The central component of chemistry Ph.D. programs is the research group, where advisors are the managers who affect students’ professional development and career path. Current literature indicates that communication issues of advisor-advisee relationship in some graduate programs arise because of the perceived power imbalance in advisor-advisee relationship and students’ fear of advisors, which negatively influenced students’ conflict communication behaviors to advisors. Limited research is available to investigate the content of and reasons for chemistry doctoral students’ conflict communication behaviors to their advisors. This study aims to identify the various conflict communication behaviors that chemistry doctoral students adopt to deal with the conflicts with advisors and explore what factors affect these behaviors. Chemistry graduate students were asked to respond to an advisor-related conflict situation in whatever way they saw fit and justify why they would respond in that fashion. The results showed that although most of participants desired to openly communicate with advisors to resolve this conflict situation, some participants looked for help from others just to avoid direct contact with advisors. In addition, different communication behaviors were emphasized by participants when exemplifying how to resolve this conflict situation. Participants’ justifications indicated that students’ perceptions on advisors’ personality, their relationships with advisors and the power imbalance between them and their advisors mainly contributed to their conflict communication behaviors in this conflict situation. These findings can play an important role in understanding the advisor-advisee relationship for the betterment of these relationships in chemistry doctoral education.

Situational interview based investigation of advisor-advisee conflict communication in U.S. chemistry graduate deucation

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.