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Doctoral students experience high rates of mental health distress and dropout; however, the mental health and wellness of engineering doctoral students is understudied. Studies of student persistence, wellness, and success often aggregate fields together, such as by studying all engineering students. Thus, little work has considered the experiences of biomedical engineering (BME) doctoral students, despite differences between doctoral BME research, course content, and career expectations compared with other engineering disciplines. In this qualitative interview case study, we explore stressors present in the BME graduate experience that are unique from engineering students in other disciplines. Methods We analyzed a longitudinal interview study of doctoral engineering students across four timepoints within a single academic year, consisting of a subsample (n=6) of doctoral students in a BME discipline, among a larger sample of engineering doctoral students (N=55). BME students in the sample experienced some themes generated from a larger thematic analysis differently compared with other engineering disciplines. These differences are presented and discussed, grounded in a model of workplace stress. Results BME participants working in labs with biological samples expressed a lack of control over the timing and availability of materials for their research projects. BME participants also had more industry-focused career plans and described more commonly coming to BME graduate studies from other fields (e.g., another engineering major) and struggling with the scope and content of their introductory coursework. A common throughline for the stressors was the impact of the interdisciplinary nature of BME programs, to a greater extent compared with other engineering student experiences in our sample. Conclusions We motivate changes for researchers, instructors, and policymakers which specifically target BME students and emphasize the importance of considering studies at various unit levels (university department level vs college level vs full institution) when considering interventions targeting student stress and wellness.
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Board 405: The Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire (SDSQ): Year 3 of an RFE Project on Understanding graduate Engineering Student Well-Being and Retention
It is well-known that a significant population of doctoral students drop out of their graduate programs and face or develop significant mental health distress. Stress plays a role in exacerbating mental health distress in both engineering PhD programs and more broadly for university students in general. While rates of dropout for engineering students may not differ strongly from other disciplines, engineering students have been suggested to be less likely to seek help from university services for well-being concerns. In the first year of our three‐year NSF RFE project, we interviewed doctoral engineering students to identify major stressors present in the doctoral engineering experience at the present study’s focal institution. In the second year of our project, we had developed the Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire - Engineering (SDSQ-E), a novel survey which measures the frequency and severity of these top sources of stress for doctoral engineering students. The SDSQ-E was designed using the results of first year interviews and a review of the literature on stress for doctoral engineering students. In year three, we completed analysis of the year 3 data and conducted further testing of the SDSQ-E. We also developed a discipline-general form of the survey, called the SDSQ-G. In October-December 2023, we administered these surveys to engineering PhD students as a subset of a large sample of graduate students at two institutions. Further, we tested the potential for the SDSQ-E to predict factors such as anxiety, depression, or intention to persist in doctoral programs. We broadly summarize these survey distributions including tests of the SDSQ-E for validity, fairness, and reliability.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2034800
- PAR ID:
- 10591288
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- graduate engineering education questionnaires retention in graduate education well-being
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Portland, Oregon
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Drawing from the results of this study and a review of the literature on graduate student stressors, we developed in Year 2 the Stressors for Doctoral Students Questionnaire for Engineering (SDSQ-E) and administered it twice, in fall 2022 and in spring 2023. The SDSQ-E measures the severity and frequency of stressors including advisor-related stressors, class-taking stressors, research or laboratory stressors, campus life and financial stressors, and identity-related or microaggression-related stressors. We present a description of our project and updates on its progress in its second year, including survey results from our 2022-2023 data collection.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46993
