“Help, I Need Somebody, Help…”: Supporting Doctoral Candidates In Different Fields Of Research

This study examines the perceived support of doctoral candidates within the academic environment in Germany, with regard to their academic progress and the probability of dropout intentions from their study programs. Based on Becher (1987), we investigated doctoral candidates in five different research fields with divergent research cultures, namely physics, mechanical engineering, German studies & history, economics, psychology & educational sciences. Perceived support was assessed on four sub-dimensions: professional, emotional, network integration and career planning, as developed by Vogel, Brandt, and Jaksztat (2017). We used data from the German 2019 National Academics Panel Study (NACAPS) comprising 28,368 respondents, the largest survey of doctoral candidates in Germany (Adrian et al., 2020). To investigate the effect of perceived support on students’ doctoral status, we used multivariate quantile regressions to compare doctoral candidates at similar stages of the doctoral process. To investigate the effect on the probability of dropout intentions, we performed linear probability regressions. We found that strong support of all types was associated with an advanced doctoral status and a decreasing likelihood of intentions to drop out. However, differences between candidates from different research fields were found.