phd supervisor burnout

The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

PhD Burnout: Managing Energy, Stress, Anxiety & Your Mental Health

PhDs are renowned for being stressful and when you add a global pandemic into the mix it’s no surprise that many students are struggling with their mental health. Unfortunately this can often lead to PhD fatigue which may eventually lead to burnout.

In this post we’ll explore what academic burnout is and how it comes about, then discuss some tips I picked up for managing mental health during my own PhD.

Please note that I am by no means an expert in this area. I’ve worked in seven different labs before, during and after my PhD so I have a fair idea of research stress but even so, I don’t have all the answers.

If you’re feeling burnt out or depressed and finding the pressure too much, please reach out to friends and family or give the Samaritans a call to talk things through.

Note – This post, and its follow on about maintaining PhD motivation were inspired by a reader who asked for recommendations on dealing with PhD fatigue. I love hearing from all of you, so if you have any ideas for topics which you, or others, could find useful please do let me know either in the comments section below or by getting in contact . Or just pop me a message to say hi. 🙂

This post is part of my PhD mindset series, you can check out the full series below:

PhD Burnout: Managing Energy, Stress, Anxiety & Your Mental Health (this part!)
PhD Motivation: How to Stay Driven From Cover Letter to Completion
How to Stop Procrastinating and Start Studying

What is PhD Burnout?

Whenever I’ve gone anywhere near social media relating to PhDs I see overwhelmed PhD students who are some combination of overwhelmed, de-energised or depressed.

Specifically I often see Americans talking about the importance of talking through their PhD difficulties with a therapist, which I find a little alarming. It’s great to seek help but even better to avoid the need in the first place.

Sadly, none of this is unusual. As this survey shows, depression is common for PhD students and of note: at higher levels than for working professionals.

All of these feelings can be connected to academic burnout.

The World Health Organisation classifies burnout as a syndrome with symptoms of:

– Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; – Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; – Reduced professional efficacy. Symptoms of burnout as classified by the WHO. Source .

This often leads to students falling completely out of love with the topic they decided to spend years of their life researching!

The pandemic has added extra pressures and constraints which can make it even more difficult to have a well balanced and positive PhD experience. Therefore it is more important than ever to take care of yourself, so that not only can you continue to make progress in your project but also ensure you stay healthy.

What are the Stages of Burnout?

Psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North developed a 12 stage model of burnout. The following graphic by The Present Psychologist does a great job at conveying each of these.

I don’t know about you, but I can personally identify with several of the stages and it’s scary to see how they can potentially lead down a path to complete mental and physical burnout. I also think it’s interesting that neglecting needs (stage 3) happens so early on. If you check in with yourself regularly you can hopefully halt your burnout journey at that point.

PhDs can be tough but burnout isn’t an inevitability. Here are a few suggestions for how you can look after your mental health and avoid academic burnout.

Overcoming PhD Burnout

Manage your energy levels, maintaining energy levels day to day.

Eat well and eat regularly. Try to avoid nutritionless high sugar foods which can play havoc with your energy levels. Instead aim for low GI food . Maybe I’m just getting old but I really do recommend eating some fruit and veg. My favourite book of 2021, How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reduce Disease , is well worth a read. Not a fan of veggies? Either disguise them or at least eat some fruit such as apples and bananas. Sliced apple with some peanut butter is a delicious and nutritious low GI snack. Check out my series of posts on cooking nutritious meals on a budget.
Get enough sleep. It doesn’t take PhD-level research to realise that you need to rest properly if you want to avoid becoming exhausted! How much sleep someone needs to feel well-rested varies person to person, so I won’t prescribe that you get a specific amount, but 6-9 hours is the range typically recommended. Personally, I take getting enough sleep very seriously and try to get a minimum of 8 hours.

A side note on caffeine consumption: Do PhD students need caffeine to survive?

In a word, no!

Although a culture of caffeine consumption goes hand in hand with intense work, PhD students certainly don’t need caffeine to survive. How do I know? I didn’t have any at all during my own PhD. In fact, I wrote a whole post about it .

By all means consume as much caffeine as you want, just know that it doesn’t have to be a prerequisite for successfully completing a PhD.

Maintaining energy throughout your whole PhD

Pace yourself. As I mention later in the post I strongly recommend treating your PhD like a normal full-time job. This means only working 40 hours per week, Monday to Friday. Doing so could help realign your stress, anxiety and depression levels with comparatively less-depressed professional workers . There will of course be times when this isn’t possible and you’ll need to work longer hours to make a certain deadline. But working long hours should not be the norm. It’s good to try and balance the workload as best you can across the whole of your PhD. For instance, I often encourage people to start writing papers earlier than they think as these can later become chapters in your thesis. It’s things like this that can help you avoid excess stress in your final year.
Take time off to recharge. All work and no play makes for an exhausted PhD student! Make the most of opportunities to get involved with extracurricular activities (often at a discount!). I wrote a whole post about making the most of opportunities during your PhD . PhD students should have time for a social life, again I’ve written about that . Also give yourself permission to take time-off day to day for self care, whether that’s to go for a walk in nature, meet friends or binge-watch a show on Netflix. Even within a single working day I often find I’m far more efficient when I break up my work into chunks and allow myself to take time off in-between. This is also a good way to avoid procrastination!

Reduce Stress and Anxiety

During your PhD there will inevitably be times of stress. Your experiments may not be going as planned, deadlines may be coming up fast or you may find yourself pushed too far outside of your comfort zone. But if you manage your response well you’ll hopefully be able to avoid PhD burnout. I’ll say it again: stress does not need to lead to burnout!

Everyone is unique in terms of what works for them so I’d recommend writing down a list of what you find helpful when you feel stressed, anxious or sad and then you can refer to it when you next experience that feeling.

I’ve created a mental health reminders print-out to refer to when times get tough. It’s available now in the resources library (subscribe for free to get the password!).

Below are a few general suggestions to avoid PhD burnout which work for me and you may find helpful.

Exercise. When you’re feeling down it can be tough to motivate yourself to go and exercise but I always feel much better for it afterwards. When we exercise it helps our body to adapt at dealing with stress, so getting into a good habit can work wonders for both your mental and physical health. Why not see if your uni has any unusual sports or activities you could try? I tried scuba diving and surfing while at Imperial! But remember, exercise doesn’t need to be difficult. It could just involve going for a walk around the block at lunch or taking the stairs rather than the lift.
Cook / Bake. I appreciate that for many people cooking can be anything but relaxing, so if you don’t enjoy the pressure of cooking an actual meal perhaps give baking a go. Personally I really enjoy putting a podcast on and making food. Pinterest and Youtube can be great visual places to find new recipes.
Let your mind relax. Switching off is a skill and I’ve found meditation a great way to help clear my mind. It’s amazing how noticeably different I can feel afterwards, having not previously been aware of how many thoughts were buzzing around! Yoga can also be another good way to relax and be present in the moment. My partner and I have been working our way through 30 Days of Yoga with Adriene on Youtube and I’d recommend it as a good way to ease yourself in. As well as being great for your mind, yoga also ticks the box for exercise!
Read a book. I’ve previously written about the benefits of reading fiction * and I still believe it’s one of the best ways to relax. Reading allows you to immerse yourself in a different world and it’s a great way to entertain yourself during a commute.

* Wondering how I got something published in Science ? Read my guide here .

Talk It Through

Meet with your supervisor. Don’t suffer in silence, if you’re finding yourself struggling or burned out raise this with your supervisor and they should be able to work with you to find ways to reduce the pressure. This may involve you taking some time off, delegating some of your workload, suggesting an alternative course of action or signposting you to services your university offers.

Also remember that facing PhD-related challenges can be common. I wrote a whole post about mine in case you want to cheer yourself up! We can’t control everything we encounter, but we can control our response.

A free self-care checklist is also now available in the resources library , providing ideas to stay healthy and avoid PhD burnout.

Top Tips for Avoiding PhD Burnout

On top of everything we’ve covered in the sections above, here are a few overarching tips which I think could help you to avoid PhD burnout:

Work sensible hours . You shouldn’t feel under pressure from your supervisor or anyone else to be pulling crazy hours on a regular basis. Even if you adore your project it isn’t healthy to be forfeiting other aspects of your life such as food, sleep and friends. As a starting point I suggest treating your PhD as a 9-5 job. About a year into my PhD I shared how many hours I was working .
Reduce your use of social media. If you feel like social media could be having a negative impact on your mental health, why not try having a break from it?
Do things outside of your PhD . Bonus points if this includes spending time outdoors, getting exercise or spending time with friends. Basically, make sure the PhD isn’t the only thing occupying both your mental and physical ife.
Regularly check in on how you’re feeling. If you wait until you’re truly burnt out before seeking help, it is likely to take you a long time to recover and you may even feel that dropping out is your only option. While that can be a completely valid choice I would strongly suggest to check in with yourself on a regular basis and speak to someone early on (be that your supervisor, or a friend or family member) if you find yourself struggling.

I really hope that this post has been useful for you. Nothing is more important than your mental health and PhD burnout can really disrupt that. If you’ve got any comments or suggestions which you think other PhD scholars could find useful please feel free to share them in the comments section below.

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Privacy Overview

PhD Burnout (and How to Avoid It)

Hannah completed her PhD this year and is a Senior Content Writer here at FindAPhD. Her research focused on Early Modern English seafarers. Having finished a PhD, Hannah has a strong grasp on the student experiencve and the multiple academic and time pressures faced by PhD students

As a fourth year PhD student, I am well acquainted with burnout. No energy, self-doubt and, worst of all, feeling numb. Unfortunately, many postgraduate students will push themselves to this point. While I can’t say I’m any different, my few years around the block have taught me that it’s never necessary and can often do more harm than good.

It’s time to put your feet up. Whether you’re currently studying a PhD, applying, or in the middle of another postgraduate programme, it’s time for a break. And I’m going to teach you how.

Schedule it

Probably the most obvious piece of advice is to schedule when your break will begin. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your work. You think tweaking your research proposal won’t hurt or why not get ahead on some reading. But if you’re thinking about work you’re not taking a break.

How you schedule your break will depend on you. I personally like to set myself work deadlines. Once I’ve finished this chapter, I’m on holiday even if I finish it early. For others, the super workaholics, decide a day when you’ll close all the tabs and rest for a week or two.

Plan distracting treats

While putting down the pens sounds simple enough, switching off your brain is a whole other game. You’re going to have to rest tactically. It’s you against the enemy. Luckily, the enemy is yourself (or rather the work goblin inhabiting your brain).

Plan things you want to do. The less effort the better. Play that 60-hour video game you’ve been eyeing, read that 1,300-page fantasy novel or even splash some paint on a canvas. The treats need to be distracting but not too much effort. Put aside the chores and indulge yourself guilt free! The point is to just exist and not worry about being productive.

Taking care of your mental health as a PhD student

Life as a postgraduate student can be stressful. We've put together some tips to tackle stress and take care of yourself!

Be willing to say no

If you’ve been working like a horse then you might have become a little antisocial. That’s ok and it’s also ok to stay that way a little longer if need be. The holidays are a popular time for people to travel and meet up with friends and family that don’t live nearby. If all that sounds exhausting to you, be open to saying no.

Of course, don’t become a full hermit – that’s never healthy. Instead, manage your load wisely. Maybe people could come to you this year, or you could meet halfway. Only go to one meetup instead of two or three. Just don’t break your back travelling if you know it will tire you out. The goal is to come back from your rest refreshed, not more exhausted. While this might mean missing out on some things, there’s always next year.

Do not check your emails

My final piece of advice is to not check your emails. If you’ve successfully managed to do all the above steps, you’ll probably get the itch to do some work before your break is over. You might think that replying to an email or two won't do any harm. Well you’re wrong.

The itch is a good thing. It means you’ve managed to rest and are ready to start work again. But that doesn’t mean you should when you still have holiday left. Take your university emails off your phone and enjoy the break for as long as possible. If you start to struggle maybe it’s time for another distracting and indulgent treat. Don’t let the work goblin take back control!

I hope these tips will help you get some much deserved rest. Ultimately, you’re the one who knows what you need and when, so listen to yourself.

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Open access
Published: 22 December 2022

Doctoral researchers’ mental health and PhD training satisfaction during the German COVID-19 lockdown: results from an international research sample

Sandra Naumann ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8992-2930 1 , 2 na1 ,
Magdalena Matyjek ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4546-6480 1 , 2 na1 ,
Katharina Bögl 1 , 2 na1 &
Isabel Dziobek 1 , 2

Scientific Reports volume 12 , Article number: 22176 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Academia has been facing a mental health crisis particularly affecting early career researchers (ECRs). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented burden on the mental health of many individuals. Therefore, we cross-sectionally investigated how doctoral researchers (N = 222) evaluate their mental health status and satisfaction with their PhD training before and during the pandemic. As compared to self-reported, retrospective evaluations about the pre-pandemic state, we found decreased satisfaction with PhD training and overall well-being. The whole sample exhibited high levels of personal and work-related burnout, a fifth indicated clinically meaningful levels of depressive symptoms and almost 25% experienced severe loneliness. When exploring predictors of depression, anxiety, and burnout, we identified low satisfaction with PhD training as the most prominent predictor for poor mental health, suggesting a link between the doctoral work and their mental health status. Females vs. males and doctoral researchers in individual doctorate vs. structured PhD programs reported higher symptoms of burnout. Our study replicates previous findings of poor mental health in doctoral researchers and indicates further decreases of mental wellbeing under the influence of the pandemic. Systematic adjustments in academia are required to improve the mental health of ECRs.

Academic burnout among master and doctoral students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Association between mental health and duty hours of postgraduate residents in Japan: a nationwide cross-sectional study

Burnout increased among university students during the covid-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis, introduction.

Although many academics indicate to love research and to experience fulfilment from various tasks which belong to their profession 1 , mounting evidence suggests that working in academia might contribute to mental health problems 2 , 3 . Early career researchers (ECRs), i.e., doctoral and early postdoctoral researchers, have been found to be at risk for mental disorders with prevalence rates up to 24% for depression and 17% for anxiety 4 . These levels are up to three times higher as compared to the prevalences in the general population 5 , 6 . Consequently, it has been suggested that academia faces a “mental health crisis” 2 , sparking a discussion of its causes and possible remedies.

Among the main stressors for ECRs are the unpredictable length of the PhD training, financial instability, and high competitiveness for subsequent academic jobs 4 . Further, the prevailing ‘publish or perish’ culture pressures academics to put quantity over quality in their scientific work 7 , increasing stress and work dissatisfaction. Poorer work-life balance and higher conflict between work responsibilities are also linked to higher burnout rates in ECRs 8 . Other, not directly work-related, factors such as feelings of loneliness 5 also have been shown to negatively affect their mental health.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health worsened in the general population with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness 9 , 10 . First studies indicate that ECRs' mental health was also negatively affected 10 . Pandemic-related changes imposed additional major stressors on ECRs 11 : Empirical work, which involved interactions with participants, had to be terminated for longer periods of time causing unforeseeable delays in PhD projects 12 . Social distancing forced researchers to stay at home, isolated from their support networks of colleagues. This might have been especially challenging for first year doctoral researchers and international doctoral researchers, who were disconnected from previous social networks and had limited chances to establish new ones after their relocation. For ECRs with children and family care duties, personal responsibilities increased as kindergarten and eldercare facilities closed, which had a disproportionate impact on female scientists 13 .

Taken together, the pandemic accumulated many additional problems on ECRs 11 who were shown to be already at high risk for developing mental health problems due to the pressure and working conditions in the academic system 2 , 3 , 4 . So far, specific research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ECRs’ mental health is scarce, however, and mostly limited to anecdotal evidence 14 . Therefore, we assessed the mental health status of a defined group of ECRs, particularly doctoral researchers, under the consideration of pandemic influences. Data were collected in Berlin, a central German research hub with numerous international research institutions. Given the international science context, we assumed that our results would be informative beyond national borders.

Firstly, we sought to assess the current mental health of doctoral researchers including existing clinical diagnoses of mental disorders, acute symptoms of common mental problems (i.e., depression, anxiety, burnout, loneliness), and support structures (e.g., strength of social network, individual coping strategies). In accordance with the literature 3 , 4 , we expected to find elevated rates for depression and anxiety symptoms in our sample. Secondly, we aimed to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral researchers’ mental health and satisfaction with the PhD training. During data collection (January and February 2021), the pandemic status had been officially declared for almost a year in Germany (starting in March 2020). By then, two waves of infection had been observed and a strict lockdown had been imposed on the public for almost two months, with restrictions on public life still effective at the time of data collection. We assumed that, given the additional stressors implied on research by the pandemic, satisfaction would decrease for various PhD-related aspects when comparing ratings of pre-pandemic times with the current, in-pandemic, situation. Further, we expected that many aspects related to the PhD training would contribute more to mental health problems in the pandemic, compared to how much they did before its onset. Thirdly, in an exploratory analysis, we investigated potential predictors of doctoral researchers’ depression, anxiety, and burnout symptoms. Given the exploratory nature of this procedure, hypotheses were more tentative: We assumed that higher PhD training satisfaction and integration into a structured graduate program would be associated with lower symptom scores.

Mental health status

Standardized questionnaires concerning mental health.

Table 1 includes an overview of the results for BSI, CBI, and De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale scores. Regarding the BSI, 21% of the sample exceeded the threshold for depression and 4% for anxiety. Means of the CBI subscales for personal burnout and work-related burnout were 49 and 47, the mean score in the CBI total scale was 48 (including only the personal and work-related burnout subscales). Both subscale scores were substantially higher than the means in the validation sample 15 . Regarding loneliness, 24% of the sample indicated to be severely or very severely lonely (scores 9 or higher).

