Motivation and emotion/Book/2015/PhD drop-out and motivation

PhD drop-out and motivation:
What are the motivational predictors of PhD drop-out?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

The Doctorate of Philosophy is an increasingly popular area of academia for students interested in specialised research, on a domestic and international scale. Despite its popularity, students across the world are struggling to complete their research and as a result drop-out rates are alarmingly high.(Wright & Cochrane, 2000).

Australian researchers at Thinkwell found that PhD students that successfully submit their Ph.D. will see a less that 0.1% chance of failure. However, the drop-out rate is almost 50% (2015). This is a huge problem for not only the institutions, who lose finances and time invested in each student, and students who often have worrisome emotional ramifications such as feelings of unworthiness and failure (Wright & Cochrane, 2000).

It's hard to imagine that so many students choose to face these negative feelings instead of following through with their studies, knowing that 99.9% of them would find successful completion. But there are possible answers as to why this dissonance may exist.

What are the symptoms of potential Ph.D. drop-out?

The biggest symptom of potential PH.D. drop-out is a long-term decrease of motivation; Zhou (2014) and Pintrich (2003, as cited in Litalien, Guay & Morin, 2014) found motivation to be the strongest predictor of education perseverance and academic success.

This makes sense, with a Ph.D. being largely self-driven research, a lack of enthusiasm can make the process of completing a Ph.D. a drudgery, driving students away from timely completion and into procrastinating displacement behaviours (Kearns & Gardiner, 2011). The big danger here is when this leads to longer terms of stress and anxiety which can ultimately drive students to drop-out from submitting completely (Kearns, Gardiner & Marshall, 2008).

There have been two identified causes for the drop out rate and failure of PhD students: structural and individual. within structural causes, one of the most common issues is the field in which the study is being undertaken. PhD's within the natural science department seem to have more timely graduations then those of the humanities and social sciences. This seems to be due to less involvement in research projects. Lower income levels may also be a large motivator in distractions outside the immediate field of study (Vassil & Solvak, 2012).

What does your motivation look like? Take the quick quiz below to find out.

Test yourself Are you as focused on your Ph.D. as you should be? Please note: Due to the structure of Wikiversity's Quiz system, a count of 'Right' and 'Wrong' answers will appear after submission. Choose as many as options as applicable to you. There are no right or wrong responses, so just ignore that and read on once you've been given your score after pressing submit. Also, once you receive your score- please press the reset button. There is another quiz at the bottom of the page and Wikiversity syntax shows the results for all quizzes on the page. Which would spoil your results.

1 Do your breaks often extend longer than you expected?

	Yes, unexpected things tend to get in the way.
	No. I make sure to get back to work straight after.

2 Do you frequently spend an unusually long time seeking out a single reference?

	No, I want to keep to the schedule.
	Yes, if I think they're important.

3 Do you often sign up for other tasks, at your own inconvenience?

	It's hard not too, people often expect me to.
	No, I need to focus on getting work done first.

4 What takes up most of your time preparing to work?

	I spend a significant time organising so that things will be easier when I work.
	I like to get straight to it, so not much.

5 Should you be doing something instead of the quiz right now?

	It's my free time.
	This can surely only help, in the long run.

Results

If you scored 5 or greater

You may be showing some serious signs of displacement.

Displacement activity is a very common way of stealthy procrastination. It’s a clever way of avoiding work without the feelings of guilt that often comes along with more recognisable forms of procrastination, especially elements of motivation driven by introjected regulation. While it can often seem as though these activities are important at the time, they become apparent as methods for procrastinating when you look back at the end of the day feeling tired, without having accomplished the important things on your to-do list for the day. Since you’re probably not supposed to be browsing this page anyway, you might as well take a moment to read on and find some possible solutions for getting your motivation mojo running.

If your score was less than five

Well done, it takes tremendous effort to stay on task, so you should congratulate yourself for a moment. Since this is probably your free time anyway, keep reading to further educate yourself on motivation, and equip yourself with the right knowledge. It may help you in the future when motivation feels scarce.

What can you do?

