Choosing to study for a PhD:

A framework for examining

decisions to become a research
student
Alistair McCulloch1, Cally Guerin2, Asangi Jayatilaka2, Paul Calder3
and Damith Ranasinghe2
1
University of South Australia, Australia, 2 University of Adelaide,
Australia, 3Flinders University, Australia

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Given its importance to institutions, policy-makers and intending
students, there is a surprising lack of research exploring the reasons
students choose to undertake a research degree. What studies there are
tend to be largely descriptive and the topic lacks a theoretically-
informed framework through which student decisions can be examined
and comparative work developed. We outline such a framework drawing
on self-determination theory and social cognitive career theory. Our
framework comprises five categories: autonomy; relatedness;
competence and self-efficacy; outcome expectations; and, goals. To
assess its utility, the framework is used to interrogate data generated
through a series of focus groups involving PhD students studying in
Australia in the area of information and communications technology.
The framework proved capable of organizing data in a robust,
comprehensive and coherent way.

Keywords: doctoral education, research degree student recruitment,

student decision-making, student choice, research student careers,
motivation
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Introduction
‘Like challenging the top of the world, you know – a PhD is the
highest degree.’ (Focus group participant)

The context for doctoral education has changed significantly over recent

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years. What was once a matter largely for individual universities and
university departments is now a major issue for national governments
and international organisations (HM Treasury, 2006; Academy of
Science of South Africa, 2010; Council of Graduate Schools and
Educational Testing Service, 2010; Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development, 2010; Pettigrew, 2012). In common with all
levels of higher education, PhD study is now an integral part of the
economic, employment, industrial and innovation policies of nation
states and supranational governmental bodies across the globe (Meek et
al., 2009). What could be referred to a mere twenty years ago as ‘a
cottage industry’ (UK Council for Graduate Education, 1996) is now be
better characterized as a highly regulated production-line involving an
increasing diversity of programs both in terms of mode of study and
means of presentation of research (Park, 2005), and also diversity of
students as a result of internationalization and widening participation
strategies (McCulloch and Thomas, 2013). For individual students,
doctoral study increasingly involves complementary disciplinary,
generic or transferable skills programs alongside an emphasis on timely
completion and employability.
These changes have taken place in (and have themselves contributed
to) the context of a situation where a rapidly increasing number of
students across the globe is studying for (and graduating with) doctoral
degrees, as well as a rapidly increasing mobility of both students and
academic staff (Chang, 2014). Simultaneously, higher education is
experiencing major expansions of undergraduate and taught
postgraduate programs in order to upskill populations and maintain
international competitiveness. Within this changing context, demand by
universities for high quality doctoral students has never been higher and
international competition for doctoral students has become increasingly
fierce as universities compete globally for what are often referred to as
the ‘brightest and the best’. Thus, for example, the Scottish Government
(2017: n.p.) website promotes the country’s Saltire Scholarships as
being ‘part of the Scottish Government’s continuing support for the
‘brightest and best’ students to come and study in Scotland.’ Within this
competitive situation, this article explores a largely neglected area but
one which is of crucial importance to both institutions and
policymakers, that is, the individual decision to become a PhD student,
and offers a theoretically-informed framework which can be used to
understand better the reasons why doctoral students choose to undertake
PhDs. The article’s contribution is not, however, limited to the
theoretical. In addition to offering a framework for future research, the
research also allows us to draw conclusions of interest to higher

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education institutions and policymakers regarding the recruitment of
research students.