Mental disorder manifestation, mental health problems, and expectations related to the PhD training

Participants were asked whether they had been diagnosed with a mental disorder before or after the start of their PhD training. As depicted in Fig. 1 , 16% of the respondents indicated that they received a mental disorder diagnosis before they started their PhD training. From this group, 49% stated that they were diagnosed with an additional mental disorder after the start of their doctorate. A majority of 84% indicated that they were not diagnosed with a mental disorder before. From this group, 13% indicated that they got diagnosed with a mental disorder after they started their PhD training. In total, 27% of doctoral researchers reported at least one clinically diagnosed mental disorder before or after the start of their PhD training.

Diagnosis of a mental disorder. The top chart shows proportions of participants diagnosed with a mental disorder or not prior to the beginning of the PhD training (1 person preferred not to answer this question; in grey). Separately for those who answered yes and no, bottom charts show proportions of participants further diagnosed and not diagnosed with a mental disorder during their PhD training. Please note: One person preferred not to answer.

As shown in Fig. 2 , the majority of doctoral researchers stated that their current mental health problems were at least partially related to their PhD training (51%), whereas only 17% reported to have no mental health problems. 62% of the responders indicated that their PhD training is a little or much worse than they imagined before they started it (see Fig. 3 ).

Mental health problems in relation to the PhD training. Participants were asked whether they think that their current mental health problems are related to their PhD training.

Expectations of the PhD training. Participants were asked whether their PhD training is how they had imagined it, better, or worse. Answers including “slightly” and “much” for both “worse” and “better” were collapsed.

Support structures

Only 16% of respondents expressed no interest in receiving psychological support. In contrast, 40% of doctoral researchers endorsed the answer “Yes, I would like it (or I am receiving some)” and 39% “Yes, I would like it, but I don’t need it now”. The forms of support rated as of most interest were psychotherapy in person (62%), psychological counselling (52%), and psychotherapy online (40%). Further, respondents stated that the coping strategies they use the most comprise social engagements (indicated by 85%) and recreational activities (78%; multiple answers were possible). To further delineate the role of social engagements, we asked participants to rate the strength of their overall social network ( M = 73; SD = 23) and the strength of their social network in Berlin ( M = 53; SD = 31). Further information on the forms of support as well as coping strategies are provided in the supplementary material (see the HTML file on the OSF page).

Changes in PhD training satisfaction and mental health during the pandemic

As shown in Fig. 4 , 43% of the respondents indicated that they were satisfied with their PhD training before the pandemic started, whereas only 32% stated that they were satisfied with it currently, in pandemic times. Evaluating the pre-pandemic situation, 38% of the sample indicated that they were dissatisfied, which increased to 46% after the start of the pandemic. Regarding the perceived change in wellbeing before and in the pandemic (see Fig. 5 ), 76% indicated that their mental wellbeing worsened during the pandemic.

Overall satisfaction with the PhD training before and during the pandemic. Answers including “very” and “somewhat” for both “satisfied” and “dissatisfied” were collapsed.

Mental wellbeing in the pandemic relative to pre-pandemic. Answers including “significantly” and “slightly” for both “worse” and “better” were collapsed.

As shown in Fig. 6 A, respondents evaluated their satisfaction with PhD-related aspects generally lower after than before the onset of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, doctoral researchers were descriptively most satisfied with their research topic, working conditions, and holidays (all items rated at around 75%). We found the lowest satisfaction ratings for career perspectives, work-life balance, and academic results (the lowest at 50%). In pandemic times, research topic, salary, and holidays were rated highest (highest averaged rating at 68%); work-life balance, career perspectives, and work environment were rated the lowest (the lowest at 43%). We found significant decreases in the pandemic in self-rated satisfaction from workload, work environment, working conditions, work-life balance, supervision, research topic, career perspectives, and holidays, (all ps < 0.01). The satisfaction from academic results and salary did not change significantly during the pandemic.

Average ratings of satisfaction with PhD-related aspects and of aspects contributing to mental health problems pre- and post-pandemic onset. The asterisks mark items for which t-tests reached statistical significance ( p < 0.05, uncorrected).

Participants also rated how these aforementioned aspects contributed to their mental health problems before and after the beginning of the pandemic (see Fig. 6 B). Descriptively, the aspects that contributed most to mental health issues pre-pandemic were academic results, supervision, work-life balance, and workload. In pandemic times, the major contributor was work-life balance, followed by workload, supervision, and career perspectives. We observed significant increases for the ratings of career perspectives ( p = 0.002), work-life balance ( p < 0.001), relationships outside of work ( p = 0.003), and holidays ( p = 0.043), indicating that in the pandemic these factors played a larger negative role for the mental health of doctoral researchers. Other aspects did not change during the pandemic (See OSF page for exact t-values).

Predictive value of PhD training variables for mental health problems

Figure 7 shows the effect sizes (Cohen’s partial f ) for the terms selected in the stepwise selection process for models predicting the depression, anxiety, and (work-related) burnout scores. Table 2 summarizes the models’ statistics and directions of the effects. Gender was significant in all models: While males tended to show higher values for anxiety and depression, being female was predictive of higher burnout scores. Years into PhD training was not significantly related to any outcome variable. PhD type (individual doctorate vs. structured program) was only predictive of burnout scores, with higher levels of burnout for the PhD researchers pursuing an individual doctorate compared to being in a structured program. Years spent in Germany, although showing significant main effects in all models, did not survive corrections for multiple comparisons. The diagnosis of a mental disorder (acquired before or during the PhD) was consistently predictive of all three mental health problems (i.e., higher scores of depression, anxiety, and burnout). Lower scores of depression and anxiety were predicted by strength of the overall social network, while higher self-efficacy was linked to lower burnout scores. The overall current satisfaction with the PhD training predicted lower scores for mental health problems in all models. In terms of PhD-related aspects, those of the ratings which reached significance were all linked to lower scores of mental health problems. In burnout, these predictors were: supervision, work-life balance, and holidays; in anxiety: work-life balance and career perspectives; in depression: work-life balance, career perspectives, and holidays.

Effect sizes (Cohen’s partial f ) in the exploratory models of depression, anxiety, and burnout. The asterisks mark predictors for which the main effects reached statistical significance ( p < 0.05).

We examined different self-report measures capturing the mental health status of doctoral researchers of the wider Berlin area. Self-report ratings implied increased levels of depression, burnout, and loneliness, which further exacerbated under the pandemic influence. Critically, these problems were linked to the PhD training.

Under the magnifying glass: doctoral researchers’ mental health status

Firstly, we investigated the mental health status of doctoral researchers regarding pre-existing clinical and subclinical manifestations. In line with previous research 2 , 3 , 4 , our participants displayed severe mental health problems. One quarter of the sample indicated to have at least one diagnosed mental disorder. Doctoral researchers with a pre-existing diagnosis more often developed an additional mental disorder during the years of their PhD training and the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus our data suggests that negative mental health impacts seem to be magnified particularly for ECRs with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Comparable to previous findings, one fifth crossed the cut-off for clinically relevant depressive symptoms 16 . These numbers are higher than the depression prevalence in the general German population before (7.7% 6 ) and during the pandemic (14.3% 17 ). However, some studies which were conducted outside of Germany reported similarly elevated levels of depression in the general population within this time period 18 . Therefore, the increased depression levels in our sample might not just be attributable to the academic training but to the high mental burden caused by the pandemic itself. We also detected higher scores of burnout as compared to the general population 15 , paralleling recent findings presenting a three-fold increase of burnout in ECRs 11 . Alarmingly, the majority of the sample reporting mental health problems indicated that they were related to their PhD training. Moreover, most of our sample reported their PhD training experience to be worse than expected and that they would be interested in receiving psychological support.

Various PhD training-related aspects may underlie the reported mental health problems: Firstly, pursuing a doctorate constitutes a time of professional and personal growth 19 . ECRs need to master complex theoretical frameworks, develop expertise in research methodologies and make an original contribution to their field 20 . Additionally, establishing boundaries between work and other areas of life is challenging: Academics assume that pervasive commitment and profound concentration on the research subject are expected 21 . Increased workload may cause a neglect of physical health or personal relationships, leading to work-life imbalances 22 . Lastly, research facility structures which do not buffer the psychological and emotional costs of the PhD training may contribute to a deterioration of ECRs’ mental health 23 .

Changes in satisfaction with the PhD training during the COVID-19 pandemic

Secondly, we aimed to unravel potential changes in satisfaction with the PhD training under the influence of the pandemic (which started about a year before this survey). We compared respondents' retrospective evaluation of their satisfaction before the pandemic with their current satisfaction. Almost all ratings significantly dropped during the pandemic with the largest decreases for working conditions and work environment. The German government introduced regulations to enforce social distancing to contain the COVID-19 virus, which also led to the closing of research facilities. Thus, a likely explanation for our results is that the disrupted or discontinued work on doctoral projects increased uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the PhD training 24 . Additionally, the workload and time spent on work might have increased significantly during the pandemic 25 , which corroborates the reported levels of increased work-related burnout in our survey.

There were no changes in satisfaction regarding doctoral researchers’ salaries during the pandemic. In contrast to the general German population, ECRs were not affected by Germany-wide short-time working measures (i.e., temporary reduction in normal working hours and thus reduction in salary). Further, at the time of the survey, the first pandemic-related extensions of PhD contracts and scholarships were granted. However, given that many empirical projects were on hold, the time until completion of the PhD training might prolong beyond the period of the granted extensions, which could increase the burden of financial insecurity in the long run. Although this hypothesis cannot be tested with the current data, it should be considered in future studies.

Likewise, we did not detect significant changes in satisfaction with academic results before and during the pandemic. It is possible that because some aspects of academic life (i.e., attending conferences) were limited, doctoral researchers had more resources to focus on output related to their PhD projects. In that vein, research indicated that the number of journal paper submissions increased during the pandemic 26 . Notably, our sample consisted of doctoral researchers which were at least three months into their PhD training in mostly empirical scientific fields. Given that they had already collected data for PhD-project related publications, they might have rated their academic results not to be significantly impacted by the pandemic.

Greater satisfaction with the PhD training in general, and with work-life balance in particular, were important resilience factors for all depression, anxiety, and burnout. This finding is in line with previous studies, which indicated that higher job satisfaction was associated with lower prevalence rates of depression and burnout in the general population 27 . Other studies highlighted that employees, who are satisfied with their work, can transfer positive feelings to non-work related contexts, resulting in a positive relationship between job and life satisfaction 28 , as well as psychological and social wellbeing 27 . Thus, maintaining ECRs’ satisfaction with their PhD training seems to be an essential mechanism to prevent mental health problems.

Further, our data showed that decreased satisfaction with PhD supervision is linked to burnout. Although we have no detailed information on the nature of the supervision quality, support from supervisors and other members of the research facilities have previously been reported to be critical to doctoral researchers’ persistence and scientific outcomes 29 . Research showed that the quantity and quality of meetings with supervisors can impact ECRs’ satisfaction 30 . Quality supervision can be characterized as involving precise and timely feedback, frequent meetings that include open discussion about roles and responsibilities, a supportive and collegial relationship, and encouragement to maintain the flow of work throughout the PhD training 31 . One driver of supervision dissatisfaction could arise from misaligned interests of ECRs and their supervisors: While the latter might be more inclined to tune their interest towards the scientific community as a whole, they might lose sight of ECR’s individual needs 32 .

In addition, we found that satisfaction with career perspectives is an important predictor of anxiety and burnout. It was recently argued that being optimistic about career prospects might help to decrease levels of depression and anxiety about the future 33 . However, long- and short-term academic career perspectives are uncertain, which may degrade academia to an “alternative career” path. Missing career outlooks, in or outside of academia, amplify the mental burden of ECRs, leading to the levels of anxiety and burnout 34 . This factor might be even more pronounced in countries of the Global South, where—compared to the Global North—levels of inequality and labour informality are higher and research funding is more limited 35 .

Within our analysis, the strength of doctoral researchers' social network emerged as an important resilience factor for depression and anxiety. Indeed, there is substantial evidence that individuals with richer networks of active social relationships tend to be more satisfied and happier with their lives 36 . However, due to the demands of their PhD training, ECRs often report declines in social interactions 37 . Lack of social support has also been found to correspond with lower wellbeing and a higher prevalence of mental illness in ECRs 38 . Similarly, in the current study ECRs who pursued an individual doctorate were more likely to suffer from burnout than their peers in structured graduate programs. Within a structured PhD program, doctoral researchers are integrated in a framework with peers from the start of the training, whereas individual doctorates require ERCs to build their own scientific community.

Another resilience factor identified in our data was self-efficacy, with higher levels being linked to lower burnout scores. Self-efficacy is an important motivational factor for identity development of ECRs 39 , especially when it comes to the confidence in successfully performing research tasks 40 . It has been found to be significantly correlated with interest in research and the production of scholarly publications 41 . Conversely, ECRs with low levels of self-efficacy may be more likely to engage in self-handicapping (e.g., procrastination) to avoid being perceived as incompetent 42 .

Finally, men in our sample showed higher levels of depression and anxiety symptoms than women. This finding is at odds with the literature, where women have been reported to suffer more often from mental health problems than men both in the general population 6 and ECR samples 2 . Although this finding is difficult to interpret, previous research showed that men have lower participation rates in voluntary surveys 43 and engage more rarely in help-seeking behavior 44 . Thus, it seems possible that the data reflect the effects of our convenience sample: Men may have participated in our survey because they experienced mental health problems, which resulted in increased clinical symptoms in this group. Further, although our male participants reported higher levels of depression and anxiety, female participants reported higher burnout scores. As shown in previous studies during the pandemic, women were more likely to engage in housework, care and family 13 , which relates to physical and psychological fatigue and exhaustion 15 , but less so to depression.

Call to action

Our sample of doctoral researchers reported profound PhD training-related mental health problems, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, mostly single researchers or initiatives founded by ECRs (e.g., German ECR initiatives like N 2 , Scholar Minds) devote their mission to reduce harmful work conditions and the stigmatization of mental health matters in academia. However, sustainable preventive and interventional solutions aiming to improve ECRs’ mental health should be prioritized and addressed on different systemic levels, such as academic institutions and political initiatives, to ensure a healthy and supportive work environment. Combining our findings with recent literature, we have identified several factors to improve conditions for ECRs. These factors are not exclusively tied to improving the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic but relate to more general aspects of ECRs’ mental health:

Institutional mental health support

Firstly, psychological burden could be alleviated if the institutional culture of a research facility was more welcoming, inclusive, and understanding of ECRs’ backgrounds 20 . To this end, an open discourse about mental health problems is needed, which would also help to increase personal and public de-stigmatization of mental health problems still being present in academia 45 .

Secondly, institution-based psychological counseling should be the standard at every research institution for prevention and interventional needs. Especially for international ECRs who are not familiar with the local health care system, institution-based counselling could be a first low-level opportunity to de-escalate arising mental health problems. Although some counselling opportunities are already in place, ECRs are often unaware of their existence (e.g., no advertisement of services; information difficult to access 46 ). In addition, psychological counselling opportunities do not seem to be specifically tailored to doctoral researchers’ needs, but are rather similar to those designed for undergraduate students 47 . Thus, institutions would need to provide easily accessible PhD training-tailored psychological counselling.

Work-life balance

Working overtime and disregarding holidays is still part of the academic culture 48 . With an average of more than 46 h of work per week 16 , doctoral researchers contribute to the normalization of this culture, likely neglecting their work-life balance. When employed part time, doctoral researchers have been shown to work even more over-time hours than postdoctoral researchers (difference of up to 7 h per week 48 ). Irrespective of the type of working contract, the implicit rule to work overtime should be discouraged by employers and supervisors. Additionally, workshops on self- and time management provided by research institutions can strengthen ECRs’ ability to deal with the stressful demands of academia.

Quality of supervision

Mentoring contracts between ECRs and supervisors could help to set expectations for both parties. This procedure is already in place at many research facilities, however, it is yet to become a common practice. Further, improving supervision quality should be incentivized by research facilities. Whereas ratings of teaching are already a part of applications for professorships, a similar quantification for supervision skills could maintain supervision quality over the course of the PhD training. Integrated evaluations by doctoral researchers could both incentivize senior academics to monitor their quality of supervision and offer tangible rewards for their efforts.

Providing career perspectives and transferable skills

Even though staying in academia is still viewed as the most desirable career path for ECRs 49 , only a small percentage can continue to work in academia after the completion of their PhD training 50 . The creation of more permanent positions on a post-doctoral level is an important political challenge. In Germany, 98% of employees under 35 years of age are working on limited contracts in academia. Thanks to public attention on precarious working conditions in academia initiated by the German grass-root movement “#ichbinHanna” ( https://ichbinhanna.wordpress.com ) , first political consequences that will lead to the creation of more tenure track positions, have been taken. Furthermore, opportunities to continue a career outside of science should be considered more strongly. Although many structured PhD programs have started to integrate educational content on alternative career paths, more room should be given for concrete opportunities to develop new skills as, for example, in the form of internships or role plays 51 . As skills acquired during the PhD training can successfully be transferred to careers outside of academia 34 , these real-life experiences might decrease anxiety regarding future job perspectives.

Growing social networks

Research facilities play a major role in socializing ECRs 51 which is why an important task constitutes the establishment of sustainable ECR networks in research facilities to grow sustainable social networks to discuss science matters and work-related challenges. Some graduate schools already provide induction days and buddy programs (e.g., connecting doctoral researchers across different PhD cohorts) to facilitate ECRs’ future academic career. In addition, regular check-ins with members of the research facility could help to identify and solve problems with settling into the research institution and its social network structure.

