Dental Students’ Satisfaction with Academic Advisors: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Background: Academic counseling is a relationship between academic advisors and students and an effective approach to preventing students’ academic failure and improve the educational system at the university level. Students' satisfaction with academic advisors could affect the quality of academic counseling. Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate the influential factors in dental students’ satisfaction with academic advisors. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted using conventional content analysis on 17 students of the School of Dentistry of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Iran who were selected by purposive sampling in 2019. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews, which were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results: Two main themes were extracted, which were the academic advisor’s image and students’ expectations. Four main categories and 12 subcategories were also obtained. The main categories were the academic advisor’s characteristics, academic advisor’s position, student-advisor communication, and students’ needs. Conclusions: According to the results, several factors may affect the satisfaction of dental students with academic advisors, such as the advisor’s characteristics, communication between advisors and students, and general attitudes toward academic advisors in the educational system. These findings should be addressed in strategy planning in order to increase students’ satisfaction with academic advisors.