Choosing to study for a doctoral qualification

Given its importance to institutions and national policy-makers, there is
a surprising lack of previous studies exploring the reasons students
choose to undertake doctoral studies; those that do exist are largely
descriptive in nature or examine the issue from a social justice
perspective. This latter category includes work on ‘the effects of social
origin and gender on access to the doctoral degree’ in Germany
(Bornmann and Enders, 2004: 21), the ‘social and academic correlates
of entry into graduate programs’ in the US (Mullen et al., 2003: 144),
and the ‘impact of social origins on enrolment in PhD progammes in
Norway’ (Mastekaasa, 2006: 438). These issues of access to doctoral
education are important (McCulloch and Thomas, 2013) and have been
studied most tellingly in the body of work published by Paul Wakeling
and his colleagues in the years since he and a colleague produced a
groundbreaking report for the UK’s National Co-ordinating Centre for
Public Engagement and the Economic and Social Research Council
(Wakeling and Kyriacou, 2010). The actual decision-making process in
entry to graduate education in the US has been studied in detail in a
recent book (Posselt, 2016), but this examines the process from the
perspective of those involved in admitting candidates rather than those
seeking entry.
Of those studies that examine the decisions of individuals rather than
focusing on systemic drivers, some focus on the professional doctorate
or its US equivalents (e.g., Jablonski, 2001; Scott et al., 2004;
Wellington and Sikes, 2006; Gill and Hoppe, 2009), but lack a reference
to relevant theoretical approaches in either their analysis or in
developing their conclusions. Some simply use an earlier study’s
approach, for example, Wellington and Sikes (2006) who look to Scott
et al. (2004), and Gill and Hoppe (2009) who look to Leonard et al.
(2005). Leonard and her colleagues follow the same method as
Wellington and Sikes (2006), asking a number of ‘why’ questions and
then simply reporting the answers. Where partial frameworks are
developed (e.g., Scott et al., 2004), these go no further than
acknowledging the existence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors as broad
categories before moving on to develop categories from the responses in
a generally common-sense way. None of these studies provides an a
priori theoretically-informed model before testing it against empirical
evidence. Rather, each develops its own set of different, but overlapping,
reasons for entering a doctoral degree which fall roughly within the

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broad categories of intellectual satisfaction and stimulation; career
security and advancement; and personal sense of identity and
achievement. Other similar papers can be found in the field of business
(Stiber, 2000), in education (Jablonski, 2001, Clark, 2007), in history
(Brailsford, 2010) and in information and communications technology
(ICT: Guerin et al., 2015). A singular exception in this predominantly
qualitative set of studies is Mokhtar (2012), who follows Wellington and
Sikes (2006) and Leonard et al. (2005) in adopting an inductive
approach to her study of female engineers in Malaysia, but who does
attempt to tie her work into earlier theoretically focused work by
comparing her categories with those emerging from studies developed
from Houle’s (1961) seminal work on adults in continuing education –
The Inquiring Mind. These latter categories are not, however, used to
interrogate the data; rather, they are used as a simple comparator.
Studies using quantitative methods either alone or in combination
with qualitative methods would also benefit from more detailed
theorising. An Australian study in the broad science, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) area that utilized a mixed
methods approach concluded that the most common reasons for
beginning research degrees are: ‘I wanted to do my own research’, ‘I am
driven by a desire to invent/create/discover new things’, and ‘I wanted
to find out more about the topic I am studying’ (Guerin and Ranasinghe,
2010). A second study from Australia involving a factor analysis of
responses from current doctoral students across all disciplines identified
five main factors impacting on decision-making: encouragement from
family and friends to take up doctoral studies; intrinsic interest in the
field of study and identification as the kind of person who can contribute
to knowledge in the discipline; inspiration by lecturers, who sometimes
actively encouraged students to continue their studies; positive
undergraduate experiences of authentic research; and a desire for career
advancement (Guerin et al., 2015a). In Lebanon, an exploratory factor
analysis study in the area of engineering identified four factors:
professional, social, and financial attitudes, as well as ‘the individual’s
own estimate of the social pressure to perform/not perform this
behaviour […] the influence of people in one’s social environment’
(Batiyeh and Naja, 2011, 423). Finally, in a study of a US research
university, Jiang and Loui (2012) identified the personal elements of
decision styles and personality types as central factors. As was the case
with the qualitative studies referred to earlier, each of these four
quantitative studies would be significantly strengthened through
engagement with underlying theories or models, thus allowing the
studies to build one upon the other. To enable this, our understanding of

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what influences individuals’ decision-making with regard to doctoral
study requires a clearer, more comprehensive framework which can be
applied systematically across studies.