Moreover, within- and between-institutional networks have the potential to help ECRs to shape their career paths. Some graduate schools are already providing alumni talks to connect ECRs with graduates from various career fields. This approach not only helps to expand the professional network, but also sharpens the view of which career options may be available after the doctorate and how to target these options early on.

Fostering self-efficacy

To maintain self-efficacy, the PhD training should entail tasks that are challenging, but achievable within the specific conditions of the doctoral project. Quite often, there is a mismatch in expectation between ECRs and research facilities 52 , likely arising from insufficient information at the admission stage regarding roles and responsibilities 53 . This parallels our finding that the majority of ECRs rated their PhD training experience markedly below their expectations. Thus, ECRs need to understand what explicit and implicit requirements are present toward the completion of their PhD training. One opportunity to enable clear expectation management is to offer an orientation day in graduate schools where potential doctoral candidates have the opportunity to receive information from administrative members, but also ECRs who are in different stages of their PhD training to provide testimonials.

Limitations

Due to different potential biases in our sample, we acknowledge that our data might not be representative of the whole population of interest. As we might have mainly reached doctoral researchers, who are interested in or even affected by mental health problems, we recognize that this procedure may have created a sampling bias. Further, the nature of the survey questions might have created a demand characteristics bias, potentially leading to elevated levels of reported burden. However, we think that the extent of these biases is comparable to other studies investigating mental health using self-report questionnaires. We also detected a gender response bias: We had more female responders even though we targeted mainly research fields related to neuroscience with a slightly men-dominated gender distribution 16 . BSI scores of our sample were rather low for overall anxiety, but rather high for the subscale phobic anxiety (56%). The latter subscale includes items that might have changed in weighting in pandemic times (e.g., “being in large crowds”), leading to increased scores. We also acknowledge that doctoral researchers’ retrospective assessment of their wellbeing might have led to biased judgements of aspects before the pandemic.

In addition to this limitation, we captured the history of mental illness more broadly (e.g., having contact with psychiatry/psychology or being previously diagnosed with a mental disorder), but did not ask for the specific diagnosis. Thus, our data does not allow for the exploration of the relationship between the mental health indexes and one or another mental disorder in-depth. We recognize that this could be especially important as we observed that a prior diagnosis was the main predictor of several dependent variables. Further, we did not assess the direct impact of the pandemic on the participants (e.g., being infected or having lost relatives or colleagues due to the pandemic). However, we asked participants if they experienced any event within two weeks prior to participation which would render their answers unrepresentative for a longer time perspective and excluded the respective data. We believe that losing a loved one or experiencing high stress due to a COVID-19 infection would have been captured in this response.

On a global scale, our survey focused on German doctoral researchers, with a certain focus on international students within the field of neuroscience, which may be generalizable to countries of similar funding opportunities and research culture. However, limited assumptions should be made about ECRs’ mental health in countries with diverging research conditions (e.g., of the Global South 35 ).

Our findings extend the ongoing debate about the mental health crisis in academia: Doctoral researchers’ self-reports showed increased levels of depression, burnout, and loneliness and further decreased mental wellbeing under the influence of the pandemic. Importantly, self-reported mental health problems were strongly linked to the PhD training, which emphasizes the need to improve academic work culture. Initiatives founded by ECRs have sought to actively reduce harmful work conditions and the stigmatization of mental health problems in academia. However, long-term change also demands top-down solutions. We thus call research institutions to action to create PhD training conditions that target the factors we identified and bring about sustainable systemic changes for academia.

Materials and methods

Participants.

We sought to target early career researchers pursuing their doctorate at research facilities in Berlin and the greater Berlin area to investigate the status of their mental health and potential COVID-19 related mental health changes via an online survey. The cross-sectional study was approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Psychology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent. Participants had the option to take part in a raffle to win 25 Euro. In total, 335 doctoral researchers completed the survey. As we aimed to compare the perceived mental health and satisfaction with PhD training of doctoral researchers before and after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we excluded participants who did not start their PhD training at least three months prior to the beginning of the pandemic (March 2020 in Germany; n = 75). Additionally, we excluded participants who indicated that they experienced an important life event which could have influenced their mental health significantly in the last two weeks (n = 38). In the remaining sample of 222 participants, the age ranged from 24 to 52 years ( M = 29.8; SD = 3.4). Gender, nationality, years into the PhD training, and type of the PhD program are summarised in Table 3 . Type of PhD program refers to structured programs (as often provided by graduate schools) vs. individual doctoral projects. They differ in characteristics, which are potentially important for doctoral researchers’ wellbeing, especially in the pandemic. For example, doctoral researchers in structured programs are often organized in cohorts or years, which facilitates the growth of a professional peer network.

Data were collected cross-sectionally between January and February 2021 with an online survey administered via the SoSci Survey platform ( www.soscisurvey.de ) and further processed in R ver. 4.0.2. The R code including data, analysis code and a HTML file with all procedures rendered in accessible form, are available at an OSF repository ( https://osf.io/q5w4g/ ). The survey consisted of standardized measures of mental health and self-developed questions regarding changes in satisfaction before and during the pandemic in relation to PhD-specific aspects.

Standardized measures of mental health

We included three standardized questionnaires to assess participants’ mental health state. For all these questionnaires, higher scores relate to greater significance of the measured mental health problem. We used the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI 54 ), which has 53 items to assess nine mental health symptom dimensions: somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. Participants were asked to choose how much a described problem bothered them in the last week (e.g., “Nervousness or shakiness inside”, scale: “Not at all”, “A little bit”, “Moderately”, ”Quite a bit”, and “Extremely”). For each dimension, raw scores were transformed into t-scores to relate the results to the general population. In reference to the BSI manual 54 , we considered t-scores equal to or larger than1 SD (t-score = 60) as clinically relevant.

The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI 15 ) was used to measure personal and work-related burnout (the third CBI scale, namely client-related burnout, was omitted in our survey as the work of doctoral researchers is rarely concerned with clients). In 13 questions, participants were asked how often they experienced described problems in the last weeks (e.g., “How often do you feel tired?”, scale: “Never/Almost never”, ”Seldom”, ”Sometimes”, ”Often”, “Always”) or how intense these problematic experiences were (“To a very low degree”, ”To a low degree”, ”Somewhat”, ”To a high degree”, ”To a very high degree”). For scoring, each answer is assigned a numerical value from 0 for “Never/almost never” or “To a very low degree” to 100 for “Always” or “To a very high degree”. The score is calculated as the mean of all items.

Further, we used the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale (11-item version 55 ) to measure social and emotional loneliness. Participants were asked to indicate how often they experienced different situations (e.g., “There is always someone I can talk to about my day-to-day problems”, scale: “None of the time”, “Rarely”, “Some of the time”, “Often”, “All the time”). Maximum total score is 11 (one per item), which combines six items from the emotional subscale and five items from the social subscale.

Self-developed questions on mental health and satisfaction with PhD training under consideration of the pandemic

In order to assess participants’ perceived mental health and satisfaction in relation to their PhD training, we created questions specifically targeting these topics considering the context of the pandemic situation. We based wording and content of the questions on other surveys targeting ECRs’ mental health, such as the survey of the N 2 network 16 and the annual Nature survey 3 . We subsequently adapted the questions to capture the influence of the pandemic.

Besides demographic questions and PhD specifics (e.g., years into PhD training), we collected information on existing and past clinical mental health diagnosis, expectations regarding the PhD training before its start, potential support structures, and changes in satisfaction with PhD-specific aspects (e.g., supervision) caused by the pandemic. We thus asked our participants to evaluate these aspects retrospectively for the times before the pandemic as well as the current in-pandemic situation. The results reported here include a subset of all questions administered in the survey; the full list can be found in the OSF repository ( https://osf.io/q5w4g/ ).

Statistical analyses

To conceive the actual mental health state of our participants, we used descriptive statistics for the standardized questionnaires. Therefore, we computed the mean and standard deviation of the BSI, CBI, and De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale scores to compare these values with existing literature. For the self-developed questions on mental health of doctoral researchers and ratings of satisfaction with PhD training, we calculated percentages per response category. We then performed two exploratory statistical analyses: The first analysis aimed to investigate whether there was a change in retrospective pre-pandemic and current in-pandemic ratings of PhD-related satisfaction aspects and items contributing to mental health issues. We performed two-tailed dependent t-tests for all related items. The second analysis aimed to investigate potential predictors of three mental health aspects: depression, anxiety, and burnout. We chose these aspects because they are most frequently considered in the context of the mental health of ECRs 2 , 3 , 4 . To this goal, we built three multiple regression models with the BSI depression t-scores, the BSI anxiety t-scores, and the CBI work-related burnout scores as dependent variables. To control for mental health issues potentially unrelated to the PhD, we included prior clinical diagnosis of a mental disorder (pre- or since the beginning of the PhD) as a control variable in all models. We expected that the three mental health aspects would be related to years into the PhD training, overall satisfaction with the PhD training, being a member of a graduate program, and gender, but we were also interested in the contribution of other factors. Therefore, we entered all suitable survey questions (see column “Predictor” within the HTML file on the OSF page) as potential predictors in the models, and conducted a stepwise selection of the best model with the bidirectional step() function (stats package). This procedure allows for iterative adding and removing predictors based on the model’s fit estimated with the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The predictors in the selected models are chosen based on their statistical significance for explaining variance. Due to few data points in the following categories, we excluded participants who (1) did not identify as a woman or a man (n = 9), (2), did not indicate being part of a structured or individual PhD program (n = 14), and (3) chose not to provide information about whether they were diagnosed with a mental disorder (n = 1). This procedure resulted in a sample size of 198 participants for this exploratory analysis. Responses to the question “How long have you been living in Germany?” were binned into three categories: 0–3 years, 4 + years, and native. Due to the design of the survey (participants could not proceed without giving a response for each item concerned for analysis), there was no missing data.

It should be noted that stepwise regression is a discouraged method for hypothesis testing and should be interpreted with caution in data exploration. The reason for this is that it may produce narrow confidence intervals, high t statistics and low p values 56 . However, when treated with caution, it could generate valuable insights about the relationships in the dataset and produce ideas for future hypothesis testing studies. Further, because stepwise regression is less effective with more explanatory variables 56 , we did not include interaction terms in our exploratory models. Finally, because the p values in stepwise regression are not accurate and should not be interpreted as they would in a hypothesis-testing, theory-driven analysis, we do not correct for multiple comparisons, as there is no straightforward method to do so and no apparent benefit for the interpretability of the results. With all this in mind, in the current study, we do not encourage other researchers to use the reported statistics as true effect sizes in the population, but rather to consider this procedure as an exploratory tool for building insights about our data and generating future hypotheses in theory-driven studies.

The stepwise selection procedure confirmed that prior diagnosis explained significant portions of variance in all models. Hence, other predictors explained additional variance in the data suggesting that PhD-related aspects may have a somewhat additive (to clinical diagnoses) influence on mental health problems. We also explored models without prior diagnosis as a predictor, which showed a similar pattern of results as the full models presented below (see point 6.2 in the HTML file in the repository). The selected models were checked for regression assumptions (normality, linearity, multicollinearity (with Variance Inflation Factors), homoscedasticity), which were met for all models (details for each model are reported in the HTML file). The significance level for all the tests was set to 0.05. However, it should be noted that these analyses are data-driven and thus any statistical significance should be considered with care. To estimate the main effects in the analyses (across levels of multiple categorical predictors), we conducted a type-II analysis of variance using the model parameters.

Ethics approval

The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the Department of Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Data availability

Data and code that support the findings of this study are openly available at the OSF repository: https://osf.io/q5w4g/ .

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all members of Scholar Minds for their support in conceptualizing this survey project. Scholar Minds is a Berlin-based initiative of PhD candidates concerned with mental health in academia ( www.scholar-minds.net ; Berlin, Germany) which was, together with other PhD researchers, co-founded by S.N., M.M., K.B.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was supported by funding from the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw). We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the German Research Foundation (DFG)—337619223/RTG2386.

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These authors contributed equally: Sandra Naumann, Magdalena Matyjek and Katharina Bögl.

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Sandra Naumann, Magdalena Matyjek, Katharina Bögl & Isabel Dziobek

Department of Psychology, Institute of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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S.N., M.M. and K.B. were involved in the survey design, data collection, and interpretation of the data. M.M. conducted the statistical analysis S.N., M.M., K.B. and I.D. drafted and reviewed the manuscript.

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Naumann, S., Matyjek, M., Bögl, K. et al. Doctoral researchers’ mental health and PhD training satisfaction during the German COVID-19 lockdown: results from an international research sample. Sci Rep 12 , 22176 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26601-4

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Burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine: the BEeP study

Rashmi a. kusurkar.

1 Amsterdam UMC, Research in Education, Faculty of Medicine, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2 LEARN! Research Institute for Learning and Education, Faculty of Psychology and Education, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Stéphanie M. E. van der Burgt

3 Center for Evidence Based Education, location AMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ulviye Isik

Marianne mak-van der vossen, janneke wilschut.

4 Dutch Institute of Clinical Auditing, Leiden, The Netherlands

Anouk Wouters

Andries s. koster.

5 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Associated Data

Introduction.

Using a self-determination theory framework, we investigated burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine, and their association with motivation, work-life balance and satisfaction or frustration of their basic psychological needs.

This cross-sectional study was conducted among PhD students at a university medical centre ( n  = 990) using an electronic survey on background characteristics and validated burnout, engagement, motivation and basic psychological needs questionnaires. Cluster analysis was performed on the burnout subscale scores to find subgroups within the sample which had similar profiles on burnout. Structural equation modelling was conducted on a hypothesized model of frustration of basic psychological needs and burnout.

The response rate was 47% ( n  = 464). We found three clusters/subgroups which were composed of PhD students with similar burnout profiles within the cluster and different profiles between the clusters. Cluster 1 ( n  = 199, 47%) had low scores on burnout. Clusters 2 ( n  = 168, 40%) and 3 ( n  = 55, 13%) had moderate and high burnout scores, respectively, and were associated with low engagement scores. Cluster 3, with the highest burnout scores, was associated with the lowest motivational, engagement, needs satisfaction and work-life balance scores. We found a good fit for the “basic psychological needs frustration associated with burnout” model.

The most important variables for burnout among PhD students in medicine were lack of sleep and frustration of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. These add to the factors found in the literature.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-020-00637-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Burnout has been identified as a global problem among medical students, residents and physicians, and is on the rise [ 1 – 4 ]. The percentage of physicians having at least one symptom of burnout in the US increased from 45% to 54% between 2011 and 2014 [ 5 ]. “PhD students in medicine” as a group has been neglected in burnout research. The reason PhD students in medicine (with or without a clinical background) deserve to be treated as a separate group from other PhD students is because this group works in a hospital or clinical setting, may be supervised by physicians with PhDs and may experience elements of the medical culture and hierarchy in ways that may contribute to burnout [ 4 ]. Thus the context is very different from a general university setting. Within PhD students in medicine, PhD students with clinical backgrounds have been reported to have different motivation, financial position and confidence as professionals than those with other scientific backgrounds [ 6 ]. PhD students actively working with patients are also expected to have more workload and conflict in balancing clinical or patient responsibilities along with their PhD research work. The current study therefore aimed to explore burnout and the factors influencing burnout among PhD students in medicine.

“Job burnout is a psychological syndrome that involves a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job” [ 7 ]. The professional consequences of burnout are lower productivity at work, unprofessionalism, increased errors and higher chances of quitting the field of work. In case of health professionals (which would include PhD students in medicine with patient responsibilities), burnout can lead to consequences such as dissatisfied patients, lower patient safety, higher patient mortality and higher cost of inefficiently delivered healthcare [ 8 ].

In this study “PhD students in medicine” are students at a university medical centre who have completed their Master’s degree and are undergoing residency/specialization training, or are completing PhD research concurrently with their residency training or professional practice, or have completed a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and are following an MD-PhD program, or non-medical and/or non-clinical graduates completing their research in a non-clinical or a clinical department.

There are several studies on satisfaction of PhD students, stress and depression, and well-being, but the findings of PhD students in medicine have not been reported separately [ 9 – 11 ]. In a review of the factors influencing PhD students’ well-being, achievement and PhD completion, it is clear that: a) PhD students in medicine have not been identified as a separate group; b) their findings are not reported separately; c) more factors influencing success in PhD have been investigated than well-being; d) only one of the studies focuses on burnout; and e) no specific theoretical framework has been used for studying burnout and engagement [ 11 ]. (See Table A1 in the Electronic Supplementary Material).

Burnout is described as having three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism and perceived negative efficacy [ 7 ]. Exhaustion means feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, cynicism involves feelings of detachment from one’s work, and perceived negative efficacy involves a feeling of incompetence in work. Generally, cynicism appears first (it also has the highest score), followed by exhaustion; negative personal efficacy may even be absent [ 12 ]. Since one of our research goals was to provide recommendations for supporting these PhD students, we explored not only burnout and factors influencing it, but also engagement in work and motivation (which is an important driver of performance) and the factors enhancing them. Engagement is defined as “a positive, fulfilling, and work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication and absorption” [ 13 ]. We used the framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to investigate this phenomenon because it provides a basis for investigating burnout and engagement through frustration or satisfaction of basic psychological needs, respectively [ 14 ]. Thus, this study aimed to investigate burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine, and how these variables are associated with the quality of their academic motivation [ 14 ], work-life balance [ 15 ], quality of sleep [ 16 ], perceived conflict in work-related responsibilities and satisfaction or frustration of their basic psychological needs [ 14 ]. (See Table A2 in the Electronic Supplementary Material for descriptions of these variables).

