Mentoring and Research Self-Efficacy of Doctoral Students: A Psychometric Approach

Abstract

Effective mentoring is an integral component of the doctoral dissertation process. This study aimed to determine the psychometric properties of two questionnaires developed to assess research self-efficacy and the mentoring/supervision process. The sample comprised 1265 doctorate students (mean age = 32.36 years; standard deviation = 8.20). Items in both questionnaires had adequate discrimination indexes and principal component analysis supported the unifactorial structure of each questionnaire, with adequate percentages of explained variance (47.5% and 60%, respectively). Reliability was good or excellent: α = 0.71 and α = 0.94. In the research self-efficacy questionnaire, there was a significant interaction between gender and year of doctoral studies. Men had higher scores in the first, second and third years of their doctoral studies than women, but this ranking was reversed for the fourth and fifth years. In the mentoring/supervision questionnaire, PhD students in their first year had a higher score than those in the third, fourth and fifth years, and students in the second year had a higher score than those in the fifth year. Understanding students’ perception of their research self-efficacy and the mentoring process is of great importance given the relationship between the mentoring process and students’ academic performance and personal well-being.