Diagnostic Measurement of Academic Supervision Styles: Development of New Research Scale

Research activities of postgraduate and undergraduate students are an important component of the educational process and training of qualified specialists who are able to think and independently create new knowledge; therefore, their choice of research career and, consequently, the scientific, technical and humanitarian progress of our country depend on their productive involvement in it. The article presents the results of developing the Questionnaire on Academic Supervision Styles (QA2S) based on the Self-Determination Theory and previous methodological developments and assessing autonomy support, controlling, structuring, and chaotic supervision styles. The study involved 264 Russian undergraduate and postgraduate students ( M = 26 years, SD = 6.3) who assessed the styles of their academic supervisors. The four-factor structure of the questionnaire corresponded to the theoretical concepts of support or frustration of basic psychological needs. All the scales of the questionnaire describing the four academic supervision styles demonstrated acceptable reliability. The construct validity of the questionnaire was testified by the expected relationships of the styles with the quality of motivation, basic psychological needs and learning satisfaction, publication activity, and frequency of contact with the supervisor. Comparison of current and desired supervision styles revealed the expected differences in all the styles except for the controlling one, for which no significant differences were found. The questionnaire is compact, reliable and valid: it can be recommended for diagnosing the identified supervision styles for research and practical purposes, to assess the prediction of intrinsic motivation for research activities and success of undergraduate and postgraduate students.