Specialising on timely Ph.D. completion, experts Hugh Kearns and Maria Gardiner strongly suggest these tools for keeping the motivation levels up when you struggle to get going (2011).

Figure.1 It's important to know what can be done to improve motivation.

Stay connected

It's almost universally accepted that to be satisfied, you must feel connected, this is especially so in your studies (Kearns et al., 2008; Gou, Liao, Liao & Zhang, 2014; Wright & Cochrane, 2000). By connecting in with a powerful support network, you gain for yourself potential proofreaders, researchers and fans (which help keep you accountable). Thinkwell, a government funded initiative that supports Ph.D. students suggests that students lighten their loads as much as possible, claiming that there are no bonus points for doing all the work yourself (2015). A support network of peers can be very effective in pushing you forward (Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz & Lima, 2004, as cited in Gou et al., 2014), with isolation being a huge problem in Ph.D. students (Zhou, 2014).

This also should go without saying, but your supervisor can be your most valuable connection, as an experienced academic with an official investment in the success of your Ph.D. they can help guide your research, keep you on target, and lead you to more valuable connections. In a recent university seminar, Thinkwell researchers rallied students to care for their supervisors, suggesting meeting with supervisors at least every three weeks (2015).

Set goals

With the actual end goal of successfully attaining a Ph.D. often feeling far away, it can be hard to remember what it's all for when sit down to work every day. By creating goals through to-do lists, there is a strengthening of resolve, giving you physical markers to work towards (Hermandezz, Schultz, Estrada, Woodcock & Chance, 2013; Bailey, Jensen, Taylor, Menzias, Williamson, Silver, Simpson & Balsam, 2015). This could be seen as a form of operant conditioningwith the act of ticking off items on your to-do list as a secondary reinforcer for the greater achievement of a completed Ph.D.

Kearns and Gardiner (2011) suggest not only making to-do lists but, if you're really struggling with displacement activity, making these to-do lists as comprehensive as possible. By breaking down the mountain into molehills, they suggest that one can slowly work their way to the top. This may sound counter-intuitive to the adage "get the hard things done first", but the scientists insist, that when you're struggling to get going, starting with a simple task can often spur you forward to keep the bowl rolling forward once you've started.

Their logic? "action leads to motivation, which in turn leads to action."

Set deadlines

Along with being an invaluable connection, frequent meet ups with supervisors can act as superb deadlines for ensuring a sustained production of work throughout your Ph.D. Another great use for the frequent meet ups is to act las more immediate deadlines. Kearns & Gardiner (2011) suggest setting expectations each meet up for what will be brought to the next one.

For many students, a distant deadline is a killer for motivation, and even when a student is intrinsically motivated, a lack of deadline can mean a difficulty in keeping on task [Kearns et al., 2008]. Even if not with your supervisor, small deadlines can give you the thrill of necessary action that it can sometimes take to hike up production levels.

Thinkwell do however make an important notice, that if you fail to complete your expected work before a meeting, to always meet with your supervisor regardless. estranging from your supervisor due to a lack of work is a dangerous form f academic isolation (Kearns et al., 2008).

Utilise incentives

Incentives are an external source of motivation and can be as simple as the act of ticking off items on that detailed to-do list. While it is true that external motivators tend to be less effective for long term motivation, there is something to be said for the power of incentive use in reaching short-term goals and deadlines, which you now know can be great tools for upholding sustained work production when intrinsic motivation is running low.

It is important that these incentives are appropriate and carefully thought out, especially if you are struggling to be motivated. A four-hour break for an hour's worth of work is likely to be more counter-productive than anything else, and expensive incentives are unlikely to be sustainable. Take the time to consider what your goals are for each day and what tools you may need to motivate yourself to star. You may say after two hours of high quality work, you may have a 20-minute coffee break. Make sure your incentives are clearly outlined and be sure to keep yourself accountable, or they will lose their effectiveness. Don't give yourself the coffee break after two hours of scrolling through the internet or reshuffling your growing piles of research articles.

Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation

intrinsic motivation comes from enjoyment found inherently in the task itself (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000; as cited in Zhou, 2014). This can be seen in the activities you most enjoy. If you are someone who relishes the act of cooking, you would need no external incentives to go out and cook, unlike those who do not enjoy cooking- where food is likely to be the external motivator that drives them into the kitchen.

It's this internally sourced motivation that is most valuable as a driving force for a successful Ph.D. (Lindholm, 2004; as cited in Zhou et al. 2014; Litalien et al., 2015). To really enjoy your research and the act of working on it is likely to be the most sustainable, and enduring path to successfully submitting your Ph.D. So do be sure to seek the enjoyment in the research itself, sharing out the drudgery of the less pleasant tasks amongst your support network and utilising your supervisor to help guide you into a topic you truly enjoy and are interested in to keep up your levels of intrinsic interest and motivation.

Extrinsic motivation

Likewise, click through to Extrinsic motivationto read more extensively about how external motivators can positively improve your likelihood to engage in low probability activities. What is most important for you to know is that while extrinsic motivators may not be as enduring and entrenched as intrinsic motivation, they still play an important role in the completion of any long-term research.

Extrinsic motivation is sourced from the external, and can be anything that increases your probability to work. This means that they can differ vastly between students in what is found to be effective. For many, the accountability and developmental feedback supervisor will be incredibly helpful- since they are likely to know where you are at and what motivation you need, adding to the importance of regular meet-ups (Kearns et al., 2008).

Though, as mentioned before extrinsic motivation, such as incentives are also useful for implementing yourself to help drive you forward during spells of low intrinsic motivation. Providing they are of course, appropriate and effective for you.

The shame sham

Figure. 2 Motivation is often stress-driven, underneath the "tyranny of the shoulds"- Horney, 1937

It's important now to pay attention to a facet of motivation that is often easy to confuse with an internal motivator.Introjected regulation can often be seen as an internal motivator, as it involves strong feelings such as guilt, stress and anxiety. It often ties activities with forceful words such as

• I must…
• I have to…
• I should…

The problem with this is multi-faceted. While introjected regulation may appear to be an internal motivation, it is actually driven by external forces. These thoughts are the internalisation of social expectations or parental views, without actually accepting these thoughts or views as your own (Litalien et al., 2015)

It should be mentioned, that these external forces do exist as extrinsic motivators on their own, and pressures such as family or social expectations can be very apparent and very forceful. But it’s the internalising of these external opinions that become introjected regulation. This doesn’t make it an intrinsic motivator. The thoughts that are internalised are from external sources. This means that the drive of introjected regulation will not be as strong or consistent as genuine internal motivation in the way of completing Ph.D..

The other issue that comes with relying on introjected regulation is its ineffectiveness. Litalien et al. (2015) found introjected regulation not only to be unhelpful in motivating students to complete their studies, but that the frequently guilt driven area of motivation was detrimental and negatively correlated to all positive learning outcomes, such as satisfaction with studies and university, positive affect and performance. In fact, introjected regulation was positively correlated to each of the negative outcomes too, i.e. test anxiety, negative affect, drop-out intention, and thesis problems.

That means introjected regulation, the expectation propelled motivation, is not only unhelpful, it’s dangerous to your studies. If you find yourself falling into reoccurring feelings of anxiety over thoughts involving terms like "I should -, I have to-, I must-," be certain to address them as soon as possible. See Further Resources to find out more about who you can speak to about challenging your thought patterns to be healthier, and more helpful.

Test yourself What is your main source of motivation? Please note: Due to the structure of Wikiversity's Quiz system, a count of 'Right' and 'Wrong' answers will appear after submission. Choose as many as options as applicable to you. There are no right or wrong responses, so just ignore that and read on once you've been given your score after pressing submit.

