Explaining doctoral students’ relational maintenance with their advisor: a psychosocial development perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study explored how psychosocial development affects doctoral students’ relationship and communication with their advisor. Chickering and Reisser’s vectors of psychosocial development were examined in the doctoral context to understand how students preserve communicatively satisfying relationships with their advisor through the use of relational maintenance behaviors. Doctoral students (N = 304) completed self-report surveys and the results revealed that psychosocial development was related positively to their use of relational maintenance behaviors. The results also indicated that students’ relational maintenance behaviors mediated the associations between psychosocial development and communication satisfaction in the student–advisor relationship. These findings support the importance of psychosocial development in graduate school and provide information that may be used to improve the quality of doctoral education.