Riding the emotional rollercoaster? Emotions in online doctoral studies

ABSTRACT

This multi-year mixed-method research explores the first-year online doctoral students’ emotional experiences. Forty-eight students who embarked on a fully online doctoral programme between 2018 and 2022 completed a questionnaire four times across the first six months – the most critical period for students to decide whether to continue their studies. The questionnaire quantitatively measured the intensity of 36 different emotions felt by each student in two contexts, respectively related to ‘doctoral studies’ and ‘life in general’. Participants also qualitatively recorded their responses to the most intense emotions, detailing reasons for such experiences. Based on quantitative data, a principal component analysis extracted five meaningful clusters: Positive emotions, Negative cognitive emotions, Negative gut reactions, Isolation, and Intrigued. Repeated-measures ANOVAs with each cluster as dependent variable showed meaningful patterns and changes depending on context and across the four time points. The qualitative data was analysed using a constant comparative method, providing deeper insights into online doctoral students’ emotional experiences. The results highlight that, although students undergo many negative emotions, those emotions do not always lead to negative experiences. Engaging with new academic challenges and other doctoral students with similar aspirations makes them feel much more positive and less isolated in their studies than in their general lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• online doctoral education
• doctoral students
• online learning
• isolation

Acknowledgement

We express our sincere gratitude to the editor and reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments, which have greatly enhanced the quality of this article. We also extend our thanks to all the participants who generously contributed their time to take part in our survey multiple times. The earlier version of this article was presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Networked Learning (NLC2024) in Malta, held from 15 to 17 May 2024.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 See Zembylas (2008) for the first qualitative investigation of emotions in an online Master’s programme.

2 We did not determine any a-priori sample size for our study. We collected as many data as we could during the 5 years in which the first author led the module. Post-hoc power analyses showed our sample size to be appropriate for the analyses planned—4 × 2 repeated-measures ANOVAs. Using G*Power 3 (Faul et al. 2007 ) and the most frequent effect size obtained (pη²= .06; medium effect size), alpha = 0.05, power = 0.80 (generally accepted minimum power in the social sciences, see Läkens 2013), the most conservative sample size calculated was N = 34, below our sample size of N = 48. The same number was obtained when considering the additional exploratory mixed 4x2x2 ANOVAs. Also, post-hoc calculation of achieved power using alpha = 0.05, sample size N = 48 and effect size pη²= .06 led to the most conservative power being 0.92, well-above the accepted minimum power.