Research Proposal:
Quality of Life and Retention Among Graduate Students
Howard M. Weiss
Psychological Sciences
and
Stephen G. Green
Management


General Issues


The Graduate School seeks to develop a better understanding of retention processes among graduate students and particularly the way quality of life impacts retention, in the hope of developing programs and interventions that can reduce turnover among quality graduate students. Professors Weiss and Green are interested in examining these issues in the context of their general work on commitment and retention. Their work suggests that three perspectives/issues may be especially relevant to understanding graduate student commitment and retention, and the proposed research will examine each of these issues. The three issues are:

  1. Leadership/mentorship – exit interviews suggest that the advisor/advisee relationship is a major influence on retention. Prof. Green’s research on the quality of leader-subordinate relationships is of particular relevance here. The proposed research will examine the development of this relationship and its influence on retention decisions.
  2. Events, Identity and Commitment – commitment is the “flip-side” of attrition. Existing research on organizational commitment provides a ready model for the study of graduate student retention. Research by Prof. Weiss on the role of events ( both large and significant events and daily hassles and uplifts) in shaping attitudes and organizational identity provides a framework for understanding graduate student experiences that influence their decisions to stay at or leave the university.
  3. The Role of Spousal Quality of Life on Graduate Student Retention – Many graduate students arrive at Purdue with spouses/partners. For these spouses/partners the difficulty of the graduate student lifestyle is not compensated for by the academic and intellectual growth experienced by the student. Virtually nothing is known about the role that the attitudes and experiences of spouses have on retention decisions. More complete knowledge in this area can lead to better retention related programs.

General Design Parameters

Study 1: We anticipate two studies. The first study will be a two-year longitudinal study that will track two cohorts of graduate students and, where relevant, spouses/partners. One cohort will be 2004 entering Ph.D. graduate students (students who indicated on their applications that they are intending to pursue Ph. D. degrees) and the other will be Ph.D. students who are beginning their third year of graduate school. The first cohort is designed to examine the initial experiences and development of retention related attitudes from the beginning of graduate school. The second cohort was added because of the high attrition rates in the third and fourth year (at least among non-international students). Both cohorts will be tracked for two years, with data collected at three points in each year, the beginning of the year, at the end of the fall semester and at the end of the spring semester. An additional mid fall semester data collection will be conducted in the first year for the cohort of entering graduate students. To help provide content (relevant experiences, attitudes, etc.) to the tracking surveys, focus groups of non-cohort graduate students/spouses/partners (current second year students for cohort one and current fourth year students for cohort two) will be conducted in the fall of 2004. This design allows us to establish baselines for students, to examine changes in their attitudes over time, and to track the way key experiences influence commitment to graduate school and decisions to leave or stay. The key dependent variables for both cohorts will be attrition decisions, commitment and satisfaction with graduate education and the Purdue graduate experience..

Study 2: In order to better understand the relationships among spousal (including partners) quality of life and graduate student retention a cross sectional study of graduate students and their spouses/partners will be conducted sometime during the 2004-2005 academic year. This cross sectional survey will be given to a sample of 2nd and 4th year students (students not part of either of the cohorts of the first study).

Confidentiality: A number of factors require that we be able to identify individual student (and spouse or partner) responses. First, to fully explore the implications of our findings the graduate school will need to be able to match student responses to other data gathered from student records, e.g., withdrawal from the program. Second, in order to match responses over time and to ensure that each survey is sent only to the respondents who are currently participating in the study, an identifying code will be required. Finally, given that we are collecting data from both student and spouse/partner, an identifying code will be needed to match their responses. Therefore, identifying codes will be maintained for the duration of the study. These codes, however, will be maintained in total confidentiality and will be kept in a secure location. Once we have completed the studies, we will destroy all identifying information. No information concerning the data of any individual will be reported to any third party. All respondents will be informed that participation in the studies is completely voluntary and will be assured of the confidentiality of their responses. Of course, IRB approval will be obtained for all data collections.