Self-determination theory framework

Self-determination theory (SDT) [ 14 , 17 ] is a macro-theory of human motivation, which puts the fulfilment of three basic psychological needs—autonomy (feeling of choice), competence (feeling of capability) and relatedness (feeling of belonging)—at the epicentre of an individual being autonomously motivated for learning or work, his/her well-being, happiness, creativity and performance. This theory considers the quality of motivation (the why of motivation) more important than the quantity (how much) and describes the quality of motivation as autonomous or controlled. Autonomous motivation is derived out of genuine interest and/or great personal value for learning or work [ 18 ]. Controlled motivation stands for persuasion of learning or work because of internal or external pressure or in the expectation of a reward [ 18 ]. SDT advocates that the more autonomous the motivation, the better the observed outcomes, namely: deep learning, high academic or work performance, better adjustment and positive well-being [ 14 , 17 ]. Satisfaction of the basic psychological needs can move a student from controlled towards autonomous motivation and is also directly associated with engagement. On the contrary, frustration of these needs can move a student from autonomous towards controlled motivation and is also directly associated with burnout.

Our hypothesized model on basic psychological needs frustration-burnout is depicted in Fig. 1 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 40037_2020_637_Fig1_HTML.jpg

Hypothesized model for basic psychological needs frustration and burnout

Our research questions for this study were:

How do PhD students in medicine score on burnout, work engagement, quality of motivation for PhD, work-life balance, conflict in work responsibilities, feeling part of a team and quality of sleep? Can we find patterns in how they score on the burnout subscales?
Are there differences in the burnout scores of males and females, clinical and non-clinical departments, and working with patients, in a lab or in an office?
How do PhD students in medicine score on the satisfaction or frustration of their basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness?
How are burnout, quality of motivation for PhD, work-life balance, quality of sleep, conflict in work responsibilities, feeling part of a team, frustration of their basic psychological needs and background variables associated with each other?

This cross-sectional study was conducted at a University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. PhD training in the Netherlands is generally a 4-year program with training in research skills and other non-cognitive skills (such as presenting in English) interspersed between data collection, analysis, interpretation and publication of about four empirical studies which form the PhD thesis. Thus the PhD is not divided into coursework and thesis phases as in some other parts of the world [ 19 ]. Also PhD students are appointed as employees and receive a salary instead of a stipend. Some PhD students who have a medical degree combine their PhD work with their residency training, while others pursue one at a time. Some PhD students have non-medical backgrounds even though they may be pursuing a PhD in a medical department. All PhD students in medicine registered at the different research institutes in this medical centre ( n  = 990) were invited to fill out an electronic survey using Net Questionnaire. The data were collected from September to November 2018 and two reminders were sent. We obtained ethical approval from the Netherlands Association for Medical Education—Ethical Review Board (Folder no. 2018.5.13).

Background variables

We collected anonymous data after written informed consent, participation was voluntary and no incentives were provided. See Tables A2 and A3 in the Electronic Supplementary Material for the details of the survey and demographic characteristics of the participants, respectively.

Data analyses

Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlations for all included variables were computed (research questions 1 and 3). We tested for differences (research question 2) in the variable scores for gender, clinical versus non-clinical departments and work setting using students unpaired t‑tests or ANOVAs, as appropriate. To answer the second part of our research question 1, we performed K‑means cluster analysis using the three burnout subscale scores. We did this because the MBI-SS [ 13 ] does not provide any cut-off scores for classifying burnout as “high”, “moderate” or “low”. Cluster analysis helped us to group PhD students who had similar scores on the three subscales of burnout with each other [ 20 ]. We validated the cluster solution using the random half-splitting method and computing the Cohen’s kappa as a measure of cluster stability. Clustering effectively reduced the within-groups variability of burnout scores by more than 50%, compared with the score variability before clustering. Therefore, clustering was considered effective. Clustering also allowed us to compare the groups with each other for their scores on the dependent variables using multiple analysis of variance (multiple ANOVAs), followed by comparison of group means using Bonferroni adjustments. Cohen’s d was used to characterize the effect size for differences between individual means, whenever statistically significant [ 21 ].

To answer our research question 4, we conducted Structural Equation Modelling analysis using AMOS 18 for testing the hypothesized model depicted in Fig. 1 [ 22 , 23 ]. The indices used for estimating goodness of fit of the model were: Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA <0.05), Comparison of Fit Index (CFI >0.95), Tucker Lewis Index (TLI >0.95), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR <0.05) [ 22 , 23 ].

The response rate was 47% ( n  = 464). The majority were 25–34 years old, Dutch females ( n  = 371, 80%), married/in a relationship, and childless. Thirty-three percent had a medicine-related degree, 52% were from clinical departments, 56% worked in an office, 27% in a lab and 17% with patients; 68% worked beyond their contract hours. The demographic characteristics and the Pearson’s correlations between all study variables are depicted in Tables A3 and A4 in the Electronic Supplementary Material.

A limited number of statistically significant differences ( p  < 0.05) between genders, departments, or work settings were found. Concerning gender, we found that work-life balance was significantly better (males: 1.92 ± 0.62, females: 2.07 ± 0.57, p  = 0.038, d  = 0.26) and vigour was significantly poorer (males: 2.22 ± 0.74, females: 1.96 ± 0.74, p  = 0.004, d  = 0.35) in females as compared with males. Concerning clinical versus non-clinical departments, autonomy frustration was significantly higher (clinical: 3.89 ± 1.21, non-clinical: 3.58 ± 1.20, p  = 0.013, d  = 0.26) and conflict between work responsibilities was significantly higher (clinical: 5.10 ± 2.59, non-clinical: 4.22 ± 2.32, p  < 0.001, d  = 0.36) among PhD students from clinical departments. Concerning work setting, work-life balance was significantly better among PhD students who worked in an office (2.16 ± 0.60) as compared to those who worked in a lab (1.89 ± 0.54) or with patients (1.90 ± 0.56): p  < 0.001 in both comparisons ( d  = 0.48 and 0.45, respectively). Conflicts with work responsibilities were significantly higher among PhD students who worked with patients (6.14 ± 2.28) than those who worked in an office (4.61 ± 2.50) or a lab (3.99 ± 2.24): p  < 0.001 in both comparisons ( d   = 0.64 and 0.90, respectively).

When we tried to classify PhD students, based on their burnout scores, three clusters were found with increasing scores on the subscales exhaustion, cynicism and perceived negative efficacy (Tab. 1 ).

Cluster analysis on the basis of scores on the burnout subscales (range 1–6)

Cluster	(%)	Exhaustion (mean ± SD)	Cynicism (mean ± SD)	Perceived negative efficacy (mean ± SD)
1 Low scores on burnout	199 (47%)	1.65  0.73	1.45  0.86	1.69  0.67
2 Medium scores on burnout	168 (40%)	3.34  0.82	3.41  1.00	2.19  0.52
3 High scores on burnout	55 (13%)	3.69  0.94	4.59  0.85	3.62  0.61

Cluster

(%)

Exhaustion (mean ± SD)

Cynicism (mean ± SD)

Perceived negative efficacy (mean ± SD)

Low scores on burnout

199

(47%)

1.65  0.73

1.45  0.86

1.69  0.67

Medium scores on burnout

168

(40%)

3.34  0.82

3.41  1.00

2.19  0.52

High scores on burnout

(13%)

3.69  0.94

4.59  0.85

3.62  0.61

Cohen’s kappa for cluster stability = 0.95 (> 0.8 is considered good)

Cluster 1 had low scores on burnout. Clusters 2 and 3 with medium and high scores on burnout were associated with low engagement scores. Cluster 3, with high burnout scores, was associated with the lowest autonomous motivation, engagement, needs satisfaction, perception of being part of a team, and feeling refreshed in the morning and the highest controlled motivation, needs frustration and conflict in work responsibilities (Tab. 2 ). Effect sizes for the differences between clusters 1 and 2, and between clusters 2 and 3, of the engagement and basic psychological needs scores were substantial ( d  > 0.8 in many cases); relatedness scores were relatively less affected (see Tab. 2 , and Figure A1 in the Electronic Supplementary Material).

Comparison of dependent variable scores between clusters (Multiple ANOVAs)

Variable (range of scores)	Cluster 1 Low burnout scores	Cluster 2 Medium burnout scores	Cluster 3 High burnout scores	Statistical significance of ANOVA	Difference between Mean 1 and Mean 2	Difference between Mean 2 and Mean 3

Autonomous motivation(1–5)	4.17  ± 0.38	3.90  ± 0.42	3.31  ± 0.83	68.6, 0.256***	0.56	1.21
Controlled motivation (1–5)	1.79  ± 0.53	1.97  ± 0.62	2.37  ± 0.74	37.4, 0.159***	0.31	0.69
Engagement (0–4)
Vigor (0–4)	2.42  ± 0.59	1.82  ± 0.61	1.13  ± 0.61	108.8, 0.372***	1.00	1.14
Dedication (0–4)	2.93  ± 0.45	2.42  ± 0.55	1.74  ± 0.74	114.1, 0.363***	0.95	1.27
Absorption (0–4)	2.52  ± 0.64	2.26  ± 0.58	1.56  ± 0.76	46.7, 0.196***	0.41	1.10
Satisfaction of BPN (1–7)	5.20  ± 0.65	4.47  ± 0.66	3.82  ± 0.85	103.7, 0.361***	1.06	0.95
Autonomy satisfaction (1–7)	4.96  ± 0.79	3.91  ± 0.93	3.36  ± 1.08	97.3, 0.346***	1.17	0.62
Competence satisfaction (1–7)	5.27  ± 0.79	4.66  ± 0.84	3.55  ± 1.15	87.1, 0.318***	0.71	1.29
Relatedness satisfaction (1–7)	5.36  ± 1.03	4.83  ± 1.10	4.54  ± 1.36	16.3, 0.082***	0.48	n. s.
Frustration of BPN (1–7)	2.60  ± 0.77	3.55  ± 0.71	4.24  ± 0.83	130.1, 0.429***	1.26	0.92
Autonomy frustration (1–7)	2.98  ± 0.96	4.27  ± 0.95	4.74  ± 1.06	109.6, 0.377***	1.32	0.48
Competence frustration (1–7)	2.72  ± 1.05	3.62  ± 1.16	4.95  ± 1.23	90.7, 0.347***	0.81	1.19
Relatedness frustration (1–7)	2.11  ± 1.07	2.75  ± 1.17	3.04  ± 1.39	21.0, 0.106***	0.56	n. s.
Work-life balance (1–3)	2.24  ± 0.56	1.82  ± 0. 55	1.93  ± 0.55	28.6, 0.121***	0.76	n. s.
Conflict at work (1–10)	3.91  ± 2.27	5.51  ± 2.40	5.00  ± 2.66	20.7, 0.087***	0.68	n.s
Belong to team (1–6)	4.20  ± 1.40	3.41  ± 1.50	2.61  ± 1.45	31.4, 0.128***	0.55	0.56
Quality of sleep (0–10)	7.41  ± 1.53	6.48  ± 1.85	6.59  ± 1.71	16.2, 0.081***	0.55	n. s.
Feeling refreshed (1–5)	3.60  ± 0.81	2.85  ± 0.91	2.61  ± 0.98	40.6, 0.170***	0.85	0.27

Significance of the ANOVA analyses is indicated by the test value of the between clusters versus within clusters mean square (F) and the overall effect size, expressed as fraction of explained variance (η2). Cluster means with different subscripts differ statistically significant from each other ( p  < 0.01, Bonferroni post-hoc test). Effect sizes for the difference between cluster means (Cohen’s d) were calculated from the difference in means and the pooled standard deviation, derived from the ANOVA analyses

*** p  < 0.001 in all cases; n. s., not significantly different. The means which have different subscripts differ from each other significantly. The means with the same subscript do not differ significantly. BPN basic psychological needs.

Relationships between basic psychological needs and burnout scores for the sampled PhD students as a whole were investigated using structural equation modelling. We did not find a good fit for the hypothesized model (Fig. 1 ). We therefore removed all the non-significant relationships from the model one by one and finally arrived at the model depicted in Fig. 2 , which had a good fit with our data, RMSEA = 0.044 (<0.06), CFI = 0.986 (>0.95), TLI = 0.976 (>0.95), SRMR = 0.041 (<0.05). Quality of sleep was negatively associated with exhaustion. Work-life balance was negatively associated with basic psychological needs frustration, directly and indirectly with exhaustion, and indirectly with cynicism and perceived negative efficacy. Conflict in work responsibilities was negatively associated only with basic psychological needs frustration, and did not have any direct or indirect effects on the burnout subscale scores. Basic psychological needs frustration was associated with exhaustion, cynicism and perceived negative efficacy.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 40037_2020_637_Fig2_HTML.jpg

Structural equation model of BPN frustration and burnout. Indirect effects: Work Life Balance-Basic Psychological Needs Frustration-Exhaustion (*−0.185); Work Life Balance-Basic Psychological Needs Frustration-Cynicism (*−0.213); Work Life Balance-Basic Psychological Needs Frustration-Perceived Negative Efficacy (*−0.154)

As hypothesized, we found that PhD students from clinical departments had a poorer work-life balance and higher conflict between work responsibilities. They also had higher autonomy frustration, which can be expected due to the conflict. A previous study has investigated differences between the motivation and expectations of PhD students with clinical versus science backgrounds [ 6 ]. PhD students with clinical backgrounds were generally older, and found lab work difficult. Although they started their PhD training perceiving themselves as professionals, they were treated by their departments as students. They perceived this as frustrating [ 6 ]. But this study did not investigate burnout among these students [ 6 ]. PhD students working with patients had a poorer work-life balance and higher conflict with work-related responsibilities than those working in a lab or an office. Clinical residents have been reported to have higher burnout scores in an earlier study owing to high patient load, long working hours and low autonomy [ 1 ]. A national study on Dutch residents has reported a high percentage (21%) of burnout [ 3 ]. If PhD work is conducted on top of these circumstances, much worse outcomes can be expected.

We also found three groups based on PhD students’ scores on the burnout subscales: Low, moderate and high . Contrary to the literature, we did not find gender differences between the three burnout subscale scores [ 24 ]. The “high” group had the worst outcomes for engagement and motivation, and basic psychological needs satisfaction and frustration. This finding differs from the study on Dutch residents, in which the authors found that high burnout could be associated with high engagement or low engagement [ 3 ].

We were able to find evidence for a modified model of the relationship between basic psychological needs frustration and burnout than our hypothesized model. Sleep and basic psychological needs frustration have important effects on burnout, while work-life imbalance and conflict in work responsibilities have an important positive effect on basic psychological needs frustration. In addition, work-life balance has an important indirect negative effect on burnout through its effect on basic psychological needs frustration. These findings about basic psychological needs frustration and burnout add to the literature on this topic. Similar results were found in an earlier study among pharmacists, in which basic psychological needs frustration was associated with low vitality [ 25 ]. We could not find evidence for a hypothesized positive relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and engagement using structural equation modelling. A similar lack of evidence for a positive relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and vitality has been reported earlier by Tjin A Tsoi et al. [ 25 ] We suggest that preventing frustration of basic psychological needs is more important for preventing burnout than ensuring satisfaction of basic psychological needs [ 25 ]. This could be due to the relatively high autonomous motivation for pursuing a PhD project in the sampled population. It can be expected that their perception of autonomy and competence is not so easily changed by external influences. On the other hand, frustration of autonomy and competence by conflicting work requirements and/or inadequate support and guidance can easily lead to a sense of frustration and burnout.

Practical applications/recommendations

Using a cluster analysis, which is a person-centred research analysis [ 26 ], for creating groups made of similar characteristics on burnout helped us propose customized recommendations for these different groups. General recommendations, based on Self-Determination Theory, for PhD students, supervisors and organizations, related to the prevention of frustration and support of satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness are summarized in Table A5 in the Electronic Supplementary Material.

Specific recommendations for the three clusters

The low burnout scores cluster seems to have favourable scores on all factors except the three subscales of engagement: vigour, dedication and absorption. We recommend training for the students in this cluster on how to become more engaged in their PhD work. The students in the moderate burnout scores cluster seem to have unfavourable scores on autonomy satisfaction and frustration, engagement—vigour, work-life balance, conflict in work responsibilities, feeling of belongingness to a team and feeling refreshed on waking up. For students in this cluster, we recommend that the supervision team engages in discussion with their students about how to maintain autonomy in work, about reducing the conflict in work responsibilities, and perpetuating team spirit, while the student gets help with organizing his/her schedule, work-life balance and sleep. The high burnout cluster students seem to have low autonomous motivation, very low engagement, low autonomy and competence satisfaction, high autonomy frustration, poor feelings of belongingness to a team, conflict in work responsibilities and do not feel refreshed on waking up. We recommend that research institutes and human resources departments provide training for the students in this cluster on structuring their work, personal and leisure activities, and resolution of problems related to poor supervision and basic psychological needs frustration.

Further research questions

Which other variables are important for burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine? Can our results be replicated in other countries in similar contexts? In addition, we think that in-depth qualitative research to get more detailed information about the stressors and energizers experienced by students in their PhD work would add to the existing literature.

Limitations

Our study has several limitations. First of all we used self-report measures, which does not give an indication of actual burnout among the PhD students. But this is true for most burnout studies in the literature, and in spite of this we think this study adds important insights to the literature. The cross-sectional design is also a limitation and a longitudinal design would definitely benefit such research. We had a response rate of 47%, which could have created a response bias. We believe this low response rate to be random as we collected data anonymously. In spite of a relatively low response rate, we believe that our results add to the literature on burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine. We wanted to investigate PhD students particularly with clinical responsibilities, but our sample contained only a small percentage (17%) of such students. We did find evidence that clinical responsibilities can interfere with PhD work. We recommend a similar study with a bigger sample size of PhD students with clinical duties to further explore the differences. Also, this study was conducted at a single medical centre. We recommend multicentre studies in the future in the interest of generalizability. We could have missed important variables influencing burnout and engagement outside of SDT, as we collected data and conducted the analysis using the variables included in the SDT framework. But we expect to have covered all the variables important from the SDT perspective and thus have a strong theoretical foundation for our work. In future studies, more variables beyond the ones in our study could be included.