A proposed framework for examining decisions to study for a PhD

To be successful, a framework in this area needs not only to reflect the
potential complexity of a decision to pursue a doctoral degree, but also
to take account of the nature of the contemporary doctorate as a research
training preparatory to employment, rather than simply as constituting a
project that will make an original contribution to knowledge. It also
needs to acknowledge the fact that decision-making is influenced by
both individual socio-cognitive and also socio-contextual factors; that is,
individual characteristics and traits are reflected in individual decision-
making whilst also being filtered through the lens of the individual’s
socio-cultural environment. Thus, an individual may be drawn towards
doctoral study because of their positive orientation towards research, but
may find their immediate family opposed to such a move. Conversely,
another individual may be inclined towards entering the workforce, but
face family or peer pressure to pursue a doctoral degree. These simple
examples illustrate the potential for interplay between socio-cognitive
and socio-cultural factors. It is important to emphasise, however, that the
article does not seek to develop a new theory of motivation or choice.
This would take much more space than a single article allows (Beck,
2004; Milner, 2005). Rather, it offers a framework for analysis
appropriate to contemporary doctoral education which integrates two
existing and complementary theoretical approaches.
The two theoretically based models upon which the framework
draws have each been previously employed, albeit separately, in relation
to doctoral education. Between them they comprehensively address both
the socio-cognitive and the socio-contextual dimensions of individual
decision-making. Taken together, they cover all the individually labelled
reasons identified in previous studies and allow us to begin to develop a
more integrated and systematic approach to the study of why individuals
might want to pursue a doctoral degree. This framework provides a way
to interrogate data about the choice to embark on a doctoral degree,
something dealt with in the next section of this article.
The first model drawn on is self-determination theory (SDT, see
Deci, 1971), which explores ‘the socio-context variables that assist and
impede human motivation, performance, and development’, variables
that are based on three ‘innate psychological needs: autonomy,
competence, and relatedness’ (Mason, 2012: 260). Mason uses SDT not
to examine decision-making with regard to the initial pursuit of doctoral

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education, but rather to explore both student satisfaction with doctoral
study once begun and then the impact of these needs on decisions to
continue. The second is social cognitive career theory (SCCT, see Lent
et al., 2002), ‘developed as a means of explaining career choice and
development through the use of socio-cognitive constructs’ (Crede and
Borrego, 2011: 2) and which addresses categories of variables neglected
by SDT. SCCT uses three primary constructs: self-efficacy, outcome
expectations, and goals. Crede and Borrego (2011: 1) use it ‘to develop
a more complete understanding of the factors that contribute to students’
decision processes with respect to pursuing a graduate degree in
engineering’. While they do examine ‘the decision to enroll’ in doctoral
programs, their discussion is limited to socio-cognitive factors, hence
neglecting the ‘socio-context variables’ addressed by SDT.
Drawing on SDT and SCCT, and combining two of their elements
which overlap but which are analytically distinct, our framework
comprises five elements relevant to decision-making:

1. Autonomy – the sense of control that an individual feels they

will have in a situation they are considering entering.
2. Relatedness – the sense of being ‘valued and cared for’, which
not only supports ‘intrinsic motivation’, but also creates
‘incentives to do activities that are valued by significant
others’ (Mason, 2012: 260).
3. Competence and self-efficacy – here we combine two
elements, one drawn from each of the two theories, to act as
an overarching category addressing two dimensions of the
complex area of self-belief. As Bandura (1982: 122) writes:
‘Efficacy in dealing with one’s environment is not a fixed act
or simply a matter of knowing what to do […] Perceived self-
efficacy is concerned with judgements of how well one can
execute courses of action required to deal with prospective
situations’. In the context of the research degree, this element
encapsulates both academic competence (the belief in one’s
academic and research abilities) and also confidence in one’s
own personal characterstics. Combining the two into a single
element aligns well with Crede and Borrego’s consideration
of the individual’s ‘belief about his or her personal abilities
which may include perceived ability to achieve academic
milestones or overcome performance hurdles’ (2011: 2) and
Lent et al.’s comment that, in the area of self-efficacy,
‘personal attainments are typically seen as the most potent or
compelling source of self-efficacy’ (2002: 262).

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 4. Outcome expectations – the consequences an individual
‘believes will occur as a result of performing the task or
behaviour’, which may include ‘future employment
opportunities such as the type of job or nature of work, or a
raise in starting salary’ (Crede and Borrego, 2011: 3).
5. Goals – the individual’s future objectives or plans, including
both career and life-plans, and also personal achievement.
This refers to where or what the individual wants to be, rather
than the expected results of actions.

It is important to note four assumptions implicit in the framework. First,

the decision to pursue doctoral education is a conscious one. Second,
both intrinsic (that is, internal to the person or the activity, in this case
autonomy, competence and self-efficacy and goals) and extrinsic (that is,
external to the person or the activity, in this case relatedness and
outcome expectations) factors impinge directly on the decision. Third,
there are background or contextual factors which create an orientation
towards doctoral education and which make a decision to apply more or
less likely; these include barriers. Fourth, that students are able to
identify these factors and express them to the researchers undertaking
the study. We make these points explicit because some theories related
to decision-making, particularly those associated with psychological
perspectives, put great store on the unconscious. The current framework
addresses conscious factors of which the actor is aware and able to
reflect on and explicate directly to a third party. This research thus falls
into the broad category of rational approaches to the study of decision-
making in which individuals are assumed to make choices based on a
calculation of what is in their best interests given their current situation,
what they would like their future situation to be (that is, their goals), and
the means available to them to pursue their goals (Olson, 1957; Barry,
1978). Having sketched out the framework, its utility is now examined
through its application to data collected through focus group discussions
involving doctoral students in ICT.

Decision-making and the pursuit of doctoral study: the framework

explored
Four focus groups investigating students’ experiences of moving
through the decision to embark on doctoral study were conducted. The
groups involved 31 doctoral students studying in the area of ICT.
Initially it was planned to draw participants only from three South
Australian universities with different research histories and strategic
priorities (University of Adelaide, University of South Australia and

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Flinders University), but an additional opportunistic group was held to
take advantage of the presence of doctoral students who were in
Adelaide to attend the Australasian Computer Science Week
postgraduate symposium. Of the participants, seven were female; seven
were Australian domestic students, the remainder being Australian
‘permanent residents’ or international students. The intention was to
gather data from differing perspectives, thus participants in one group
were all international students and another group comprised students
whose PhDs focused on ICT education. This offered the opportunity to
surface what might otherwise have remained hidden. The focus groups
were guided by a series of open-ended questions allowing for a
conversational style of discussion, the initial questions having been
derived from a survey questionnaire reported elsewhere (Guerin et al.,
2015a). Details of the methodology of the current study are reported
elsewhere (Guerin et al., 2015b: 3-6). Questions explored issues such as
undergraduate experiences of research, influences on decisions to
embark on a PhD, and the role of the school or faculty1 in encouraging
interest in research. Each of the focus groups lasted a minimum of one
hour and was audio recorded. The recordings were transcribed verbatim
and then coded using NVivo10 software. The framework was then used
to interrogate the focus group data to examine the extent to which the
framework offers a robust approach to analysis and the extent to which
it could deal with the data in a comprehensive way. Transcripts were
read and coded independently by two researchers in the team with
experience in qualitative analysis. Where there was disagreement over
coding, discussion took place until either agreement could be reached or
the fragment from the transcript was rejected; the latter occurrence was
very rare. It is important to emphasise here, however, that the key
purpose of this part of the article is to understand the extent to which the
framework allows us to allocate the data collected in the focus groups in
a coherent and comprehensive way, rather than to focus on substantive
questions relating to student decision-making.

