‘Is it me or … ?’. A multimethod study to explore the impact of personal and contextual factors on PhD students’ well-being

As PhD students’ well-being gathers relevance, exploring what factors influence it and how is crucial. Therefore, this study quantitatively examined the joint effect of personal and contextual variables on PhD students’ well-being and qualitatively assessed their perceptions about the main issues they faced during their doctoral course. Through a multimethod study, we collected quantitative data from 216 Italian PhD students, 123 of whom responded to an open-ended question. We tested a moderating mediation model to understand whether (1) there was an indirect relationship between self-efficacy and exhaustion, mediated by the perceptions of impostor syndrome; (2) supervisor instrumental support moderated the self-efficacy – impostor syndrome relationship and the indirect relationship abovementioned. Quantitative findings showed that self-efficacy was negatively associated with exhaustion via perceptions of impostor syndrome. Concerning the moderation effect, when self-efficacy was high, the higher the supervisor support, the lower the perceptions of impostor syndrome. When self-efficacy was low, the higher the supervisor support, the higher the perceptions of impostor syndrome. Qualitative findings reported various personal and contextual aspects PhD students perceived as problematic, which may jeopardise their well-being. These results may inform policymakers and academic staff interventions for promoting PhD students’ well-being.