The Well-Being of International Doctoral Students—What Does it Look Like, What Affects it, and How Can We Support it?

There are multiple reviews on the well-being of international students and doctoral students, but to our knowledge, none on the well-being of international doctoral students. We undertook a scoping review to understand the state of well-being of international doctoral students, the factors that affect it, and the strategies that support it. We searched PsycInfo, EBSCO, Scopus, and ERIC for full-text, peer-reviewed articles published in English from 2003–2023. Fourteen studies were included in our scoping review. These studies suggest that international doctoral students report relatively low well-being in terms of negative emotions, attitudes toward the self, and social relationships. Their well-being is affected by an intersection of predisposing, contextual, and psychological factors. Strategies to support well-being focused on actions that individual students can enact to support their own well-being. We suggest several strategies to support the well-being of international doctoral students, focusing on those that involve actions taken by institutions.