1 My studies are driven by my curiosity.

	Agree
	Disagree

2 I can't wait for my PhD to be over

	Agree
	Disagree

3 My studies are aimed to gain me a better career.

	Agree
	Disagree

4 What I'm researching excites me.

	Agree
	Disagree

5 If I don't finish I'll disappoint a lot of people.

	Agree
	Disagree

6 I would complete my Ph.D. without any future incentives

	Agree
	Disagree

Results

If you scored 5 or greater

You have largely external sources of motivation for your Ph.D. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s important to have goals in mind, and there is evidence that goal-setting behaviour can be a positive way of motivating students in their efforts to complete their education. A way of pulling those long-term incentives closer is to utilise the methods of setting goals, deadlines and creating immediate incentives that work to increase your motivation while you’re far from the finish line and help keep you from dropping down and out.

However, there is significant evidence that the most enduring and satisfying form of motivation is that of intrinsic motivation, . Aim to seek out the positive challenges and embrace your research as a positive experience in and of itself to ingrain a deeper level of intrinsic motivation. This, of course, isn’t easy, and if you find yourself struggling to find enjoyment in the research itself, check out the further resources, and talk to your supervisor. It’s most important to remain connected to a support network that works to make your Ph.D. run as smoothly and enjoyably as possible.

If you scored less than 5

You have a largely internal source of motivation for your Ph.D. This is good news. But be sure to make use of deadlines and stick to a schedule, meeting up with your supervisor often to keep yourself on track. It’s very easy to get lost in the research and forget to move forward at a good pace, particularly if you’re enjoying yourself. The point of the Ph.D. is to complete it, so be sure to be connected into a support network that will keep an eye on you to make sure you cross the finish line.

Also, for the days when you feel stuck getting started, be careful to not feel as though the day is lost because you aren’t feeling it. Use the key strategies, to get the ball rolling. You’ll find it easy to keep going once you’ve started.

Conclusion-

With motivation being one of the most predictive factors to successful Ph.D. completion, it's important to take the time to see how healthy your motivation looks, and where it's coming from. If you find that it's getting harder to stay on task, get started or stick to deadlines, look out for the resources that are available in your university, chances are, you'll be able to find excellent help to sustain you through your research. Otherwise, there are some excellent resources online available through institutions such asThinkwell

See also

• Goal Setting
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
• Intrinsic Motivation
• Extrinsic Motivation
• Another fun quiz, that finds whether you are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.

References

• Bailey, M.R., Jensen, G., Taylor, K., Mezias, C., Williamson, C., Silver, R., Simpson, E.H. & Balsam, P.D. (2015) A novel strategy for dissecting goal-directed action and arousal components of motivation behaviour with a progressive hold-down task. Behavioral Neuroscience, 129(3), 269-280. Doi: 10.1037/bne0000060

• Guo, Y., Liao, J., Liao, S. & Zhang, Y. (2014) The mediating role of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between developmental feedback and employee job performance. Social Behaviour and Personality, 42(5), 731-742. Doi: 10.2224/sbp.2014.42.5.731

• Hernandez, P.R., Schultz, P.W, Estrada, M., Woodcock, A. & Chance, R.C. (2013) Sustaining Optimal Motivation: A longitudinal analysis of interventions to broaden participation of underrepresented students in STEM. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(1), 89-107. Doi: 10.1037/a0029691

• Kearns, H. & Gardiner, M. (2011) Waiting for the motivation fairy. Nature, 472, 127. Available at: ithinkwell.com.au

• Kearns, H., Gardiner, M. & Marshall, K.(2008) Innovation in PhD completion: The hardy shall succeed (and be happy!). Higher Education Research & Development, 27(1), 77-89. Doi:10.1080/07294360701658781

• Litalien, D., Guay, F. & Morin, A.J.S. (2015) Motivation for PhD studies: Scale development and validation. Learning and Individual Difference, 41, 1-13. Doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2015.005.006

• Vassil, K., & Solvak, M. (2012). When failing is the only option: explaining failure to finish PhDs in Estonia. Higher Education, 64(4), 503-516. doi:10.1007/s10734-012-9507-6

• Wright, T., & Cochrane, R. (2000) Factors influencing successful submission of Ph.D. theses. Studies in Higher Education, 25(2), 181-195. Doi: 00/020181-15

• Zhou, J. (2014) Persistence motivations of Chinese doctoral students in science, technology, engineering, and math. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 7(3), 177-193. Doi: 10.1037/a0037196