This presentation aims to examine why so many doctoral students end up dropping out of their doctoral program. In France, between 5% and 30% of doctoral students drop out each year, depending on the discipline. The reasons for these drop-out rates have remained ambiguous. In the mindset theory of the action phases (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1990), an action crisis can be defined as an attitude towards a long-term goal that arises when individuals begin to doubt their own ability to achieve their initial objective. Applied to doctoral studies, students fall into an action crisis when they intend to abandon their doctorate (Giudicelli et al., 2023). The goal of this research is to identify the variables associated with the dropout intention. To reach this goal, a two-year longitudinal study was conducted on 81 doctoral students from two doctoral schools of humanities and social sciences located in Montpellier. The survey was sent in 2020 and again in 2021. The study consisted of using validated scales to measure three types of variables: contextual, dispositional, and affective variables. Correlations, walsh-t tests, logistic regression and generalized estimating equations were used to analyze the data. The results show that a number of contextual, dispositional, and affective variables are associated with the students’ dropout intention. Moreover, the PhD experience tends to worsen through the two-year study, even for the students who did not intend to drop out. Overall, this research could be of help for universities, doctoral schools, thesis supervisors, and the students themselves to prevent thesis dropout.

Authors:
Edouard Giudicelli, Western Brittany in Brest, France
Arielle Syssau, University Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3, France
Nathalie Blanc, University Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3, France

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Edouard Giudicelli is a University Postdoctoral Fellow or Instructor at University Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3 in France

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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