Developmental trajectories during doctoral study: identifying heterogeneity in psychosocial factor’s development

ABSTRACT

Despite their importance to the research enterprise, doctoral students are an underexamined population in higher education. Several studies have emphasized the importance of psychosocial characteristics in academic success and scholarly identity formation. However, few studies have explored their developmental trajectories across a range of disciplines to give an overall perspective of the scholarly identity formation process and its nuances. We argue that doctoral education is a socialization process that, if successful, helps doctoral students to develop a disciplinary identity. We propose that this identity development process is mediated by how students internalize their socialization experiences. Therefore, we integrate concepts from self-determination and identity development theory into socialization theory. Using a three-year longitudinal sample at a single institution (n = 1264), we identify doctoral students’ developmental trajectories in perceptions of competence, autonomy, relatedness, knowledge, and recognition. We identify six different developmental groups according to baseline levels and developmental trajectories during the first two years of doctoral studies. Further, we find that sex, family income background, and anticipatory socialization experiences are associated with membership in these groups. Lastly, we observe that these trajectories are associated with socialization outcomes. Findings highlight a non-monolithic socialization process that calls for a systematic approach to measure these psychosocial characteristics over time. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• developmental trajectories
• doctoral student socialization
• self-determination theory
• group-based trajectories

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Rackham Graduate School for its generous funding and support of the Michigan Doctoral Experience Study. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors.

Disclosure statement

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

Statements and Declarations

Availability of data and material

Data used in this study has restricted use and cannot be released to other researchers per IRB requirements.

Code availability

We use STATA software to do the analysis. Codes are available upon request.

Authors’ contributions

The conception of the study by Paula Clasing-Manquian; Study design by Paula Clasing-Manquian, Heeyun Kim, and John Gonzalez; Literature review by Paula Clasing-Manquian, Nabih Haddad, and Heeyun Kim; Data analysis was performed by Paula Clasing-Manquian and reviewed by Heeyun Kim; Discussion was drafted by Nabih Haddad, Paula Clasing-Manquian, and John Gonzalez. All authors read, commented, and approved the final manuscript.

Ethics approval

This study received approval from the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board (ID: HUM00133992).

Consent to participate

Consent to participate was obtained from each participant before they answered the survey.

Notes

1 Although we acknowledge that sex and gender are not the same, we choose to include sex instead of gender in the multinomial model as it has no missing values, and the group size is big enough for the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This study received funding from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan.