‘Is it me or … ?’. A multimethod study to explore the impact of personal and contextual factors on PhD students’ well-being

ABSTRACT

As PhD students’ well-being gathers relevance, exploring what factors influence it and how is crucial. Therefore, this study quantitatively examined the joint effect of personal and contextual variables on PhD students’ well-being and qualitatively assessed their perceptions about the main issues they faced during their doctoral course. Through a multimethod study, we collected quantitative data from 216 Italian PhD students, 123 of whom responded to an open-ended question. We tested a moderating mediation model to understand whether (1) there was an indirect relationship between self-efficacy and exhaustion, mediated by the perceptions of impostor syndrome; (2) supervisor instrumental support moderated the self-efficacy – impostor syndrome relationship and the indirect relationship abovementioned. Quantitative findings showed that self-efficacy was negatively associated with exhaustion via perceptions of impostor syndrome. Concerning the moderation effect, when self-efficacy was high, the higher the supervisor support, the lower the perceptions of impostor syndrome. When self-efficacy was low, the higher the supervisor support, the higher the perceptions of impostor syndrome. Qualitative findings reported various personal and contextual aspects PhD students perceived as problematic, which may jeopardise their well-being. These results may inform policymakers and academic staff interventions for promoting PhD students’ well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• PhD students
• exhaustion
• self-efficacy
• impostor syndrome
• supervisor support

Authors’ contribution

Gerardo Petruzziello and Annalisa Soncini: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing –original draft, Visualisation, Supervision, Project Administration. Ferdinando Toscano, Giuliano Tomei, and Davide Giusino: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Visualisation. Gabriele Puzzo, Sara De Sio: Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Visualisation.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the corresponding author under reasonable request.

Ethics

The Study adhered to the Helsinki Declaration. The participants provided their informed consent to participate in this Study.

Disclosure statement

This article has been published under the Journal’s transparent peer review policy. Anonymised peer review reports of the submitted manuscript can be accessed under supplemental material online at (https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2024.2352445).

Notes

1 The terms ‘Emotional Exhaustion’ and ‘Exhaustion’ have been used interchangeably to conceptualise one of the three dimensions of Burnout, both in early and more recent scholarly work (Bakker and Demerouti 2017; Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter 2001). From now on, we use the term exhaustion as it encompasses the energetic component of burnout at a general level.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerardo Petruzziello

Gerardo Petruzziello is a Work and Organisational Psychologist, holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bologna (Italy), and is an assistant professor at the same University. His research focuses mainly on the psycho-social factors influencing early-career researchers’ well-being, graduate employability and career resources, sustainable transition to work and sustainable careers, and the promotion of psychological well-being and safety in the workplace.

Annalisa Soncini

Annalisa Soncini is a post-doc fellow at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). She obtained her double-title PhD at the University of Bologna (Italy) in Psychology and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in Social Psychology. Her research interests mainly focus on the job-related well-being of teachers and PhD students, as well as teachers’ beliefs and practices related to the error-handling strategies implemented in the classroom. More recently, she has been working on school-family partnership and teacher-parent relationship.

Ferdinando Toscano

Ferdinando Toscano, Ph.D., serves as a Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in Work and Organisational Psychology at the Department of Psychology ‘Renzo Canestrari,’ University of Bologna, Italy. He obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology from the same university in 2023. His research interests predominantly revolve around exploring the psychological factors associated with remote work, promoting workplace well-being, examining leadership dynamics, and fostering organisational innovation.

Gabriele Puzzo

Gabriele Puzzo is an industrial psychologist and PhD student in Psychology at the University of Bologna. His research focuses on investigating and implementing innovative techniques to foster pro-environmental behaviours in organisational and community contexts. His interests also include human factors, organisational development, and wellbeing.

Sara de Sio

Sara de Sio is a PhD student at the University of Bologna. Her research interests refer to environmental sustainability, and in particular in the understanding and the promotion of consumers’ green purchasing behaviour, focusing especially on psychological variables able to influence sustainable dietary choices.

Davide Giusino

Davide Giusino holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bologna. His research focuses on applied psychology, psychological and psychosocial interventions, mental health and well-being. He is currently a research fellow at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Salento.

Giuliano Tomei

Giuliano Tomei is a Clinical Psychologist and Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Padua. Along with his clinical activity, he pursues various research interests, including meta-research, the application of network models for clinical purposes, mental health well-being in academia, and the adverse effects of psychotherapies.