning typology described by Smith et al. (2009). As an illustration, the schedule included the following:

Item 2 (structural): Tell me about the nature of interaction between you and other doctoral students?

Item 5 (descriptive): Have you encountered any particular challenges as a doctoral student?

Item 7 (evaluative): How has studying for a doctorate affected your wider responsibilities at home?

Item 10 (evaluative): Do you feel that your general well-being has suffered as a consequence of being a doctoral student?

This study prioritised “attentive listening” and follow-up questioning that further explored the narrative presented by the participant (Smith et al., 2009). The idea of researcher reflexivity is an essential part of the analytical process, with a recognition that in the double hermeneutic cycle those interpretations by the researcher inevitably condition analysis. In this context, Peat et al. (2019) refer to the impact of this asymmetric relationship between the researcher and participant and how this can affect the process of interaction during the interview and interpretation of its data. Consequently, the qualitative data tables not only make reference to the participants’ comments and emergent themes, but also to the author’s reflexive commentary.

As Kettell (2020) explains, a homogenous and purposive sample is necessary if we are to examine any given phenomenon and, as Smith et al. (2009) explain, to explore the possibilities for convergence and divergence within the sample. Useful research has been undertaken into doctoral students’ experiences using IPA methodology (Dickens et al., 2016; Kettell, 2020). During 2019–2020 three academic staff who were studying for a DBA were interviewed, and the intention was that those students who were not on campus and therefore were not readily available would be interviewed later in 2020. As a result of the Covid-19 emergency, however, this schedule for interviewing was delayed until 2021, when a decision was taken to interview students remotely by video-call rather than in person. Given the restrictions imposed by successive lockdowns and by the fact that many DBA students lived outside of the United Kingdom, this was the only feasible course of action. An interesting point to note is that, of the additional four DBA students who participated in the research during 2021, three were employed at a Dutch university with which the host university in England enjoyed a close partnership. The implications of this are important as it provides an insight into the experiences of two sets of academic staff from differing contexts.

The size of a research population is typically small in IPA research compared to other qualitative approaches such as thematic analysis, where there is greater emphasis placed on the transferability of findings (Peat et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2009; Smith & Osborn, 2008). Importantly, for Smith et al. (2009, p. 51) data generation should avoid collecting too much data from the sample as too much data can obscure individual experience and the depth of analysis. Pietkiewicz and Smith (2012) recommend that IPA samples should range between five to ten participants. In general, IPA research adheres to this sample range. In their IPA study of professional doctoral students, both Dickens et al. (2016) and Rayner et al. (2015) conducted interviews with ten participants, whereas Cooper et al. (2012) and Stoten (2019) interviewed six doctoral students.

The data presented in the Findings and Analysis section report on feedback from seven students enrolled on a DBA, as described in Table 1. The interviews were transcribed using computer voice recognition software and checked for accuracy. In order to enhance participant validation, a copy of the transcript was sent to each interviewee. Because this article is concerned with eliciting the views of students on well-being in differing contexts, two distinct groupings were identified for sampling within the DBA cohort. One group was composed of academic staff who were undertaking a “fast-track” DBA in a little over two years. A second group was employed outside of the university and visited the university for intensive week-long study blocs twice a year.

Findings and Analysis

The analysis of data in IPA methodology is conducted through a number of distinct stages. Smith et al. (2009) suggest that six stages of analysis should be undertaken in an iterative and inductive cycle (Smith, 2007). These stages are presented below in Table 2.

Table 2. A summary of the analytical stages involved in IPA research, after Smith et al. (2009).

Stage	Action	Description	Reflexive comment
1	Familiarisation with the data through reading and re-reading	Establishing an overview of the interview through re-reading the transcript and listening to the recording	An iterative process that is dependent on the researcher and their interpretation of data.
2	Initial note-taking and evaluating possible themes	Identifying codes from the data, such as key relationships or concepts	This stage highlights the role of the researcher in the “construction” of themes.
3	Developing emergent themes	Clustering themes into potential super-ordinate themes	A “critical friend” could participate in the analysis to address possible researcher bias.
4	Searching for connections across emergent themes	Identifying dominant super-ordinate themes in order to ensure that the story told is representative. This stage could involve abstraction/subsumption/polarisation/contextualisation.	Reflect on the nature of the message and how this may be contextualised within a broader social context.
5	Moving to the next case	Bearing in mind what has merged without precluding new data	This stage collates the data from individual accounts.
6	Looking for patterns across cases	Often using a form of tabulation to organise analysis	Cross-referencing the data with the super-ordinate themes can lead to divergence as well as convergence.

In line with the approach described in Table 2, each transcript was read through several times and relevant data highlighted. Colour-coding the transcript to highlight initial codes and subsequent themes led to greater clarity, and this proved useful later during the analytic process when comparing transcripts and searching both for convergence and divergence. The data presented in Table 3 follow the approach taken by Stoten (2019), which modified the format suggested by Smith et al. (2009) and Pietkiewicz and Smith (2012) that organised qualitative data in three columns to facilitate analysis as part of the analytic process.

Table 3. Extracts from the interview data.

Interview extract (Caroline)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I think I’ve been in a box too long and I don’t even realise I was…. It’s massive and even thought you hear people say it changes you… it’s just a piece of coursework and I know it’s a big one, but them you do exams, you do it and hand it in and it’s not like that. I do feel it’s solitary…. Doing your research is solitary… you get into a niche, which nobody knows about…. Uncertainty is what a lot of people struggle with and I think it’s just not me.	Jenny recognises the challenge of  doctoral study: How effective is  pre-enrolment guidance on the  demands of DBA study?	Isolated in the box Contrast with Master’s level Solitary; niche; uncertainty
Interview extract (Laura)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
Myself, I feel as it is quite solitary…. I could get a bit more stressed about it all. I do think of this great big project, and how you start it how do you finish it? …. There are lots of stressful moments. It’s quite exciting, challenging, scary.	How effective is the supervision process? A mixture of emotions: positive and negative	Solitary; stressful; exciting; challenging; scary
Interview extract (Jenny)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
Trying to manage working full-time and raising my family and committed to my studies is a big issue…. It impacts horrendously in terms of your time…. I want to play with my son, I want to be in the garden, I don’t want to be stuck behind a computer. I feel wracked with guilt and then I procrastinate even more as I should have done more so it has definitely impacted on me…. It made me ill to the point where I went back onto anti-depressants because it impacted on my health and well-being so much. I actually cried at my last annual progression…. I cried because I felt so vulnerable, stupid, out of my depth.	A very powerful and insightful extract that highlights  the social and emotional costs of DBA study	Workload pressures Impact on time; family context; guilt; procrastination;  anti-depressants; crying; vulnerable; stupid
Interview extract (Juan)	Reflective comments
I have responsibilities at my work, like everybody, I am a senior lecturer, I have lots of classes and responsibilities, and students so it is a huge responsibility. At home… it is only my wife and me. That’s not such an issue but I mean that it is difficult to combine these three things. You know what I mean? I try to respect being at home with my wife and myself. I try to respect the time at the weekends for us and have some time, otherwise we have no life anymore… the doctorate is occupying the very last part my brain, my head. I cannot take too much.	An insight into the pressures of combing doctoral study with university teaching and a home-life
Interview extract (Alice)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I am actually under pressure now, because the deadlines….it requires concentration and some specific slot in your time. And, I having this full time work and having being a mom and wife. It becomes like making space in your life to have this concentration is difficult and by doing everything at home. In particular, in my case, my husband is ill, so he needs a lot of assistance and become worse when the Corona crisis broke…. I feel very much under pressure, but this is not because the path [of the DBA] it is because the circumstances.	This extract highlights the very real challenges at home  for Alice and how she is balancing care issues at  home with work and DBA study.	Pressure; deadlines Time-management; mother and wife; competing  demands; impact of Covid-19
Interview extract (Maria)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I am a perfectionist which is a weakness and I get very stressed due to not when I was not really understanding research philosophy or when I was struggling with methodology, so I did worry because then I think Oh my God, I'm not going to do it properly and then that affected my back. So I have to go to the physiotherapist because all the tension gets concentrated here, that's my weak point and then my sleep.	Recognition of personal traits and how these affect  study. A range of physical symptoms of the pressure  involved of combining multiple roles.	Stressed; struggling; worry; back problems;  tension; sleep
Interview extract (Pierre)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
It’s very… commitment to it…. So, yeah, I organise myself so I could work evenings and weekends… so that’s fine.	Insight into resilience	Commitment; self-organised; time-management  (evenings and weekends)
Interview extract (Juan)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I don’t want to talk too much about the Covid… But I mean, for instance, I hear myself very often saying that I manage these dreadful times because of the DBA…that’s when you live through this misery. In my particular case, it helps me out to have the routine.	The DBA as a diversionary experience?	Covid-19; manage; misery; routine
Interview extract (Alice)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I needed to bring a cousin from Mexico to stay her [daughter] when I had to go the residential weeks… I try to work hours every day for balance and also not to reveal my stress to her…. I don’t want her to suffer…. I want to set an example to my daughter.	A powerful insight into the pressures placed on family life	Residential weeks; everyday routine; balance; suffer; example to daughter
Interview extract (Maria)	Reflective comments	Emergent themes
I have to really re-plan my life, my routine, also to keep balance with family responsibilities. So, what I usually do is weekends, or every day. I wake up very, very early so I can study for a few hours and then the rest of the day for my family. With other DBA students… we created a website group and we're also in contact. But then, less contact let's say with my colleagues from [work] we talk almost every day and then with the other ones, it would be let’s say two or three times a month. I did worry…. It is better because I am sporting and I started yoga, so my stress level can be channelled with sports.	An insight into a personal coping strategy through medical support and sport	Routine; family responsibilities; time management; worry; tension; sleep Differing levels of social contact and support Exercise as a coping strategy

