How Satisfaction with Advisor Relationship Interacts and Evolves in Engineering Doctoral Students Questioning Whether to Leave the PhD

This research full paper presents a longitudinal multiple-methods project focused on the phenomenon of graduate attrition from the engineering PhD. There are relatively few investigations of graduate student attrition, and even fewer collect longitudinal and nationwide data representing dominant graduate student experiences. To this end, over the past several years, we have collected interview and longitudinal survey data from several large nationwide data collection efforts capturing data current students who are questioning leaving their PhD, many of whom decided to leave either with no degree or leaving with a Master's degree instead of a PhD. From these data, this paper investigates one critical aspect of attrition and persistence in doctoral education: the “advisor relationship.” To this end, this paper answers the overarching research question: How do “questioning” doctoral engineering students' perceptions of their research advisors interact with other factors to promote attrition and persistence, and how do perceptions of relationships change over time? The data analyzed in this study includes nationwide interview data with <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{N}=41$</tex> participants, and a longitudinal study of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathrm{N}=113$</tex> doctoral engineering students who are considering whether to persist or depart. Data are analyzed using methods relatively new to engineering education research: Qualitative analysis was conducted using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), a method that quantifies qualitative data to understand the“ causal configurations” of factors that lead to an outcome: In this case, questioning departure. We also employ a novel longitudinal SMS survey study, showing data collected over several years. Implications offer new perspectives to advisors, graduate chairs, and academic administrators who interface with graduate student issues, to work toward a more supportive environment in which graduate students can thrive. We show that advisor relationship is of significant importance, and that it is important to continue to attend to advisor relationship especially for late-stage graduate students.