How does social support contribute to engaging post-PhD experience?

ABSTRACT

Social support from the supervisor and the researcher community has been identified as one of the determinants for successful completion of doctoral studies. Still surprisingly little is known about the function of social support for early career Post-PhD researchers. Even less is known about the individual variation in experienced social support among Post-PhD researchers. This study explores the function of social support in terms of experienced research engagement, burnout and abandonment intentions among Post-PhD researchers. Altogether, 282 Post-PhD researchers from UK and Spanish universities completed the survey. The cluster analysis was applied. Results show that the majority of participants experienced high levels of supervisory and researcher community support. Researchers representing an Adequate Support profile were less likely to experience burnout or to consider abandonment; they also experienced a higher degree of research engagement than their less fortunate counterparts. Further, Post-PhD researchers working in research groups were more likely to display the Adequate Support profile than those working primarily on their own. Strikingly, scientists were more likely than social scientists to be represented in the Reduced Support profile. Interestingly, there were no statistically significant differences between the UK and Spanish Post-PhD or female and male researchers in support profiles.

KEYWORDS:

• Social support
• supervision
• researcher community
• post-doctoral students
• burnout
• engagement
• abandonment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Kirsi Pyhältö is professor of educational sciences, at the University of Oulu, Finland. She also works as a research director in the Center for University Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Educational Sciences, at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include early career researchers and researcher education particularly doctoral and post- doctoral students’ engagement and learning, well-being, supervision, and researcher communities see more homepage https://researchondoctoraleducation.wordpress.com.

Dr. Lynn McAlpine is Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford and McGill University. Her research examines how doctoral students and PhD graduates prepare for and navigate their careers both in and outside the academy. She regularly draws on this research into the experiences of PhD students, post-PhD researchers, professionals and research-teaching academics to help inform both institutional policy and individual practice.

Dr. Jouni Peltonen is a university lecturer in the Faculty of Education, at the University of Oulu. His research interests are in the doctoral education, theory and philosophy of education, and both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Dr. Montserrat Castello is Full Professor in Educational Psychology at Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain. She is also a Director of the Research Institute on Applied Psychology at Universitat Ramon Llull. Her research interests focus on Academic Writing Strategies and identity of Early Career Researchers and she is especially interested in collaborative revision of academic activity and writing regulation in situated learning communities.

ORCID

Kirsi Pyhältö http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8766-0559

Montserrat Castello http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1757-9795

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Societal Challenges R+D+i programme. under [grant number FINS-RIDSS -CSO2013-41108].