The initial reading of the transcripts generated 194 initial codes; these initial codes were coalesced into 14 emergent themes and then further consolidated into nine super-ordinate themes. These nine super-ordinate themes, with their attendant number of emergent themes, were as follows: professional context and opportunity (24); challenges, including Covid-19 and a cyber-attack (11); university regulations (46); university-based study support, including supervision (15); social learning (15); coping strategies (17); family life (19); positive affective (21); and negative affective and attendant health issues (26). A possible explanation for the relatively low level of initial codes that directly relate to the Covid pandemic is attributable to the timing of the research, when only the Dutch students were affected by the disruption. Smith et al. (2009) recommend the use of tabulation to organise the data across super-ordinate themes and to evaluate the degree of convergence (see Table 4). For Pietkiewicz and Smith (2012), a table of themes provides a measure of quality in demonstrating the rigour involved in the analytic process. In this way, the use of analytic tabulation provides an overview of the key phenomenon to report.

Table 4. Organising the recurrent themes across the interview data, after Smith et al. (2009).

Super-ordinate theme	Caroline	Laura	Pierre	Jenny	Juan	Alice	Maria
Professional context	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Challenges	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
University regulations	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Study support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Social learning	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coping strategies	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Family life	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Positive affective	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Negative affective/health issues	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes

Discussion

The impact of the Covid-19 emergency not only adds to the complexity of the discourse on students’ well-being but also enriches our understanding of how students cope with the challenge of doctoral study in extremis. The findings from this research replicate others' work on the disruptive impact of Covid-19 on students’ progress, most notably in relation to access to the campus, research, and immediacy of supervision (Brinkert et al. 2020; Lambrechts & Smith, 2020; Neves & Hewitt, 2021; Pitkin, 2020). This challenge was further complicated by a cyber-attack on the English university in August 2020 that disrupted much of the support mechanisms for almost a year. For those students resident in Europe, it was impossible to travel to the campus in England. Given that the DBA is delivered as a part-time and blended study programme, the cyber-attack intensified the initial challenges caused by the Covid pandemic, and it was often difficult to separate the two issues from a student’s perspective. The problems reported by students infer that simply relying on online provision is inadequate and may engender additional challenges, especially when the supporting technological infrastructure is unreliable. This article recommends that universities re-evaluate their contingency plans and the ways in which they have supported students during 2020–2021, particularly in terms of the effectiveness of online resources.

One major finding of the research is the resilience shown despite the challenging context. Moreover, and especially for those employed at the Dutch university, there was a sense of personal fulfilment and achievement in undertaking a doctorate. In this way, we should think in terms of the doctorate beyond its professional connotations and place it within a wider remit of personal self-esteem and identity. In a departure from much of the literature on well-being, several students referred to their DBA as a welcome, if demanding, diversion from the stress induced through the Covid-19 emergency. In short, although the findings do echo previous research on the negative impact of doctoral study on family life, workload, and health, there are also positives that highlight the resilience of students and the sense of fulfilment presented by the challenge of doctoral study.

This research reports on the importance of a multi-dimensional perspective of student well-being rather than searching for isolated stressors (Schmidt & Hansson, 2018) as well as the need for a work-life balance (Waight & Giordano, 2018). Smith (2011) introduced the idea of the “gem” to describe data that provide deep insight into participants’ interpretations of their lived experience. Although the tabulation of occurrence of a super-ordinate theme is a useful pointer to the importance placed on it by participants, the idea of a gem is evident in the powerful messages conveyed, such as “I’ve been in a box too long and I don’t even realise I was,” “It made me ill to the point where I went back onto anti-depressants because it impacted on my health and well-being,” and “The doctorate is occupying the very last part my brain, my head. I cannot take too much.” These gems were also found in resilience, such as “I try to work hours every day for balance and also not to reveal my stress to her…. I don’t want her to suffer…. I want to set an example to my daughter,” and surprisingly, “I manage these dreadful times because of the DBA…it helps me out to have the routine” when discussing the impact of the Covid-19 emergency. For researchers, the encounter with the gem provides a profound insight into others’ experience.