The most important variables, found in this study, for burnout among PhD students in medicine students are lack of sleep and frustration of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Work-life imbalance and conflict in work responsibilities are associated with basic psychological needs frustration. The model of basic psychological needs frustration being associated with burnout adds to the literature.

Caption Electronic Supplementary Material

Acknowledgements.

We are indebted to the many people who have made this research possible. A full list is available online.

This research study was funded by all 8 Amsterdam UMC Research Institutes (Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam Gastroenterology & Metabolism, Cancer Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam Reproduction and Development, Amsterdam Infection & Immunity, Amsterdam Public Health, Amsterdam Cardiovascular Sciences, Amsterdam Movement Sciences) and the Human Resources Department of Amsterdam UMC.

Conflict of interest

R.A. Kusurkar, S.M.E. van der Burgt, U. Isik, M. Mak-van der Vossen, J. Wilschut, A. Wouters and A.S. Koster declare that they have no competing interests.

DOI: 10.20919/psych(2019).001
Corpus ID: 150411938

PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well as enhance engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among PhD students

Saavedra Morales Patricio Javier
Published 21 January 2019
Psychology, Education

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4 Citations

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PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well as enhance engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among PhD students

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ii OPSOMMING iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF FIGURES xi LIST OF TABLES xii CHAPTER 1

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PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well as enhance engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among PhD students.

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What can I do to recover from a short term burnout?

Over the past few days, my advisor and I had been going really hard. We got a really good idea and the preliminary results looked good, so I started spending long days in the lab, going home only to sleep. My advisor saw this and he started spending a lot more time with me and we had long meetings whenever I requested. This has been going on for about 4 weeks and although I loved it while I was in it, I feel burnt out now. There are still really exciting things I need to try but I don't know why I can't get myself to do any of them.

What is a good strategy to escape this burnout phase?

I have already tried:

Playing an instrument I was good at
Just taking some time off
Limiting my work hours

But none of these and others seem to work.

graduate-school

23 If it is days or weeks (not years), I don't know if "burnout" is the right term. It's just a temporal loss of motivation or energy, or tiredness. (Anyway, the quicker you fight with it, the better for you.) – Piotr Migdal Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 10:51
3 You need to find something apart from books and papers that keeps your mind busy and away of recurrent thoughts. I would not recommend reading other books. It has to be something different of the environment your burnout is caused by. For me, gym and movies most part of the times works really well. This activities really make me forget about problems of my daily life. Try to find what's yours and schedule a time for them. – user5872 Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 12:20
8 Not specifically academia-burnout-related. As my Zen teacher says: "if you're so burnt out you feel you can't accomplish anything, start with clapping hands". Do anything you can succeed in, starting from the absolute basics, until gradually you recover your momentum and get back to serious things. Another advise, to prevent burnout, next time keep the excitement / expectations in check. High expectations mess with your success thresholds and rob you of the sense of accomplishment. Excitement wastes your serotonin unnecessarily, while you need it for creative work. – Andriy Volkov Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 12:28
1 Bipolar disorder? You never know ... – Kaz Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 17:42
2 Actually, there's a lot of research that suggests that extended workweeks are only sustainable for a short period of time—a few weeks at most. Beyond that, burnout sets in, and can require a few weeks of rest to "make up" for the intense work done during the "rush" period. – aeismail Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 19:22

7 Answers 7

For a true burnout you will need to stop working, rest, and seek counseling/medical help. You need to lower your expectations of yourself and virtually eliminate what others expect from you. Ultimately, because work is about expectations (either self-imposed or set by others), I doubt that you can continue working and recover from a burnout.

Given that you state that the burnout occurred over a short period, rather than a sustained year-upon-year effort, my advice is to take a vacation. Three weeks should do the trick.

Just remember, life is about enjoying it, not earning money, because in the end you will take nothing with you.

22 I agree: get yourself out of your current environment (no work, change in daily life, change in place). If you work at a small campus in a rural area, take a trip to New York/LA/whatever. If you work at a University in the center of London, go to the Lake District for a week or two, go hiking in Corsica, just go bury your toes in the water of Ardèche, etc. Doesn't have to be very far, or very expensive, but it should take your mind to other things. Also: find good books, don't bring your computer, don't look for internet access . – F'x Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 8:48
1 @F'x: Sounds like good advice for me (and I'm not even burnt out). – Dave Clarke Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 8:53
3 I gave Dave Clarke's feedback a "yes" to was this helpful, but I have to add my own experience. If you're truly feeling burnt out, you need to do one of two things, step back and think about it, or jump in and just submit to it. I've felt burnt out with my job and been pushed to the edge where I lost all productivity, but then I realized, it's my life, and if I want to do it, I should "claim" the work as my own even if I am not the boss, And that really makes all the difference. Claim what you're doing, own it, and take pride in it, it will stave off burning out. – Asitaka Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 12:36

I find burnout a reoccurring effect, and to some extent it comes with academic research as you are continually trying solve problems and come up with new ideas. In this respect I find doing science like doing art - if I am not in the mood for doing it then the results won't be good and productivity is low, so the only solution is to stop completely. If you have got the research 'bug' (you normally love research and it preoccupies pretty much every waking hour of your day) then when you are ready you will come back to thinking about it and want to get back in the lab.

My advice is to do nothing until you are ready - don't think about the lab at all or worry that you are not doing anything, just rest completely - go for walks, watch moves, kill zombies, whatever.

As a post doc I have learnt to organise better, and back off if things get too hectic, taking an afternoon off for example. I still suffer a little at the end of the year, where I take a fortnight off but usually I am itching to get back after a week.

Burnout is a word of many meanings. But basically, it is characterized by a very strong physical exhaustion, a general anxiety and the feeling that you are a failure at work, that you will never meet the expectations of the persons you work with/for. This last feeling is strengthened by the fact that a person in burnout thinks she owes something to the others. A last symptom is depersonalisation : you have the feeling of living outside you and the world, you are a spectator of your life, not an actor of it anymore. If you have this last symptom, you should go to the doctor right now, not asap, now !

Most of the time, a burnout becomes a real medical problem (as a strong anxiety syndrom) and needs that a medical doctor takes action.

Besides giving a medication, a MD will give life advice such as :

Stop completely working for a while, do a sleep cure
Avoid any activity that relates to work (you're in academy, don't read complicated stuff, you're a plumber, don't do any home improvement)
Change your environment : go visit your old uncle who is a farmer in Ohio (or a fisherman in France, or ...)
Modify the way you live, be more involved in your own life. Sometimes, we (=people in academy) don't take the time to cook, to do sports, to rest without activity. Even if one can live happily with a 100% focus on work, it increases the odds of being burned out.
And my last advice : at first try to avoid seeing people from work. It is necessary, so that you can realize that they don't really need you and you don't really need them.

This is really me! About your last point, but how can I graduate without seeing them and being at my work? Right now the only way out that I can see out of this mess is suicide. I can no longer read, I only see me failing. Thanks for the advise to consult a doctor, though I am not sure if I will do it. – Abraham Commented Apr 13, 2013 at 5:06
I don't think it's intended as never see your coworkers. It is, however, important to shy away from meeting coworkers while you are trying to take a few weeks of distance from your work. If you keep meeting with them it is much harder to mentally let go of your work, even if only for a few days. You'll still graduate, you'll go back to work, but first you need to give yourself some well earned rest. Don't try to fight your own mind because you will likely lose that battle. Don't try to rationalize pushing yourself harder by imposing deadlines, because it won't help you "beat" your situation. – Marc Claesen Commented Mar 19, 2015 at 5:52

As an addition to the current suggestions, I can highly recommend adding some exercise to your daily life. Lab life, especially when intensive, makes as sedentary life style. You sit in front of the pc, by the wetlabs... etc

What kind of exercise you do is a preference thing, I personally love high-tempo ball sports like football (soccer) or squash. There's nothing like the endorphine high you get after wearing yourself completely and take a shower afterwards. It will help you get troubles off your mind as well. I can highly recommend squash for this purpose; when playing with an even opponent, an hours workout will get you to a point where forming shorter sentences is as complicated of an intellectual task as you can manage, which means no time/place for daily worries.

Another important thing is to get good sleep. Not just the hours in bed but the quality of sleep. If thoughts and worries about work are haunting you in the sub-conscience, it really doesn't matter how long you are in bed. In this aspect you'll have a positive synergy between physical workout and better sleep.

Hope it helps, and you'll start feeling better soon.

2 As JeffE would put it, Run, don't walk ! – Federico Poloni Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 19:55
This is a great answer. My life became an order of magnitude better after I started practicing sports and sleeping more (and not trying to wake up early to work on saturdays and sundays). – Jay Commented Nov 8, 2016 at 10:33

First of all, noone here can know what is really the matter with you. So we all find it rather alarming, because

"Not getting yourself to do exciting things" can be a symptom of serious medical problems.

However, after a "work-sprint" you may just be exhausted in a perfectly normal way. E.g. after I had handed in my Diplom thesis, I needed two weeks of basically doing nothing and sleeping a lot (incidentally and very typically, I got a cold as well). It's just paying back your debts in recreation, in the very literal meaning of the work.

Things to do:

Talk to your advisor. From what you wrote, you have a very good relationship. If you think you are in the normal need-for-holidays, tell him, and get the holidays.

During the holidays,

Spend much time outdoors. Sun (in case it's winter now where you are) and excercise is good for everyone and you may need to catch up due to the work sprint. Doesn't need to be real sports, for me personally it would be better to do "excercise" on a non-exhausting level, but longer. 5 - 8 h of walking, biking or slow cross country skiing would sound good to me, but your marks may vary of course. I'd say, a good amount of fresh air is when you fall into your bed at 8 pm and sleep till next morning...

Make sure you eat lots of vitamins

If you are afraid (i.e. you are not 100% sure that it isn't) something more serious may be the matter:

Don't wait until you know it is serious! By then, it will be very serious, and you may not be able any longer to seek the help you need.

Also talk to your advisor. If you think, holidays may help, take them. However, here are two additional "saftety lines":

Schedule a meeting for after your holidays to discuss whether you are again in working condition. Ask him now that he should get you to medical help if you are not in working condition after the holidays.
Ask him to come and get you to medical help if you don't show up after holidays.

In addition (before the holidays),

find out whether your university has some kind of psychological counselling (not sure about the correct English name), examination offices usually know that.

Alternatively, find out a psychological clinic (university hospital?) with emergency counselling hours (again, someone please correct my English)

If you don't get yourself to doing this now (till Monday noon), go to your advisor (or very good friends/relatives), tell them you have a psychological emergency and that they should get you to medical help immediately.

Normal exhaustion after intense work:

Personally, I know and love these exciting periods of intense work. However, they are exhausting, and you need the recreation afterwards as you'd recreation after a mountain tour of several weeks. Also, they don't happen every day (I think one couldn't survive that, even though they are incredibly good). BUt from what I know from fellow researchers, these a serious driving force for quite some of us. Welcome!

Even though you are now exhausted, remember how good it is. I think a healthy balance is if you are exhausted like you are exhausted after a big physical effort. I remember them like physically strenuous tours.

They are not an every-day experience, but odds are that this wasn't the last experience of the sort :-) And, while this one may have been too much of the good, you can learn knowing when it is enough (and/or to plan for recreation afterwards). For me, this got easier once I had the experience that new such spells of incredibly good work do come.

For me, having a structure is usually something that brings a good balance.

One of the reasons PhD students can get very disorganized and end up wasting a lot of time is the lack of a fixed schedule, this is both needed to have a productive life and a balance between your work and personal life.

Just try to keep by an schedule, and you'll see you will get more relaxed.

4 Sure. That prevents any future burnouts. But what can be done once you get into one? – Stressed Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 8:15
The only way to get out is to go back to your life, take care – Leon palafox Commented Feb 1, 2013 at 8:25

I agree with a lot of the other answers, but I have a few additional ideas that haven't been suggested yet.

Do you find yourself thinking about this project at odd moments, even when you're supposedly resting or doing something else? You need to reset your mind by clearing out this project and replacing it with something else for a while. It needs to be sufficiently compelling to get your attention away from the thing that has filled your mind for 4 weeks. Then, after a bit, your enthusiasm for your old project will regenerate and you can be excited about it again.

When you get sick of working on a particular project, one thing that can sometimes be helpful is to spend some time (perhaps a week or two, maybe more) working on a very different project of some sort.

Another possibility is that you are not actually burned out. You may instead have conditioned yourself to associate this project with working very long hours. Now, whenever you think about working on it, you subconsciously feel like if you work on it, it will consume your life again and you don't have the energy for that. This is a bit harder to deal with. To continue to work on this, you have to break the conditioning. If you can force yourself to work on the project, but with more reasonable hours, that may help.

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Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences - Postgraduate Students' Association

PhD Student Burnout

Fmhs-pgsa blog.

Doctoral study is associated with high levels of anxiety and depressive symptomatology, and poor wellbeing overall (1) . Unsurprisingly, the prevalence of burnout is also high among this population (2) . Along with PhD students, nursing and medical students also suffer from disproportionate rates of burnout (3) . This is not a great omen for PhD students in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.

What is burnout?

Burnout is defined as ‘‘ a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy ’’ (4) .

Exhaustion may include fatigue and low energy due to the draining of emotional resources (5) . Cynicism may refer to an attitude of distancing from work or feelings of indifference towards work. Inefficacy refers to lower rates of success at work or reduced accomplishments.

It’s important to note that burnout is not a failure of the individual. While precise definitions of burnout may vary, the core issue is chronic workplace stress due to poor management. Most of all, burnout reflects a failure of the system.

Universities should take note that the experience of burnout is linked to attrition intentions among PhD students (6.7) .

HOW DOES BURNOUT FEEL FOR PHD STUDENTS?

For PhD students, burnout may feel like high levels of chronic stress . PhD students often serve in a variety of roles as teachers, students, and researchers, and this unclear delineation of roles may in itself be a source of burnout stress.

Students experiencing burnout may feel under constant strain, unhappy, and experience depressive symptoms . Students may experience sleeping difficulties due to worries and an inability to overcome difficulties.

Additionally, burnout feels like emotional exhaustion. Students experiencing burnout may feel increasingly irritable and strained. Students might feel resentful, taken for granted, and with nothing left to give. Depersonalization, or a feeling of detachment, may be experienced such that students appear emotionally cold.

Feelings of worthlessness and lack of accomplishment are typical during episodes of burnout. Students may feel an absence of motivation to complete their work.

Finally, physical symptoms may accompany the psychological symptoms of burnout. Fatigue, exhaustion, headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, hypertension, colds, and flu are among the physical symptoms associated with burnout (8.9).

I think I’m getting better at recognising burnout because it’s happened so much and it’s getting quite normal. For me, I just tend to feel tired a lot and start to experience apathy and anhedonia. For me, recovery requires taking long breaks (at least a few days) from work, and finding time to reconnect with the people and things that I love.

What contributes to burnout?

Key predictors of burnout among doctoral students include:

Chronic stress (9, 10)
Low frequency of supervision (7)
Lack of satisfaction with supervision (2, 7, 10)
Lack of equality among researchers (7)
Poor sleep quality (11)
Bullying by faculty members (12)
Feeling a lack of belongingness to a team (13)
Conflict in work responsibilities (2, 13)
Low autonomy (13)

Perfectionism, subjective appraisal of employment opportunities, and an existing psychiatric disorder may also increase risk of burnout (6, 14).

What reduces risk of burnout?

The risk of burnout may be decreased by:

Doing PhD in hometown (2)
Quality supervision- emotional, social, and informational support (7, 10, 15, 16)
Equal treatment as part of research community (7)
Regular supervisory meetings (7)
Sense of belonging (17)
Social support (18)

Of the predictors and risk factors, supervision appears to have a consistent and powerful impact on burnout for doctoral students. Quality supervision has a buffering effect on stress which social support from family/friends cannot match (16) .

I think the key to avoiding burnout during PhD is 1) setting realistic milestones, and 2) making sure you meet them along the way. Often PhD students set unrealistic milestones and feel like a failure if these are not met. The best way around this is to check in with your supervisor and your peers who may have more experience in how long tasks may take. And secondly, three to four years seems like a really long time but it will really be over quite quickly. Therefore students should work consistently throughout the PhD to ensure that these realistic milestones are met. Making progress in small but consistent increments should help avoid overload and risk of burnout. Remember it is a marathon not a sprint!

HOW CAN YOU PROTECT AGAINST BURNOUT?

The prevention of burnout is not an individual responsibility, but a collective one. Universities should identify risk factors for burnout and attempt to mitigate these. These efforts might include specialised training to aid doctoral supervisors in developing constructive and supportive leadership styles; clear and comprehensive information on the roles and responsibilities of doctoral students; and fostering of a cohesive community for doctoral students, faculty, and staff (1, 10, 15, 16, 19).

In the absence of power to drastically change university systems and culture, an individual doctoral student might be able to slightly reduce burnout risk by:

Engaging with peers.

Peer support has been shown to help with motivation, identification of stressful tasks and workloads, and confidence to talk with supervisors about changes that are needed to prevent burnout (20).

Active involvement in the academic community.

Students are more likely to feel empowered when they actively engage in the research community (17) . Students may attend conferences or participate in academic events or seminars to increase their involvement.

