Browsing by Subject "hyvinvointi, tohtoriopiskelija, lääketieteen ala, tiedeyhteisö"

Objectives: Although doctoral students are a highly select group, previous national and international studies have shown that they experience many challenges during the process of completing a doctorate. These challenges can relate to well-being and many students never finish their degree. The purpose of this study was to discover the kinds of well-being experiences medical sciences doctoral students have. Previous research on Finnish doctoral education has investigated doctoral students’ well-being via the sense of competence, belonging, autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 1985) , and contribution (Eccles, 2008). In this study, medical sciences doctoral students’ experiences were explored via these four senses, in the context of eudaemonic well-being and positive psychology. In this study, doctoral students’ well-being experiences were understood to develop in the dynamic interplay between their primary context of work and learning. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of well-being experiences medical sciences doctoral students have and how those experiences appear in their primary context of working and learning as part of a scholarly community. This study is part of a larger national research project on doctoral education in Finland (Pyhältö et al., 2009). Methods: The data were collected between 2007–2008 with semi-structured interviews. The participants were seven female medical sciences doctoral students. One interview was dropped during the analysis process. All participants were conducting their doctorates at a research intensive university in Finland. The interviews underwent qualitative content analysis, in which the theory approach and inductive approach were combined. At the beginning of the first analysis phase, well-being experiences and their context were inspected by the variable-oriented technique. Next, the analysis focused on the person-oriented technique. Results and conclusions: The results suggested that the participants often emphasized a sense of competence and belonging. Doctoral students’ experiences sometimes appeared in the sense of autonomy, but only seldom the sense of contribution. Well-being experiences were often related to research activities or interplay with members of a scholarly community, but only seldom to doctoral studies or financial resources. Person-oriented technique results suggested that well-being experiences varied between doctoral students. Some of them described many, while some only mentioned a few well-being experiences. Experiences were also emphasized differently. The findings reveal that it was relevant to investigate medical sciences doctoral students from the perspective of eudaemonia and positive psychology via the senses of competence, belonging, autonomy, and contribution. The results can be applied to the development of doctoral education and to develop methods to support doctoral students’ well-being.