Effective supervision of doctoral students in public and population health in Africa: CARTA supervisors’ experiences, challenges and perceived opportunities

ABSTRACT

The quality and success of postgraduate education largely rely on effective supervision. Since its inception in 2008, the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) has been at the forefront of providing training to both students and supervisors in the field of public and population health. However, there are few studies on supervisors’ perceptions on effective doctoral supervision. We used a mostly descriptive study design to report CARTA-affiliated doctoral supervisors’ reflections and perceptions on doctoral supervision, challenges and opportunities. A total of 77 out of 160 CARTA supervisors’ workshop participants responded to the evaluation. The respondents were affiliated with 10 institutions across Africa. The respondents remarked that effective supervision is a two-way process, involving both supervisor and supervisee’s commitment. Some reported that the requirements for effective supervision included the calibre of the PhD students, structure of the PhD programme, access to research infrastructure and resources, supervision training, multidisciplinary exposure and support. Male supervisors have significantly higher number of self-reported PhD graduates and published articles on Scopus but no difference from the females in h-index. We note both student and systemic challenges that training institutions may pursue to improve doctoral supervision in Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• CARTA
• doctoral training
• effective supervision
• supervisor training
• Africa

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge all the CARTA funders. We obtained ethical waiver from the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of the Witwatersrand (Ref: R14/49) to use de-identified evaluation data for this study. Consequently, we did not require the informed consent of the workshop participants. JOI, ENB, GB, and AA were involved in the conception of the research, including selection of the research questions and developing the protocol. JOI, ENB and AA undertook the initial data analysis and drafted the initial paper. Further analysis was done by JOI, ENB, AK and JA. Further drafts of the paper were revised by JOI, ENB and SF. All authors have read, reviewed and approved the final submitted version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded through the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA). CARTA is jointly led by the African Population and Health Research Center and the University of the Witwatersrand and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York [grant number B 8606.R02], Sida [grant number 54100113], the DELTAS Africa Initiative [grant number 107768/Z/15/Z] and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The DELTAS Africa Initiative is an independent funding scheme of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS)’s Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) and supported by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency) with funding from the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the UK government. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the Fellow.