Avoid overload.

It can be difficult for students to say no to extra work due to several factors including the power imbalance between supervisors and students. But if students can cut down on tasks that don’t serve them, this would be beneficial (19).

Prioritise sleep.

Sleep was frequently mentioned in studies of doctoral student burnout. Better sleep quality and duration is a modifiable factor that may reduce the risk of transitioning from ‘stressed’ to ‘exhausted’ (11).

Levecque K, Anseel F, de Beuckelaer A, van der Heyden J, Gisle L. Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy . 2017;46(4):868-879. doi:10.1016/J.RESPOL.2017.02.008
Sorrel MA, Ángel Martínez-Huertas J, Arconada M. It Must have been Burnout: Prevalence and Related Factors among Spanish PhD Students. The Spanish Journal of Psychology . 2020;23:1-13. doi:10.1017/SJP.2020.31
Bullock G, Kraft L, Amsden K, … WGC medical, 2017 undefined. The prevalence and effect of burnout on graduate healthcare students. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov . Accessed August 1, 2022. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5661741/
Maslach C, … WSA review of, 2001 undefined. Job burnout. dspace.library.uu.nl . Accessed August 1, 2022. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/13606/maslach_01_jobburnout.pdf?sequen
Schaufeli WB, Martínez IM, Pinto AM, Salanova M, Barker AB. Burnout and engagement in university students a cross-national study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology . 2002;33(5):464-481. doi:10.1177/0022022102033005003
Nagy G, Fang C, Hish A, … LKCS, 2019 undefined. Burnout and mental health problems in biomedical doctoral students. Am Soc Cell Biol . 2019;18(2):1-14. doi:10.1187/cbe.18-09-0198
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Symptoms of professional burnout: A review of the empirical evidence.: EBSCOhost. Accessed August 1, 2022. https://web.s.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=b9d14b7e-56fe-4370-8d56-049a6bad9a99%40redis
Meis L de, Velloso A, Lannes D, … MCBJ of, 2003 undefined. The growing competition in Brazilian science: rites of passage, stress and burnout. SciELO Brasil . 36(9):2003. Accessed August 1, 2022. https://www.scielo.br/j/bjmbr/a/X9Fby6spKPD7B9mt4PcSHsF/abstract/?lang=en
Allen HK, Lilly F, Green KM, Zanjani F, Vincent KB, Arria AM. Graduate Student Burnout: Substance Use, Mental Health, and the Moderating Role of Advisor Satisfaction. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction . 2022;20(2):1130-1146. doi:10.1007/S11469-020-00431-9/TABLES/3
Allen HK, Barrall AL, Vincent KB, Arria AM. Stress and Burnout Among Graduate Students: Moderation by Sleep Duration and Quality. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine . 2021;28(1):21-28. doi:10.1007/S12529-020-09867-8/FIGURES/2
Goodboy A, Martin M, Johnson Z. Communication Research Reports The Relationships Between Workplace Bullying by Graduate Faculty with Graduate Students’ Burnout and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. doi:10.1080/08824096.2015.1052904
Kusurkar RA, van der Burgt SME, Isik U, et al. Burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine: the BEeP study. Perspectives on Medical Education . 2021;10(2):110-117. doi:10.1007/S40037-020-00637-6/FIGURES/2
Chun KH. 의과대학ㆍ의학전문대학원생의 학업소진 양상과 관련 변인들과의 관계 Relationship between Academic Burnout of Medical and Graduate Students and Related Variables. Korean Medical Education Review . 2014;16(2):77-87. Accessed August 1, 2022. http://www.ysmed.net/kmer
Devine K, Hunter KH. Innovations in Education and Teaching International PhD student emotional exhaustion: the role of supportive supervision and self-presentation behaviours PhD student emotional exhaustion: the role of supportive supervision and self-presentation behaviours. InnovatIons In EducatIon and tEachIng IntErnatIonal . 2017;54(4):335-344. doi:10.1080/14703297.2016.1174143
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Rigg 1 J, Day 2 J, Adler 2 H, Rigg J. Emotional Exhaustion in Graduate Students: The Role of Engagement, Self-Efficacy and Social Support. Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology . 2013;3(2). doi:10.5539/jedp.v3n2p138
Peterson U, Bergströ G, Samuelsson M, et al. Reflecting peer-support groups in the prevention of stress and burnout: randomized controlled trial. Journal of Advanced Nursing . 2008;63(5):506-516. doi:10.1111/J.1365-2648.2008.04743.X

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Profiles of doctoral students’ experience of ethics in supervision: an inter-country comparison

Open access
Published: 24 August 2022
Volume 86 , pages 617–636, ( 2023 )

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Erika Löfström ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0838-9626 1 ,
Jouni Peltonen ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7458-6532 2 ,
Liezel Frick ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4797-3323 3 ,
Katrin Niglas ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0867-9594 4 &
Kirsi Pyhältö ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8766-0559 1 , 3

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The purpose of this study was to examine variation in doctoral students’ experiences of ethics in doctoral supervision and how these experiences are related to research engagement, burnout, satisfaction, and intending to discontinue PhD studies. Data were collected from 860 doctoral students in Finland, Estonia, and South Africa. Four distinct profiles of ethics experience in doctoral supervision were identified, namely students puzzled by the supervision relationship, strugglers in the ethical landscape, seekers of ethical allies, and students with ethically trouble-free experiences. The results show that the profiles were related to research engagement, satisfaction with supervision and studies, and burnout. Not experiencing any major ethical problems in supervision was associated with experiencing higher engagement and satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies and low levels of exhaustion and cynicism. Similar profiles were identified across the countries, yet with different emphases. Both Estonian and South African PhD students were overrepresented in the profile of students with ethically trouble-free experiences, while the Finnish students were underrepresented in this profile. The Finnish PhD students were overrepresented among the seekers of ethical allies. Profiles provide information that can alert supervisors and administrators about the extent of the risk of burnout or discontinuing of PhD studies based on students’ negative experiences of the ethics in supervision.

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Introduction

Supervision calls for pedagogical considerations of ethics as practiced in the student-supervisor relationship (Halse & Bansel, 2012 ). We have previously shown that Finnish PhD students’ experiences of ethics in supervision predict research engagement, satisfaction with doctoral studies and supervision, burnout, and intentions to discontinue studies (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ). This indicates that sustainable experiences of ethics in the supervision relationship may not only provide a buffer against attrition (Cloete et al., 2015 ) and mental health problems documented in the literature on PhD students (Levecque et al., 2017 ; Reevy & Deason, 2014 ) but could provide a resource allowing doctoral students to flourish (Shin & Jung, 2014 ; Vekkaila et al., 2018 ) . In turn, negative experiences related to ethics in supervision may increase the risk of burnout and dropping out from doctoral studies (Jacobsson & Gillström, 2006 ). However, not much research is available on how doctoral students differ in their experiences of ethics in supervision and how these differences contribute to their research engagement, satisfaction, burnout, and intentions of discontinuing PhD studies. Even less is known about the variation in such experiences across different sociocultural contexts of doctoral education. This study provides insight into how doctoral students differ in their experiences of ethics in supervision and how these differences contribute to their research engagement, satisfaction, burnout, and discontinuing PhD studies and identifies variation in three distinct sociocultural contexts.

Theoretical underpinnings

Ethics in supervision

Ethics in supervision consist of components of normative principles about acceptable and nonacceptable behavior (ethics) and values that are essential in everyday practices, such as honesty and transparency (integrity) (Jordan, 2013 ). Here, we use the term ethics in supervision to encompass both dimensions in doctoral supervision. Supervision includes both expectations regarding moral positions and acting on those positions. Questions of ethics and integrity are simultaneously present in expectations regarding how research ought to be carried out and how the relationship between a supervisor and a doctoral candidate is construed. We operationalized ethics in supervision through a set of principles familiar from codes of conduct for researchers, such as the Singapore Statement (World Conferences on Research Integrity, 2010 ), and the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2017 ), and research ethics guidelines, such as the Belmont Report (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical & Behavioral Research, 1979 ) and the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association WMA, 2013 ), to name a few. These principles include respect for autonomy , beneficence , non-maleficence , justice , and fidelity .

Respect for autonomy is a fundamental ethical principle and refers to the respect for individuals’ right to make decisions concerning themselves (Kitchener, 1985 , 2000 ). In doctoral supervision, this refers to providing sufficient space for the doctoral student to make choices regarding his or her research (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2014 ). The autonomy experienced by doctoral students is shown to be a substantial source of engagement (Vekkaila et al., 2013 ). This does not mean that supervisors should not guide doctoral students in finding proper directions and helping them to make informed choices in the research process. If doctoral students’ freedom of choice or space to explore their own ideas are severely limited, or they feel that different options cannot be raised for discussion, it can infringe on their development in becoming independent researchers (Lee, 2008 ). There is evidence that students’ ethical views develop when supervisors show respect for the students’ own decisions regarding their research (Gray & Jordan, 2012 ). Furthermore, the lack of support that is experienced in the transition into an autonomous and independent researcher may expedite doctoral students’ decisions to discontinue PhD studies (Leijen et al., 2016 ).

Beneficence refers to an intention to do good for others. In supervisory relationships, this entails supporting the doctoral student in developing increased competence and independence and ultimately gaining a doctoral degree. Failure to provide benefits to the doctoral student can be a consequence of insufficient content, pedagogical, and supervisory competence including confusion about role expectations (Jairam & Kahl, 2012 ; Parker-Jenkins, 2018 ).

The principle of non-maleficence is compromised when the doctoral student or his or her rights are harmed in one way or another. In supervisory practices, this may take place as misappropriation or exploitation of a doctoral student’s work or through psychologically confounded relationships, involving a parent/child-like relations or an intimate relationship between a supervisor and a supervisee (Goodyear et al., 1992 ; Löfström & Pyhältö, 2014 ; Parker-Jenkins, 2018 ).

Supervisors use a range of strategies to level out the issues of power asymmetry in their pursuit of supporting doctoral students’ well-being and development (Elliot & Kobayashi, 2018 ). However, asymmetrical power relationships can cause breaches of the principle of justice (Kitchener, 1985 ). Doctoral students may find it difficult to assert themselves in situations in which seniority and expectations of gratitude influence ownership, authorship, or workload (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2014 ; Yarwood-Ross & Haigh, 2014 ).

The principle of fidelity is a vital basis for sustaining any relationship. It includes keeping promises and treating others with respect (Kitchener, 1985 ; 2000 ). In supervision, breaches of fidelity involve failure to keep a supervision promise. The reasons for discontinued supervision may be fully comprehensible, such as a supervisor retiring, moving away, taking parental leave, or falling ill (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2014 ; Wisker & Robinson, 2013 ; Yarwood-Ross & Haigh, 2014 ), but sometimes less so, that is, outright neglect (Johnson et al., 2000 ). In either case, the doctoral student may experience abandonment. Supervisor unavailability is one of the most disruptive aspects for progression in the doctoral journey (McAlpine, 2012 ). Insufficient supervision increases the risk of discontinuing doctoral studies (Pyhältö et al., 2012 ).

These five ethical principles converge on three thematic dimensions: first, the dimension ethical aspects in the research community, including social structures and programmatic aspects (FORM) , encompasses the principles of autonomy, beneficence, and fidelity. Second, the dimension fairness and adherence to common formal and informal rules as a means of ensuring equal treatment of doctoral students (RULE) encompasses justice, non-maleficence, and fidelity. Third, the dimension respect in personal relations (CARE) encompasses autonomy and beneficence. Positive experiences of these dimensions contribute to engagement and satisfaction while negative experiences contribute to burnout and intentions to drop out (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ).

Combining these dimensions of ethics in supervision raises a question about the interrelation between the constructs (for approaches related to burnout and engagement, see Shirom, 2011 ; Larsen & McGraw, 2011 ; Shraga & Shirom, 2009 ). If these dimensions are independent, one may score high on one and low on the other dimensions. For instance, a PhD student might simultaneously experience high levels of fairness and equal treatment of doctoral students (RULE) and lack of respect in personal relations (CARE). Alternatively, they may be dependent, and a high score on one dimension would correlate with a high score on the other. Applying a person-centered approach to PhD students’ experiences of ethics in supervision allows us to explore the question in more detail.

Study engagement and study burnout

Study engagement has been suggested as being a hallmark of optimal doctoral experience, characterized by sense of vigor , dedication , and absorption (Vekkaila et al., 2018 ; see seminal work on work engagement by Bakker & Demerouti, 2008 ; González-Romá et al., 2006 ; Schaufeli et al., 2002 ). Such doctoral experiences encompass immersion in research, a feeling of time passing quickly, strong psychological involvement in research combined with a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, positive challenge, and high levels of energy resulting in positive outcomes in post-PhD researcher careers (Shin & Jung, 2014 ; Vekkaila et al., 2018 ) . Doctoral students who receive sufficient supervisory and research community support are more likely to experience higher levels of engagement than their less fortunate peers (Pyhältö et al., 2016 ).

Problems in the supervisory relationship and lack of faculty support appear to be related to increased risk of burnout (Peluso et al., 2011 ). PhD burnout resulting from extensive and prolonged stress has two main symptoms, namely exhaustion characterized by a lack of emotional energy and feeling drained and tired of doctoral studies and cynicism comprising feeling that one’s research has lost its meaning and distancing oneself from the work and members of the research community (Maslach & Leiter, 2008 ). Research environment attributes, such as sufficient supervisory and research community support, sense of belonging, and good work-environment fit, have been found to be associated with reduced burnout risk and increased levels of engagement among doctoral students (Hunter & Devine, 2016 ). Burnout entails negative consequences including reduced research productivity, reduced engagement, reduced interest in research, study prolongation, and increased risk of discontinuing doctoral studies (Ali & Kohun, 2007 ; Pyhältö et al., 2018 ; Rigg et al., 2013 ).

Little is known about individual differences in doctoral students’ experiences of the ethics in supervision, and how these differences are related to supervision arrangements and student well-being or a lack thereof. The theoretical underpinnings and results from earlier studies in Finland (e.g., Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ) inspired us to hypothesize that the underlying structures concerning the experiences of ethics in supervision may be the same across different cultural contexts as similar problems have been described elsewhere (see Muthanna & Alduais, 2021 ). Therefore, we set out to identify profiles of doctoral students’ experiences of ethics in supervision and their association with engagement, burnout, and intentions to drop out in the historically diverse but culturally and regionally relatively similar contexts of Finland and Estonia, in comparison to the culturally and regionally rather different context of South Africa.

These countries have in common high levels of attrition and distress and exhaustion in addition to prolonged studies, insufficient supervision, and poor integration of doctoral students into the research community (ASSAf, 2010 ; Herman, 2011 ; Leijen et al., 2016 ; Stubb et al., 2011 ; Vassil & Solvak, 2012 ). There is evidence that 35–45% of Finnish doctoral students have considered discontinue studies (Pyhältö et al., 2016 ). In South Africa, the attrition rate amongst doctoral students is 22% nationally in the first year with less than half of candidates graduating within 7 years (Cloete et al., 2015 ). In Estonia, the reported attrition in the phase prior to planning our study was 34% (Vassil & Solvak, 2012 ). Outcomes such as exhaustion and attrition have been shown to be related to negative experiences of ethics in supervision (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ). These shared problems in doctoral education and differences in the settings make it relevant to study the chosen countries from the perspective of ethics in supervision and compare the results in order to understand universal and context-specific aspects of doctoral students’ experiences of the ethics in supervision. Following the above, we posed the research questions:

How do Finnish, South African, and Estonian PhD students experience the ethics in supervision, engagement, burnout, and satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies?

What kind of profiles do experiences of the ethics in supervision, engagement, burnout, and satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies constitute among Finnish, South African, and Estonian PhD students?

Is there a relationship between the experiences of ethics in supervision profiles and supervisory arrangements (frequency of supervision, number of supervisors, and individual or group supervision)?

As profiles of doctoral students’ experiences of the ethics in supervision have not been identified before using a broad set of key variables of importance in the doctoral experience, we were interested in the profiles as such in the comparative context set out for our study.

In Finland, doctoral studies are research-intensive rather than course-centered, and research generally begins immediately (Pyhältö et al., 2012 ). In Estonia, the recent reform of doctoral studies introduced a substantial amount of course work to the curriculum and regardless of the emphasis put on research, the first year of a doctoral program is often devoted to course work, leaving less time for research activities. In South Africa, doctoral studies are research oriented. Although professional doctorates are now included in the South African Higher Education Qualifications Sub-framework (Council on Higher Education, 2014 ), doctoral programs continue predominantly to be by research only, with no credit-bearing coursework.

Tuition fees

In Finland, doctoral education is publicly funded, and there are no tuition fees for students. However, there is no automatic funding for studying at the doctoral level. Students apply for competitive funding from a number of foundations that support research or find employment at the university on various projects, or outside the university (Pyhältö et al., 2011 ). In addition, in Estonia, doctoral education is publicly funded (Lepp et al., 2016 ). Since 2012, every student who is granted a doctoral study place receives a grant for 4 years. Recently, several Estonian universities have introduced a policy by which they grant doctoral students an income comparable to the average salary, but the Estonian data were collected in 2016, before this policy came into existence, and the grant was substantially smaller. Consequently, there has been a tradition of finding additional employment in or outside the university. In South Africa, the doctoral education system is funded by a combination of government subsidies and student fees (Cloete et al., 2015 ). Many students are already employed when enrolling for a doctorate or are soon usurped into academic positions. However, in humanities, arts, and social sciences, many students receive little or no financial support, while funded full time doctoral study is more common in STEM.