Autonomy
The choice to undertake a PhD was closely related to a belief that, as
research students, they would have a greater degree of control over their
day-to-day activities (that is, autonomy) than they would in other work
or study situations. One interviewee was very explicit about the appeal
––––––––––––––––––––––––––
1
We use the terms ‘faculty’ in its European sense to mean an organisational unit
within a university, rather than in the US sense where it refers to the academic
staff.

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and motivating influence of autonomy:

‘I figured that in most jobs you’re never going to be able to do

what you want to do all the time. You might get a little bit of time
where you can do what you want to do or you enjoy that part of
the job or there’s always the other stuff, you know, writing the
reports, the meetings, the meetings, the meetings, the meetings,
the meetings […] all that sort of stuff. But you know what I mean:
whereas in this sort of area of postgrad research you’re more
likely to get a larger chunk of time to be able to spend to do the
kind of stuff you like [...] there’s not someone looking over your
shoulder.’

Indeed, it became clear that, for a large number of interviewees, the

attraction of doctoral study was that it was not working in government
or industry. For one student, an Honours program2 involving both an
industry placement and a research project had convinced her that she
had a passion for the latter:

‘I don’t like to do the [industry] stuff, repeating everything

everyday. So […] this motivation has come from the Honours
project which is a one-year research project […] that we have in
the third year. In the first semester we have 6 months industrial
training.’

For many others it was their experience of industry following graduation

from earlier undergraduate or Masters degrees that taught them the value
of the autonomy they could expect to find in doctoral research. They had
experienced work in industry as boringly repetitive, lacking in
opportunities for creativity, and involving endless meetings. While jobs
in industry might pay well, for some the dullness of the work was
intolerable. They saw doctoral study as providing access to more
stimulating work that allowed for greater autonomy and freedom in
organising their days. The following two extracts each demonstrate this:

‘I have ten years work experience […] Maybe in the first five
years […] working is very good, but ten years later very boring
––––––––––––––––––––––––––
2
An Honours program is an Australian research-focused or research-intensive
qualification comprising a year of full-time study and usually taken after
completion of a Bachelors degree. In the Australian system, Honours is a long-
standing route into a doctoral degree.

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 because every day just copy, copy, copy, copy some word, copy
some code or some program. And then I do some minor revision,
and they coded different applications, revision, revision, yeah –
very boring!’

‘I was actually hired by a big computer corporation before I

graduated [from my undergraduate degree] doing this daily
routine, going to work, back from work, going to work, back
from work – it makes me very bored with the situation […] So
university life is a good thing for me […] We have freedom but
not a daily routine like that.’

The sense of boredom described in these last two extracts relates directly
to autonomy. In a study of 255 undergraduate students drawing heavily
on SDT, Sulea et al. (2015: 133) comment that ‘the need for autonomy
represents a student’s desire to regulate himself and his behavior, and to
experience psychological freedom and choice when studying’ and found
that ‘the needs for autonomy […] and competence [were] significant
predictors of boredom. Students with unfulfilled needs for autonomy
and competence reported higher levels of boredom, after controlling for
personality traits’ (ibid.: 136).
One of the participants described an epiphany, referring to the
moment when he decided that he could not bear to spend the rest of his
career working in his current job. He observed a colleague, who clearly
did not enjoy his work, and imagined this person having a breakdown:

‘I pictured him as being someone who has just had to put up with
just rubbish, which is the job I do all day – listen to stupid people
asking stupid questions.’