This research into the experiences of DBA students adds to the research into positive enablers, such as inspiration, motivation, and home life, reported in the Ph.D. doctoral journey by Stubb et al. (2011), Pyhalto et al. (2020), and McAlpine et al. (2020). In order to conceptualise the complexity of lived experience for those who study part-time for a professional doctorate, the Individual, Institutional, Challenge, and Coping strategies (IICC) model is presented in Table 5. This model aims to conceptualise those factors identified in this article that impinge on student well-being within a framework aligned to both individual and institutional contexts. In differentiating between the individual and institutional contexts, the model points to areas where universities can develop policy to address student needs or to refine practice, particularly in relation to identifiable pinch points during the doctoral journey. The findings highlight the need for institutions to be more agile in their response to unforeseen events, such as the Covid-19 emergency. The model also aims to provide a holistic approach to an understanding of students’ experience through the representation of both challenges and coping strategies.

Table 5. The IICC model.

	Challenges	Coping strategies
Individual	Challenge of DBA study; fear of failure	Development of self-concept of new horizons and career progression
	Work and financial context	Learning with others; sense of personal fulfilment
	Family and health concerns	University financial support and sabbaticals
	Sport and medical help	Time management, wider social networks, and professional medical support
	Remote learning
Institutional	Supervisory support, the cyber-attack, and dislocation caused by the Covid-19 emergency	Online community networking and regular podcasts by academics
	Regulations, deadlines, annual progression, and form-filling	Seeking help from dedicated administrative support and supervisors. Sharing experiences and mutual support within small groups.
		Induction programme

In proffering the IICC model, this article contributes to the discourse on those who undertake a professional doctorate. It also raises important questions for future research and institutional policy about how we support students who study for professional doctorates. Is our understanding of professional doctorates as sophisticated as our understanding of the traditional Ph.D. journey? Given the variance in programme structure, institutional processes, professional contexts, and demography, how appropriate is it to subsume research into those who study part-time for professional doctorates within a broader discourse of student well-being when this is often dominated by the experience of full-time Ph.D. students? The IICC model provides a framework within which to explore this imperative.

Limitations

This article is not without its limitations. In particular, not only did the Covid-19 emergency disrupt the scheduling of interviews with the Dutch students, it also affected the immediate context for the interviewees. In addition to the impact of Covid-19 on the health and well-being of the participants and their families, it also affected how those who were not full-time staff at the university interacted with the university and how they were able to access resources and support. In this way, the interview data reflected the immediacy of participants and their context. This prioritisation of lived experience through ideographic insight limits the transferability of the findings in this research.

Conclusion

This article set out to address an overarching research question: How do students describe the impact of study for a professional doctorate on their subjective well-being? In doing so, the research adopted a methodology that is extensively used in mental health and well-being studies, i.e., IPA, and focussed on the individual narratives of studying for a part-time DBA. The literature on student well-being is extensive and growing, but it has tended to focus more on Ph.D. students who are embarking on their academic careers. This article looks to make an original contribution through its focus on part-time DBA students who combine home and work commitments with doctoral study and its reports on enablers of study as well as stressors. The findings not only point to the challenges that confront these students but also their resilience and sense of purpose that extends beyond the professional to a personal context.

In order to conceptualise these findings in a framework for further research, this article offers the IICC model. This model provides clear boundaries for useful research on DBA student well-being but could also be applied to other professional contexts, such as the Ed.D. There is much useful future research to be undertaken into the lived experience of studying for a professional doctorate and how this differs from the traditional Ph.D. model, especially in relation to identifiable pinch points. The IICC model therefore provides a foundation for future research into the experiences of students reading for a professional doctorate. As an outcome of this research, universities should look to refine their support mechanisms through a more nuanced understanding of studying for a professional doctorate on a part-time and remote basis. This article was informed by two unexpected events, i.e., the Covid pandemic and a cyber-attack on the host university, both of which highlight the vulnerable and potentially isolated position of part-time professionals who study for a doctorate. This article has added to the list of stressors that impact subjective well-being and that have been identified in the literature prior to the pandemic. In doing so, this research suggests that we need to think about the psychosocial and wider social contexts of doctoral students’ well-being. Given unforeseen events, such as the Covid emergency and a cyber-attack, this article has also highlighted the frailty of learning and support systems within Higher Education for part-time students enrolled on professional doctorates. Ultimately, universities should explore how they can revisit their policies, procedures, and allocation of resources in order to meet the needs and expectations of those who undertake a part-time professional doctorate.

Disclosure Statement

This research complies with ethical policy at the host institution, and there is no conflict of interest to report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David William Stoten

David William Stoten, EdD, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Newcastle Business School at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK. Dr. Stoten writes on leadership, organisational theory, and learning and teaching within the Business School.