Supervision arrangements

In Finland, doctoral students are expected to have two named supervisors. One of these is generally a full professor. It is common that doctoral students take part in research seminars organized by a supervisor (Pyhältö et al., 2012 ). In Estonia, doctoral students must have at least one named supervisor at the professorial level, but if the supervisor is less experienced, the doctoral program committee commonly assigns a senior supervisor to support the process. A similar practice of teaming up inexperienced supervisors with more experienced ones is in place in South Africa, although a supervisor does not need to be at a professorial level. Given the current lack of suitably qualified supervisory capacity in a variety of fields, inexperienced supervisors are often allocated to students, and single student-supervisor dyadic arrangements are still common (Cloete et al., 2015 ).

Types of doctoral dissertation

In both Finland and Estonia, a doctoral dissertation can be written either as a monograph or as an article compilation, with the latter being more prevalent in many fields. The articles are usually co-authored with the supervisors and sometimes with other senior researchers (Lepp et al., 2016 ; Pyhältö et al., 2012 ). In South Africa, doctoral dissertations follow a variety of formats, including both monographs and publication-based theses, or various permutations of these formats (Odendaal & Frick, 2017 ).

Participants

The data were collected at four universities in 2016 and 2017 as independent surveys. The universities included two in Finland, one in Estonia and one in South Africa. All four have an international profile and play important national and regional roles. All are research universities, but they are at different stages of building up their research profiles. The response rate in each country was 25–26%. The data set consisted of 860 doctoral students with a mean age of 37.59 (Table 1 ). The largest subset, namely the Finnish data, are representative of age and disciplines, with women slightly overrepresented among the respondents.

Participation in the study was voluntary and based on informed consent. No incentives were offered. No personal identifiers were collected. In Finland and Estonia, an ethics review is not required for anonymous survey research involving healthy volunteer adults (Finnish National Board on Research Integrity, 2019 ; Estonian Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, 2017 ). In South Africa, an ethics review was conducted according to the ethical code of conduct of the university.

We utilized the Ethical Issues in Supervision Scale (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ), which contains 15 Likert-type items reflecting breaches of five ethical principles, namely respect of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, and fidelity. The items address exploitation, misappropriation, lack of collective culture, lack of well-being, supervision competence, narrowness of perspective, imposition of supervisor’s views and values, inadequate supervision, abandonment, inequality, and unfair authorship.

Items from the Doctoral Experience Survey (Pyhältö et al., 2011 , 2016 ) were included to measure burnout (exhaustion and cynicism, drawing on Maslach et al., 2001 ) and engagement (originally adapted from Schaufeli et al., 2002 ) (Pyhältö et al., 2018 ). These items utilized Likert-type response scales (1 = fully disagree, 7 = fully agree).

Additional background items with various response scales from the Doctoral Experience Survey included: number of primary supervisors (one supervisor/two supervisors/no supervisor/other individual or entity); intention to drop out (yes/no); supervision model (whether the student received supervision mainly individually/in a group/or both); frequency of supervision (daily/weekly/once a month/once in 2 months/once in 6 months/less frequently); satisfaction with (a) doctoral studies and (b) supervision (1 = very dissatisfied, 7 = very satisfied); considering changing supervisor (yes/no); actual change of supervisor (yes/no).

After an initial screening of data, exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were performed to investigate the factor structure of the three scales: ethical issues in supervision, exhaustion, and engagement. We carried out a series of EFAs with maximum likelihood extraction and both orthogonal and oblique rotations. We based the decision about the number of factors to retain on both the eigenvalues of the factors and the theoretical salience of the rotated factors (see Table 2 for scales used for EFA and their factor scores). The factor structure is similar to the three-factor structure in Löfström and Pyhältö ( 2020 ), in which the five theoretically informed ethical principles converged into three thematic dimensions. The analyses of the burnout scale and the engagement scale supported a two-factor and a one-factor solution, respectively (see Table 2 ).

Doctoral student profiles of ethical experiences in supervision were identified through K-means cluster analysis performed on the three Ethical Issues in Supervision subscale scores ( FORM, RULE and CARE ). We performed several analyses with one to five clusters and selected a four-cluster solution, which was the best model both content-wise and in terms of parsimony. For inter-country comparisons, we used one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and suitable post hoc tests. Due to the differences in our subsample sizes, we used Gabriel’s test when we assumed that variances of three groups were homogenous and Tamhane’s T2 when this assumption was not supported by the data. We also used chi-square tests to detect any differences there might be in the student composition based on gender, format of doctoral dissertation, and supervisory arrangements as well as the differences between the countries in proportions in the profiles of ethical experiences.

The ethical experience profiles were analyzed in relation to experiences of engagement and burnout, satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies, and intentions to drop out through ANOVA, again along with Gabriel’s and Tamhane’s T2 multiple comparison tests and chi-square test. We determined the magnitude of the effect sizes (Cohen’s d ) referring to Cohen ( 1988 ): small ( d = 0.2), medium ( d = 0.5), and large ( d = 0.8) effect size.

There were differences between countries concerning the doctoral students’ experiences in all three dimensions of ethics in supervision, engagement, burnout, satisfaction to supervision, and satisfaction to doctoral studies (see Table 3 ).

Because the cell sizes are unequal, but the homogeneity of variance assumption was supported by the data, we used Gabriel’s post hoc test here for pairwise comparisons when we assumed that the variances of the groups included in the comparison were equal which was supported by the data. According to Gabriel’s test, Finland differed from Estonia ( p < 0.01, d = 0.30) and South Africa ( p < 0.001, d = 0.30) on the dimension ethical issues in the research community; including social structures and programmatic aspects (FORM ) in that the students exhibited lower scores, that is, a less positive experience. On the dimension fairness and adherence to common formal and informal rules as a means of ensuring equal treatment of doctoral students (RULE) , the South African experience differed slightly from that in Finland ( p > 0.05, d = 0.21) with higher scores, that is more positive experiences, while the Estonian score was in the middle indicating no statistically significant differences when compared to the results from the other two countries. On the dimension respect in personal relations (CARE) , Estonian doctoral students scored slightly lower, that is, more positive experiences, when compared to Finnish ( p < 0.05, d = 0.30) and South African ( p < 0.05, d = 0.29) PhD students.

South African doctoral students reported higher scores in engagement than their Finnish ( p < 0.001, d = 0.29) and Estonian ( p < 0.05, d = 0.31) colleagues. While the doctoral students from the three countries differed neither on cynicism nor drop out intentions, there was a difference between Finland and South Africa in exhaustion. South African students reported more exhaustion than their Finnish colleagues did ( p < 0.05, d = 0.46). However, Finnish doctoral students were less satisfied with supervision than South African students were ( p < 0.001, d = 0.23) and showed a lower satisfaction level in doctoral studies than both South African ( p < 0.001, d = 0.43) and Estonian students ( p < 0.01, d = 0.32).

In a joint cluster analysis, we identified four doctoral students’ profiles according to their experiences of ethics in supervision (Fig. 1 ).

Ethics in supervision profiles

Profile 1: Students puzzled by the supervision relationship (referred to as the puzzled ) ( n = 160, 18.6%) had relatively high values on the FORM and RULE subscale scores, thus expressing an absence of ethical problems in terms of supervision arrangements, availability of supervisory support, and experiences of just and fair treatment. Nevertheless, they experienced challenges with the supervisory relationship, such as issues with the adequacy of the supervisory support and facilitation of independence.

Profile 2: Strugglers in the ethical landscape (referred to as strugglers ) ( n = 96, 11.2%) expressed experiences of exploitation, misappropriation, lack of collective culture, lack of well-being, low supervisor competence, narrowness of perspective, imposition of supervisor’s views and values, inadequate supervision, abandonment, inequality, and unfair authorship. This profile stands out as having consistently the most negative experiences on all dimensions of the ethical landscape of supervision. We wish to remind the reader that low values, that is, an absence of problems, for the CARE variable indicate positive experiences.

Profile 3: Seekers of Ethical Allies (referred to as seekers ) ( n = 192, 22.3%) had relatively high average scores on RULE but struggled somewhat with FORM. They expressed the view that there was a general absence of ethical problems in terms of supervision arrangements, availability of supervisory support, and experiences of just and fair treatment, but their experience with the ethical landscape was not entirely positive. Ethical problems are likely to be located at the structural and organizational levels and in the relationships within the research community. They feel taken care of in terms of the adequacy of the supervisory support, experiencing that their supervisors do care about their well-being and development. The profile suggests that supervisors are sufficiently experienced to be allies in any ethical confrontations with other parties.

Profile 4: Students with ethically trouble-free experience (referred to as the trouble-free ) ( n = 412, 47.9%) had the highest scores on both FORM and RULE subscale scores and a low average score on the CARE subscale score, indicating an absence of ethical problems in terms of supervision arrangements, availability of supervisory support, and experiences of just and fair treatment. They feel taken care of in terms of the adequacy of the supervisory support, and their experience is that supervisors do care about their well-being and development.

The results of ANOVA tests revealed significant differences between the four profiles in engagement, exhaustion, cynicism, satisfaction with supervision, and satisfaction with doctoral studies (Table 4 ).

As a point of departure, we assumed that students in the four profiles diverge in their experiences of satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies, engagement and burnout, and intentions to discontinue PhD studies. We performed ANOVAs with Gabriel’s or Tamhane’s T2 post hoc test. Pairwise comparisons with Tamhane’s T2 indicated that differences in engagement appeared between profiles. The puzzled and the strugglers ( p < 0.05, d = 0.35); the puzzled and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.57); the strugglers and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.87); and the seekers and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.60) differed from each other in engagement. Overall, the trouble-free were more engaged than the other profiles, but also the Puzzled deviated in a positive way. The effect size was large in the difference between the strugglers and the trouble-free .

As for exhaustion, Gabriels’s test indicated that differences appeared between the puzzled and the strugglers ( p < 0.001, d = 0.51); puzzled and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.61); strugglers and the seekers (p > 0.001, d = 0.73); strugglers and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 1.05); and the seekers and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.34). The strugglers exhibited the highest levels of exhaustion, and the trouble-free the lowest, with the puzzled and the seekers placing in between with relatively similar levels of cynicism. The effect size was large in the difference between the strugglers and the trouble-free .

We used Tamhane’s T2 to examine the differences between the groups on cynicism and found statistically significant differences between the puzzled and the strugglers ( p < 0.05, d = 0.41); the puzzled and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.88); the strugglers and the seekers ( p < 0.01, d = 0.45); the strugglers and the trouble-free ( p 0.001, d = 1.18); and the seekers and the trouble-free ( p < 0.001, d = 0.77). The strugglers exhibited the highest levels of cynicism, and the trouble-free the lowest, with the puzzled and the seekers placing in between with relatively similar levels of cynicism. The effect size was large in the difference between the puzzled and the trouble-free .

Tamhane’s T2 indicated that in satisfaction with supervision all the profiles differed significantly from each other. The trouble-free were more satisfied than the puzzled ( p < 0.001, d = 0.97), the strugglers ( p < 0.001, d = 2.70) and the seekers ( p < 0.001, d = 1.46). The puzzled were more satisfied with supervision than the strugglers ( p < 0.001, d = 1.72) and the seekers ( p < 0.001, d = 0.65). The seekers were more satisfied with supervision than the strugglers were ( p < 0.001, d = 0.84). The effect sizes were large in the difference between the trouble-free and the puzzled and the seekers and between the puzzled and the strugglers .

Gabriel’s test suggested that the trouble-free were more satisfied with their doctoral studies than the puzzled ( p < 0.001, d = 0.65), the strugglers ( p < 0.001, d = 1.62), and the seekers ( p < 0.001, d = 0.89). The puzzled were more satisfied than the strugglers were ( p < 0.001, d = 1.01), and the seekers were more satisfied than the strugglers were ( p < 0.001, d = 0.71). The effect sizes were large in the difference between the trouble-free and the strugglers and the seekers and between the puzzled and the strugglers .

For comparisons on intentions to drop out and more detailed aspects of supervision, chi-square test was used (see Table 5 ). More often, the strugglers harbored ideas of dropping out and had considered a change of supervisor more often than the other profiles. The seekers , however, had the highest rate of actually changing supervisor. Gender and model of supervision were not statistically significantly related to profile membership.

The representation of students from the three countries varied in the four profiles. The chi-square test we used to examine the differences between countries showed ( χ 2 [6, N = 860] = 24.094, p < 0.001) that Estonian doctoral students were underrepresented among the puzzled (observed count = 7/expected count 16) and slightly overrepresented among the trouble-free (52/41) . Finnish students were under-represented in the trouble-free profile (214/249), while at the same time overrepresented in seekers (132/114) . South African students were underrepresented among the seekers (42/59) and overrepresented among the trouble-free (146/126) .

The results show four profiles of doctoral students’ experience of ethics in supervision. To our knowledge, this is the first study identifying profiles that combine experiences of supervision and ethics among PhD students in a cross-national design. The results indicate that the ethics in supervision profiles are distinct, yet related dimensions of the ethics in supervision experiences. Despite contextual differences in emphases, the same structure holds for the full data set, further strengthening the validity of the identified profiles beyond a single context, and at the same time suggests that despite cultural differences the underpinning structure of experiences of supervision in ethics are the same across the contexts. Had this not been the case, we presume it had been revealed in the results as we compared culturally and regionally relatively similar contexts (Finland and Estonia), and culturally and regionally rather different contexts (Finland/Estonia and South Africa). The profiles can help institutions to analyze the ethical landscape of doctoral education and to identify challenges. The profiles can provide information about the extent of the risk zone of burnout or dropout based on negative experiences of the ethics in supervision.

The ethics in supervision materialized through the doctoral students’ experiences of Ethical issues in the research community, including social structures and programmatic aspects (FORM ), Fairness and adherence to common formal and informal rules as a means of ensuring equal treatment of doctoral students (RULE) , and Respect in personal relations (CARE). The Finnish students’ experiences emerged in general as less positive than the experiences of their Estonian and South-African peers. Qualitative analyses of Finnish doctoral students’ experiences of the ethics in supervision indicate a high level of sensitivity about ethical aspects (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2014 , 2017 ), which may help explain why their answers were more critical. However, since we do not have comparison data from Estonia and South Africa, we can only speculate.

The profiles were the students puzzled by the supervision relationship; Strugglers in the ethical landscape ; seekers of ethical allies ; and the students with ethically trouble-free experiences . When the students did not experience major ethical problems in any of the ethical dimensions as in the case on the Trouble-free , this was related positively with engagement, low levels of exhaustion and cynicism, and high levels of satisfaction with supervision and doctoral studies. By contrast, the strugglers expressed challenges in all of the ethical dimensions. This was related negatively to engagement, high exhaustion and cynicism levels, low levels of satisfaction with doctoral studies and supervision, harboring thoughts of discontinuing studies, and considerations to change supervisors. This finding is in line with research showing that students who experience receiving insufficient supervisory support exhibit more burnout and are less satisfied with supervision and more likely to harbor thoughts about dropping out than their peers who experience receiving sufficient support (Peltonen et al., 2017 ).

While the puzzled showed indications of ethical challenges, they were in some regards “better off” than the seekers. Even if supervision failed to contribute to the doctoral students’ experiences of being fully respected in the supervision relation and supported in autonomy, the puzzled were more satisfied with the supervision than the seekers . Sound institutional structures and processes are important; particularly so in situations in which supervisors change, and the supervision relationship must be renegotiated (Wisker & Robinson, 2013 ) – something which was more common among the seekers than in the other profiles.

The consistent experiences of the two extremes and their relation to the outcome variables establish the importance of paying attention to doctoral students’ experiences ethics in supervision. It is important to keep in mind that the trouble-free represented the largest profile, suggesting that supervision generally takes place in a sound ethical landscape.

Differences emerged among the three countries. In Finland, the seekers and, in South Africa and in Estonia, the trouble-free were overrepresented. Research on Finnish doctoral students’ experiences of their main resources and challenges during their doctoral studies relate to supervision (resources), structures and programmatic features (challenges), and the apprenticeship nature of doctoral studies in Finland (Author et al., 2012), which may help explain why this profile is overrepresented. The emphasis is on seeking alliance with the supervisors while experiencing challenges with social structures and programmatic aspects. The relationship and importance of alliance with the supervisor is pronounced, perhaps at the expense of association with and involvement in doctoral programs. South African students have been reported as having high levels of burnout (ASSAf, 2010 ; Herman, 2011 ), and high levels of exhaustion were corroborated by our study. The conditions of the South African students are more demanding than for Finnish and Estonian students, in terms of tuition fees and economic matters. Yet, the South African students were highly engaged and satisfied with the supervision and their doctoral studies. For these students, there appears to be a balance between the perceived demands and the available resources (see Bakker & Demerouti, 2008 ), and a sense of fairness and care to mitigate against negative experiences of ethics in supervision. The Estonian students, in turn, exhibited relatively high levels of satisfaction, which may be a clue to understanding their overrepresentation in the trouble-free profile. Satisfaction has been shown to be related to positive experiences of ethics in supervision and indicative of a fit between the individuals and their learning-environment fit (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020 ).

We acknowledge that there are limitations in the study. The response rate was 25–26%. It is possible that students who have experiences at the extremes of the dimensions we researched were more prone to respond than their peers whose experiences were neutral.

We propose future research to investigate what movements take place in and out of profiles and whether movement patterns differ across countries. A longitudinal approach would provide insight into the dynamics at the intersection of doctoral student experience, supervisory practice, and ethics. While our study was focused on an inter-country comparison, we recognize the possibility of intra-country differences and therefore encourage research with a larger number of institutions, first within a country and, second, across countries.

Change history

10 october 2022.

Missing Open Access funding information has been added in the Funding Note.

