Factors influencing Chinese female master’s students’ intention to pursue doctoral studies and the associated gender differences: a sequential exploratory mixed-methods study

To investigate the factors influencing Chinese female master’s students’ intention to pursue doctoral studies and the associated gender differences, this study employed a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design. It involved semi-structured interviews with 28 female master’s students, followed by a questionnaire survey administered to 1010 master’s students (596 female, 414 male). The results indicate that female master’s students’ intention to pursue doctoral studies is shaped by a combination of internal and external contextual factors. Among these, academic disposition and attitude toward doctoral studies are the core internal factors, while research experience, subjective norms, and the social environment are the primary external factors. Analysis of the underlying mechanisms reveals that all external contextual factors exert significant positive effects on female students’ intention to pursue doctoral studies through research self-efficacy and academic disposition (or attitude toward doctoral studies). However, only subjective norms positively and significantly affect the intention through perceived risk of doctoral studies and attitude toward doctoral studies. Gender difference analysis shows that the intention to pursue doctoral studies is significantly higher among male master’s students than their female counterparts. The path from “subjective norms → research self-efficacy” is stronger in the male group, while the corresponding serial mediation effect does not differ significantly between genders. This study offers a novel perspective for understanding women’s academic career choices and provides practical implications for addressing the ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon in academia.