We invite you and one of your female doctoral advisees to participate in a research study entitled, “Female Doctoral Students’ Research Experiences.” If you complete the activities in this study, both you and your advisee will each be compensated with a $20 Amazon gift card.
The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that facilitate female psychology doctoral students’ research self-efficacy. If you are interested in this study, you will nominate up to three of your female doctoral advisees to participate in this study together with you. Not all pairs of advisors and advisees will be selected for this study, and in any case, not more than one of your advisees will be selected to participate in this study.
Although we cannot offer any promises, it is possible that your doctoral advisee might experience an increase in research self-efficacy as a result of participating in this study.
You will complete an online survey consisting of a brief questionnaire and will be asked to write a brief letter of encouragement to your doctoral advisee. (For the time being, please do NOT tell your doctoral advisee about this letter.) The duration of this study for you is about 30 minutes (5 minutes for a brief questionnaire and 25 minutes for the brief letter). The duration of this study for your advisee is about 35 minutes.
To participate in this study, you must satisfy all of the following criteria and also invite at least one of your female doctoral advisees who satisfies all of the following criteria to participate in this study. Both you and your advisee will be eligible for this study only if both of you consent to participate and both of you meet all the criteria for this study. Please read the following criteria carefully, so that you only nominate advisees that meet all the criteria in this study:
1. You are a professor or a researcher at a university/ college in the United States.
2. You currently supervise the research of the female doctoral student whom you intend to invite to participate in this study. We will refer to this student as your “advisee” (even if she is not formally your advisee).
3. Your advisee is a student in a Ph.D. program in psychology or a field closely associated with psychology.
4. Your advisee identifies as a female and is at least 18 years old.
5. This student has been your advisee for at least 3 months.
6. Your advisee is in her first, second, or third year of the Ph.D. program.
7. You are familiar with your doctoral advisee’s research skills and interests.
8. Your research and your advisee’s research relies exclusively or primarily on a quantitative methodology (e.g., both of you use mainly statistics to address your research questions). If your research relies on mixed methods, you still qualify for this study as long as your research is primarily quantitative in nature.
9. On average, you hold a meeting with your advisee at least once a month. A meeting is defined as a face-to-face meeting or video call (e.g., using Skype) that lasts at least 30 minutes- it could be an individual meeting or a group meeting (e.g., a lab session); it includes supervision and discussions on research, practice, professional development, etc. It excludes classes in which you are the instructor.
Ideally, the female doctoral advisee whom you nominate would be someone who might benefit from some encouragement to enhance her research self-efficacy.
If you are interested in participating in this study, simply reply to this email- [email protected]– with your first and last name. Please also give us the first and last name as well as the email addresses of between 1-3 of your female doctoral advisees whom you’re nominating for this study.
IMPORTANT- You are welcome to tell your advisees about this study, but please do NOT forward this email to them and do not tell them about the letter of encouragement. We will send your advisee a separate recruitment email and will copy you on that email.
After your advisee completes her first online survey, we will send you a brief online survey for you to complete.
This study has been approved by Indiana University’s Institutional Review Board. Questions about the project may be directed to [email protected]