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Löfström, E., Peltonen, J., Frick, L. et al. Profiles of doctoral students’ experience of ethics in supervision: an inter-country comparison. High Educ 86 , 617–636 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00917-6

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Causes of PhD Student Burnout and Dropout

PhD programs are notoriously stressful, and the addition of a global pandemic has exacerbated mental health struggles for many students. This often results in PhD fatigue, which can eventually lead to burnout.

If you’re feeling burnt out or depressed and overwhelmed by the pressure, please reach out to friends and family for support.

Table of Contents

Universities should recognize that burnout is linked to increased attrition intentions among PhD students.

What is PhD Burnout?

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. Surveys show that depression is prevalent among PhD students, occurring at higher rates than among working professionals.

This often leads to students losing their passion for the topic they chose to dedicate years of their life to researching.

Stages of Burnout

Twelve stages of burnout.

Several of these stages can be personally identifiable and it is concerning to see how they can potentially lead to complete mental and physical burnout. It is notable that neglecting needs (stage 3) occurs early on. Regular self-check-ins can hopefully halt the burnout journey at this point.

What Contributes to Burnout?

Additionally, perfectionism , subjective appraisal of employment opportunities , and existing psychiatric disorders may increase the risk of burnout .

What Lowers Risk of Burnout?

Top tips for avoiding phd burnout.

In addition to the points covered above, here are some general tips that can help prevent PhD burnout:

Maintain reasonable working hours

Ensure adequate sleep.

Proper rest is crucial to prevent exhaustion. While the amount of sleep needed varies among individuals, 6-9 hours is the typical recommendation. Prioritizing a minimum of 8 hours of sleep can help maintain energy levels and overall well-being.

Limit social media usage

Engage in activities outside of your phd, regularly check in on your well-being.

Don’t wait until you’re completely burnt out before seeking help, as recovery can be prolonged, and you might feel that dropping out is your only option.

Maintain a nutritious diet

Avoid high-sugar, low-nutrient foods that can disrupt energy levels. Focus on low GI foods, and include fruits and vegetables in your diet. If vegetables are not appealing, try fruits like apples and bananas. Sliced apple with peanut butter makes a nutritious, low GI snack.

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Symptoms of PhD burnout?

Hi guys, I am a PhD student and have been for quite some time. I obtained my masters two years ago, and was on track with my PhD until my advisor retired on me and there was no one to replace him with. I moved to another university and am basically having to start over again… 😢🫠 lately I’ve been feeling like I want to leave and do something else. I’m tired of the academic system… what are some symptoms of burn out?

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Burnout epidemic: A wake-up call for the accounting profession

"I thought this was the end. I was like, finally, no more deadlines."

This was the text I received from a buddy during the height of the most recent busy season. It was during that rare New York earthquake. Do you remember hearing about it? The one that shook up the Northeast pretty good.

I'm sitting here on the other side of the country, getting ready for my own workday to start, when suddenly my phone buzzes with this text.

This guy thought he was going to die, and his first thought was, "Oh good, I don't have to deal with work anymore."

My friend works at a Big Four accounting firm in the tax department.

I get it. We all have those moments where we're so stressed out and overworked that we start thinking some pretty dark thoughts. But to actually put it into words like that and to have that be your immediate reaction to a potentially life-threatening situation? That's a whole other level.

And the thing is, I know this guy well. He's a hard worker, super smart, really good at what he does. But he's also been putting in insane hours, year after year, trying to climb that corporate ladder. And it's just taking a toll on him.

But what really gets me is that this kind of thinking, this whole "I'd rather deal with a natural disaster than keep working" mentality, isn't even that uncommon in our industry. We've all had those moments where we're just so burnt out and exhausted that we start fantasizing about some kind of escape, no matter how drastic.

And that's the thing about burnout. It's not just a little stress or a bad day at work. This pervasive, all-consuming feeling of dread and hopelessness just eats away at you, day after day, until you start thinking about some pretty messed up things.

Burnout is a widespread problem

As much as we joke about it and try to brush it off with a bit of dark humor, the reality is that burnout is a serious problem across the country, but particularly in our accounting industry.

99% of accountants suffer from burnout.

study by the University of Georgia, nearly everyone in our profession is experiencing burnout. The study used the Maslach Burnout Inventory to measure burnout across three key dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a low sense of personal accomplishment.

Emotional exhaustion is the feeling of being completely mentally and physically drained from the constant demands of the job. Depersonalization refers to detachment or cynicism toward your work and the people you interact with. And finally, a low sense of personal accomplishment is that nagging feeling that despite all your hard work, you're not making a meaningful impact or progressing in your career.

The fact that virtually everyone in accounting is grappling with these issues to some degree is really concerning. It's not just a matter of individual well-being, although that's certainly important. It's also about the long-term sustainability of our profession. How can we attract and retain top talent if the stigma is that "you will burn out"?

And here's another sobering statistic from the same study: 81% of accountants had their personal lives disrupted at least once a month due to work, specifically the month-end close process. That's a massive chunk of people who are consistently sacrificing their personal time and relationships just to keep up with the demands of the job.

When you look at numbers like that, it's clear that burnout isn't just some minor inconvenience or occasional stress. It's a pervasive, deeply rooted issue affecting almost everyone in accounting to some degree. And if we don't start taking steps to address it, both as individuals and as a profession, we're going to see some serious consequences down the line.

Burnout has a significant impact

$7.8 trillion globally. Let that number sink in for a moment. $7.8 trillion. That's a lot of zeros.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: How did they even come up with a number like that? It seems too big to be real. And honestly, I had the same thought when I first heard it. But when you break it down, it makes more sense.

Think about all the ways that burnout can impact a company's bottom line. You've got decreased productivity as burned-out employees struggle to stay focused and motivated. You've got higher turnover rates as people leave their jobs because they just can't handle it anymore. And then there's the increased healthcare costs that come along with the physical and mental toll of burnout.

All of those factors add up, and they add up fast. And when you consider just how widespread burnout is, particularly in high-stress industries like accounting, it becomes clear how those costs can snowball into trillions.

But here's the thing — as staggering as that $7.8 trillion figure is, it's still just an estimate. The true cost of burnout, in terms of human suffering and lost potential, is incalculable. And that's why it's so important that we start taking this issue seriously, both as individuals and as a society.

We need to start prioritizing mental health and well-being in the workplace, and creating environments that support and nurture employees rather than burn them out. Because, at the end of the day, no amount of money can make up for the toll that burnout takes on people's lives. And that's something that we simply can't afford to ignore.

Strategies for combating burnout

So, what can we do about it? First and foremost, we need to start prioritizing celebration and recognition in the workplace. And I'm not just talking about a quick "good job" email or a gift card to Starbucks. I mean really taking the time to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and accomplishments of our teams.

The Fintech Flo Podcast about his experience as a staff accountant at Cornerstone. When his team hit that big milestone of submitting their S-1, the CFO didn't just give them a pat on the back and send them back to work. No, he took them out for an incredible dinner by the beach and made it a point to celebrate their achievement. For Mike, that experience was meaningful and memorable because it showed him that his hard work was truly valued and appreciated.

Time is money, and leaders who take the time to show their team they are valued can go a long way in combating those feelings of burnout and exhaustion. It reminds people that they're not just cogs in a machine but valuable members of a team that appreciates and supports them.

We also need to start setting better boundaries around work hours and expectations. In the same podcast episode, Stefan van Duyvendijk told me about this brutal audit he worked on, where he was putting in 17-hour days for three weeks straight. And if that wasn't bad enough, he was stuck in the basement of some government building with no windows and no natural light. It's like something out of a horror movie (not a bad pitch for my next script now that I think about it).

This isn't an isolated incident. So many accountants and auditors have stories like this, where they're working insane hours in terrible conditions, all in the name of getting the job done. Yes, we are hard workers, but at what cost?

No one should be working 17-hour days, period. And if we're in a situation where that kind of schedule is necessary, we need to look at our processes and figure out where we can streamline and improve.

The most directly applicable improvement that should be focused on is setting up the infrastructure of business operations and workflows that enable expectations to be met. That means building mental health into the blueprint, which can very often start with the right systems. Popcorn machines are nice when you're stuck at the office, but a task management system will help you actually leave work on time is much more impactful.

We've been talking about the burnout crisis for decades, but the talk needs to turn into action. We must create a work environment that supports healthy habits, like taking regular breaks, getting outside for fresh air and natural light, and encouraging people to prioritize their self-care both inside and outside of work. This is a pipeline issue that needs to be addressed, or the strain will continue to pile up for those who are left until the mounting pressure takes the whole building down.

It's never easy, but who knows — maybe one day, we'll get to a point where no one ever has to send a text message like the one my friend sent during that earthquake. A point where we can all find joy, purpose and fulfillment in our work without sacrificing our mental and emotional well-being in the process. That's the dream, right?

Let's tackle burnout together

Every single one of us has a role to play in solving the burnout problem in the accounting profession. So, here's my challenge to you:

Start by taking an honest look at your own well-being. If you're feeling burnt out, don't ignore it like so many do. Reach out for support and implement some of the strategies we discussed.
Have a conversation with your colleagues and your leaders about burnout. Share your experiences, your concerns and your ideas for change. The more we talk about this issue, the harder it becomes to ignore. Candor is tough, but leaders must encourage it.
Advocate for change in your organization and in our profession. Push for policies and practices that prioritize well-being, and don't be afraid to speak up when you see something that contributes to burnout culture.

Remember, we're all in this together. By supporting each other and working toward systemic change, we can create a profession that is more productive and profitable and more fulfilling and sustainable for all.

A coalition of accounting educators and tech leaders released a generative AI governance framework as a starting point for organizations.

In a narrow holding, the Supreme Court upheld the provision, but emphasized that the ruling did not have broader implications.

BDO USA released its 2023 Audit Quality Report Tuesday as it added a second independent member to its Audit Quality Advisory Council.

The New York offices of Top 10 Firm BDO USA

Financial restatements decreased roughly 6% year over year, according to a report from Ideagen Audit Analytics.

Middle-class residents in these states pay a smaller percentage of their paychecks to taxes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey are introducing legislation to impose a 95% windfall tax on the excess profits of large corporations that are overcharging for products.

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How To Overcome PhD Burnout?
How to Deal with Burnout as a PhD Student
The secrets of dealing with burnout during your PhD
PhD Burnout
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17 Strategies to Cope With Academic Burnout

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Counseling Ethics Professional Development Supervision and Burnout Prevention
Clinical Supervision for Counseling
The secrets of dealing with burnout during your PhD
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PhD Student Burnout: Why Do PhDs Get Burnout And What To Do About It ( PhD Stress And Anxiety )
How to Deal with Burnout

COMMENTS

PhD Burnout: Managing Energy, Stress, Anxiety & Your Mental Health
The World Health Organisation classifies burnout as a syndrome with symptoms of: - Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; - Increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; - Reduced professional efficacy. Symptoms of burnout as classified by the WHO. Source.
(PDF) PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout
PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well as enhance engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among PhD students December 2018 DOI: 10.20919/Psych ...
I made a hasty career decision amid Ph.D. burnout. Here's ...
Here's how I got back on course. I made a hasty career decision amid Ph.D. burnout. Here's how I got back on course. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. In the exit interview after my Ph.D. defense, a professor on my thesis committee asked why I had accepted an industry job. Puzzled, I answered that it was the ...
PhD Burnout (and How to Avoid It)
Hannah completed her PhD this year and is a Senior Content Writer here at FindAPhD. Her research focused on Early Modern English seafarers. Having finished a PhD, Hannah has a strong grasp on the student experiencve and the multiple academic and time pressures faced by PhD students. As a fourth year PhD student, I am well acquainted with burnout.
Doctoral researchers' mental health and PhD training ...
Means of the CBI subscales for personal burnout and work-related burnout were 49 and 47, the mean score in the CBI total scale was 48 (including only the personal and work-related burnout subscales).
Frontiers
Four well-being profiles were identified ().The first study well-being profile was high engagement-low burnout profile (see Table 3).It was the second most common profile among the participants with a 32.7 percent share (n=226).The PhD candidates in this profile reported rather high levels of study engagement meaning that they often felt enthusiastic and inspired by their doctoral work.
PDF PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well
the importance of support provided by both the supervisor and faculty members in helping to avoid burnout and enhance engagement among students. We also found that students' identification with ... prevention of burnout and engagement with the PhD program). To investigate whether perceived progress in the program (e.g., successfully
Burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine: the BEeP study
Burnout has been identified as a global problem among medical students, residents and physicians, and is on the rise [ 1 - 4 ]. The percentage of physicians having at least one symptom of burnout in the US increased from 45% to 54% between 2011 and 2014 [ 5 ]. "PhD students in medicine" as a group has been neglected in burnout research.
A brief primer on the PhD supervision relationship
While I myself have limited PhD supervision experience, I have reviewed the literature on PhD student-supervisor relationship and here present a brief primer. 1 INTRODUCTION Becoming a successful academic and securing a principal investigator (PI) position at a research-intensive university requires many distinct skills (e.g., Madan, 2021 ...
[PDF] PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout
Research points to PhD students as being particularly at risk, yet the factors that contribute to PhD students' compromised wellbeing are unclear. ... Our results point to the importance of support provided by both the supervisor and faculty members in helping to avoid burnout and enhance engagement among students. We also found that students ...
(PDF) PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout
PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well as enhance engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among PhD students . × Close Log In. Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. or. Email. Password. Remember me on this computer. or reset password. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll ...
PhD supervisors and faculty members might help to avoid burnout as well
Our results point to the importance of support provided by both the supervisor and faculty members in helping to avoid burnout and enhance engagement among students. We also found that students' identification with supervisors and faculty members together with clarity of role are positively associated with students' work-related well-being.
Burnout and engagement among PhD students in medicine: the ...
The most important variables for burnout among PhD students in medicine were lack of sleep and frustration of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. ... Thompson E, Roberts M, Phua F. Determinants of PhD student satisfaction: the roles of supervisor, department, and peer qualities. Assess Eval High Educ. 2019;44: ...
phd
3. You need to find something apart from books and papers that keeps your mind busy and away of recurrent thoughts. I would not recommend reading other books. It has to be something different of the environment your burnout is caused by. For me, gym and movies most part of the times works really well.
PhD Student Burnout
For PhD students, burnout may feel like high levels of chronic stress. PhD students often serve in a variety of roles as teachers, students, and researchers, and this unclear delineation of roles may in itself be a source of burnout stress. ... The best way around this is to check in with your supervisor and your peers who may have more ...
PhD burnout
Edit: Just wanted to also mention that a study conducted at Berkeley in 2015 found that 50% of all PhD students are clinically depressed and 10% suicidal. If you manage to get through this you'll come out stronger! 4 years into my Phd in epidemiology in London, finishing my last chapter, and holy shit am I burnt out.
Burnout Culture. How the quest for a PhD led me to crash ...
Burnout cannot simply be described as exhaustion from overwork. Normal exhaustion from hard work is meant to be satisfying. Consider the bone deep fatigue you feel after a particularly hard work out.
My former PhD supervisor developed feelings for me, how I can ...
My former PhD supervisor developed feelings for me, how I can handle this since we have ongoing projects together . Interpersonal Issues My supervisor, who is in his early 50s (I am in my early 30s), has been incredibly supportive throughout my PhD journey. He helped me successfully defend my thesis, and his caring nature has always been evident.
Perhaps It's Not You It's Them: PhD Student-Supervisor Relationships
A good supervisor can lift you up when you are low, push you to be a better researcher, and continue to advocate for your success way beyond your PhD. Yet at the opposite end of the spectrum, a poor PhD Supervisor can bully you, gaslight you, and lead to a truly miserable few years of PhD study. In fact, in Nature's 2019 PhD student survey 24 ...
Profiles of doctoral students' experience of ethics in supervision: an
Supervision calls for pedagogical considerations of ethics as practiced in the student-supervisor relationship (Halse & Bansel, 2012).We have previously shown that Finnish PhD students' experiences of ethics in supervision predict research engagement, satisfaction with doctoral studies and supervision, burnout, and intentions to discontinue studies (Löfström & Pyhältö, 2020).
Causes of PhD Student Burnout and Dropout
Key predictors of burnout among doctoral students include: Chronic stress. Low frequency of supervision. Lack of satisfaction with supervision. Lack of equality among researchers. Poor sleep quality. Bullying by faculty members. Feeling a lack of belongingness to a team. Conflict in work responsibilities.
Symptoms of PhD burnout? : r/PhD
My rule of thumb is if you're asking for symptoms of burnout, that's a symptom of burnout. As someone who quit Ph.D. due to depression/burnout many years ago just to come back and try again, I concur with u/scrappypizza that if you are asking for the symptoms of burnout, you are most likely burned out.
Effective Ways to Discuss Burnout with Supervisors
Remember that preventing burnout is an ongoing process, and it's important to continuously monitor your workload and stress levels, even after having these important discussions with your supervisor.
Burnout epidemic, a wake-up call for the accounting profession
Burnout has a significant impact. According to Hamza Khan, author of "The Burnout Gamble," the annual cost of lost productivity, disengagement, and healthcare issues related to burnout is estimated to be $7.8 trillion globally. Let that number sink in for a moment. $7.8 trillion. That's a lot of zeros.

PhD Burnout: Managing Energy, Stress, Anxiety & Your Mental Health

What is PhD Burnout?

What are the Stages of Burnout?

Overcoming PhD Burnout

A side note on caffeine consumption: Do PhD students need caffeine to survive?

Maintaining energy throughout your whole PhD

Reduce Stress and Anxiety

Talk It Through

Top Tips for Avoiding PhD Burnout

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