The Impact of the Academic Advising Style on the Development of an Academic Integrity Culture among Future PhD Candidates

Abstract

Our research studied the impact of academic advising style on the development of a culture of academic integrity among PhD candidates. The study involved 52 postgraduate students and their 52 academic advisors. The results obtained were analyzed through general scientific methods. We used a closed-ended questionnaire to gather data from academic advisors, open-ended questions for postgraduate students, mathematical data processing techniques, and the Statistica software package to interpret data. The empirical data indicates that a pastoral academic advising style was applied by 17,3% of advisors, a laissez-faire style by 11,5%, a contractual style by 40,4%, and a directorial style by 30,8% of advisors in this study. Correlating these results with data on postgraduate students’ level of academic integrity culture lead to the conclusion that the contractual style of academic advising could be regarded as the most beneficial for raising the level of academic integrity culture of postgraduate students (33,3% of students of advisors with this style had a high level of academic integrity culture). The weakest style for improving the level of academic integrity culture of students is the pastoral style (11,1%). Moreover, it is obvious that most academic advisors (40,4%) use the mutually beneficial contractual style. The quantitative increase of advising style indicators corresponding to the contractual type entails higher values for students’ academic integrity culture. The relationship between advising style and level of academic integrity culture is not linear, and we cannot argue that an academic advisor with a contractual leadership style adheres to all the desirable principles of academic integrity culture. Further investigations are required if more specific and diversified conclusions are to be made. Furthermore, we should take into account that other members of the academic staff also have an impact on the formation and improvement of the academic integrity culture of postgraduate students.