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Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how doctoral students in the biological sciences understand their research skill development and explore potential racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in the scientific learning process. Design/methodology/approach Based on interviews with 87 doctoral students in the biological sciences, this study explores how doctoral students describe development of their research skills. More specifically, a constructivist grounded theory approach is employed to understand how doctoral students make meaning of their research skill development process and how that may vary by gender and race/ethnicity. Findings The findings reveal two emergent groups, “technicians” who focus on discrete tasks and data collection, and “interpreters” who combine technical expertise with attention to the larger scientific field. Although both groups are developing important skills, “interpreters” have a broader range of skills that support successful scholarly careers in science. Notably, white men are overrepresented among the “interpreters,” whereas white women and students from minoritized racial/ethnic groups are concentrated among the “technicians.” Originality/value While prior literature provides valuable insights into the inequalities across various aspects of doctoral socialization, scholars have rarely attended to examining inequalities in research skill development. This study provides new insights into the process of scientific learning in graduate school. Findings reveal that research skill development is not a uniform experience, and that doctoral education fosters different kinds of learning that vary by gender and race/ethnicity. 

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how student agency influences career decision-making for doctoral students in biological sciences. The authors address the following questions: How do biological science graduate students navigate career indecision? And how does agency relate to their experiences with career indecision? Design/methodology/approach The authors analyzed interview data collected from 84 PhD biology graduate students. Researchers used a grounded theory approach. After open codes were developed and data were coded, code reports were generated, which were used to determine themes. Findings More than half of the sample had not committed to a career path, and undecided students were bifurcated into two categories: Uncommitted and Uncertain. Uncommitted graduate students demonstrated agency in their approach and were focused on exploration and development. Uncertain students demonstrated less agency, were more fearful and perceived less control and clarity about their options and strategies to pursue career goals. Practical implications Findings suggest some forms of indecision can be productive and offer institutional leaders guidance for increasing the efficacy of career development and exploration programming. Originality/value Research on doctoral student career decision-making is often quantitative and rarely explores the role of agency. This qualitative study focuses on the relationship between student agency and career indecision, which is an understudied aspect of career development. 

Purpose This study aims to focus on the experiences of biomedical science students nearing the end of their doctoral programs and the factors that influence their well-being. In addition to identifying general challenges, the study aims to expand understanding of how interactions with principal investigators (PIs) can influence students’ well-being and engagement in wellness practices. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study presents an analysis of interview data collected from 90 trainees five years after beginning their graduate programs. All were participants in a larger mixed-methods, longitudinal study. Emergent themes and a codebook were established after reviewing interview transcripts and completing memos. Codes were applied to data, and reports were generated to confirm and challenge early interpretations. Findings Participants described four key factors that influenced their well-being: perceived work/life balance; managing progress on research; program completion and job search; and overall faculty relationships. While relationships with PIs could be a source of stress, participants more often described how both interactions with, and observations of their PIs could amplify or mitigate their ability to manage other stressors and overall sense of well-being. Originality/value While researchers in the USA have increasingly considered the factors impacting graduate student mental health, there has been less of an emphasis on wellness and well-being. Furthermore, there has been less attention to how PIs contribute, in positive and negative ways, to these outcomes. This study offers insight into well-being at a specific timepoint, considering dynamics unique to wellness and well-being in the later stages of doctoral training. 

Graduate students’ mental health and well-being is a prominent concern across various disciplines. However, early predictors of mental health and well-being in graduate education, specifically doctoral education, have rarely been studied. The present study evaluated both the underlying latent classification of individuals’ mental well-being and predictors of those classifications. Results estimated two latent classes of students’ mental health and well-being: one class with generally high levels of mental well-being and one with lower levels of mental well-being. Regression analyses showed that mentoring in the second year of doctoral study, certainty of choice in the third year, and both academic development and sense of belonging in the fourth year were positive predictors of membership in the higher mental well-being class. In contrast to some prior studies, demographic variables were not related to the identified well-being classifications. Regression analyses further showed that mental well-being was negatively related to participants’ number of publications and research self-efficacy, indicating a problematic relationship between scholarly productivity and confidence and well-being. These findings may be used to identify and provide targeted support for students who are at-risk for having or developing lower levels of mental well-being in their graduate programs. 

Threshold concepts are transformative elements of domain knowledge that enable those who attain them to engage domain tasks in a more sophisticated way. Existing research tends to focus on the identification of threshold concepts within undergraduate curricula as challenging concepts that prevent attainment of subsequent content until mastered. Recently, threshold concepts have likewise become a research focus at the level of doctoral studies. However, such research faces several limitations. First, the generalizability of findings in past research has been limited due to the relatively small numbers of participants in available studies. Second, it is not clear which specific skills are contingent upon mastery of identified threshold concepts, making it difficult to identify appropriate times for possible intervention. Third, threshold concepts observed across disciplines may or may not mask important nuances that apply within specific disciplinary contexts. The current study therefore employs a novel Bayesian knowledge tracing (BKT) approach to identify possible threshold concepts using a large data set from the biological sciences. Using rubric-scored samples of doctoral students’ sole-authored scholarly writing, we apply BKT as a strategy to identify potential threshold concepts by examining the ability of performance scores for specific research skills to predict score gains on other research skills. Findings demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy, as well as convergence between results of the current study and more conventional, qualitative results identifying threshold concepts at the doctoral level. 

While previous research documents that women in STEM doctoral programs tend to fare better when their advisor shares their gender identity, this study provides new insights into the role of student–advisor gender identity congruence, relying on a longitudinal sample of doctoral students in biology and using structural equation and latent growth curve modeling. Findings show that advisor gender played an inconsistent and typically indirect role in predicting student outcomes. Further, all students, regardless of gender, tended to report higher quality advising when their advisor was a woman, pointing to potential gender inequities in advising expectations of faculty. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed. 

Developing research self-efficacy is an important part of doctoral student preparation. Despite the documented importance of research self-efficacy, little is known about the progression of doctoral students’ research self-efficacy over time in general and for students from minoritized groups. This study examined both within- and between-person stability of research self-efficacy from semester to semester over 4 years, focusing on doctoral students in biological sciences ( N = 336). Using random intercept autoregressive analyses, we evaluated differences in stability across gender, racially minoritized student status, and first-generation student status. Results showed similar mean levels of self-efficacy across demographic groups and across time. However, there were notable differences in between-person and within-person stability over time, specifically showing higher between-person and lower within-person stability for racially minoritized and first-generation students. These findings indicate that racially minoritized and first-generation students’ research self-efficacy reports were less consistent from semester to semester. Such results may indicate that non-minoritized and continuing-generation students’ experiences from semester to semester typically reinforce their beliefs about their own abilities related to conducting research, while such is not the case for racially minoritized nor first-generation students. Future research should examine what types of experiences impact self-efficacy development across doctoral study to offer more precise insights about factors that influence these differences in within-person stability.