This insight led him to radically change his employment situation and
‘so on that day I went and worked out how to get out of what I was
doing’. Embarking on a PhD presented a positive and realistic
transformation of his work situation, linking to the outcome expectations
to be discussed below.
Finally, for some students, the attraction of the research degree was
that it was not coursework, that their learning would be autonomous,
self-managed and in depth. One said, ‘I loved it [research]. I loved the
actual learning and really knowing about something, not just pass the
test and move on’, and another concurred, saying:

‘A PhD is not studying anymore. You do your own work. You

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 manage yourself, I manage myself. I manage my time and I learn
skills, experience. Not, not only reading books, not only study in
library […] I think I love this way.’

Competence and self-efficacy

A sense of their own academic competence was important to a
significant proportion of participants and this derived from a number of
sources. For some, it came from their achieving good marks on previous
programs, for example: ‘I have the enough good results to continue my
PhD’ and ‘I’m always doing really well in my study course.’ For others,
an undergraduate research project had provided a sense of being able to
undertake independent research. Two examples are:

‘I think what encouraged us was as part of our undergraduate

degree in the last semester we have a project where you select an
area [to] research into and present a report’

‘During my undergraduate [studies] I was doing some minor

thesis project and finding new things by doing the research
project [which] also made me interested in pursuing a PhD.’

Another referenced a sense of competence derived from an

undergraduate requirement to undertake a literature review of 10-15
papers so that she had ‘a good understanding of what research is before
coming to the PhD.’
Honours was a significant source of creating a sense of competence,
with the Honours project in particular being mentioned. One student
said that ‘this motivation came from the Honours project’ and another
that ‘I never anticipated doing Honours so that was my first exposure to
research at the higher level I suppose and I had a reasonably good
experience.’ This latter student continued

‘…but other than that, just through the topics that you do as part
of your Honours degree you’re obviously exposed to more and
more journals and academic articles and that sort of stuff, so you
become more sort of attuned to how that side of it works. When
you’re an undergrad from my point of view that’s just a
completely closed door. I had no idea how that side of academia
worked – wasn’t really exposed to it in any way. So Honours was
the first the first time I got to experience that.’

Working as a research assistant provided a sense of competence to

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another student:

‘Hadn’t considered doing my PhD. [I] was working as a student

research assistant for a couple of years at university so I had an
idea of what I was possibly getting myself into, so then I thought
[I would] just continue doing that.’

And as a final example in this category, one student described his

experience of being involved in an undergraduate research project from
which a paper was published:

‘It was good, I had a good feeling at that moment. It was really
good and you can see your work has been published somewhere,
is being seen by other people. So yes, that was really
encouraging.’

Participants also identified a range of personal qualities or

characteristics which they saw as being useful for researchers. These
included self-reliance and independence, perseverance and persistence.
One of the participants made the point explicitly, stating that those who
are suited to research will be drawn to it, particularly if they have had
opportunities to experience research as undergraduates:

‘Not all people have the personality suitable for doing research.
And the guys who are suitable for, who like doing research, they
will find their own ways. You don’t need to tell them.’

Another believed that ‘my character is suitable to do some research

work I think.’
For some, the essential qualities needed as a researcher are perceived
as being habits of mind which can be either innate or learned:

‘A PhD or any kind of research requires persistence more so than

intelligence. I mean, you need some sort of ability but
[completing a PhD shows you] can see your difficult problem
through. It’s character building and if you can handle that […]
then you can handle anything.[…] I wanted to be a stronger,
better person.’

For one student, competence, self-efficacy and autonomy were

explicitly linked, pointing again to the close relationship between the
categories of this framework:

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 ‘I like the autonomy, I mean I work quite well by myself. I’m
introverted and I don’t really need interaction to function […] I’m
quite happy to sit there by myself and just work, and again that
kind of suited, that is something you sort of get to do when you do
your PhD more so than earlier degrees. You get to plan how you’re
going to spend your time and find a way that works for you.’

Relatedness
The relatedness category was very important for participants in the
study. Some identified a personal attachment to their school or
department in their decision to continue studying there, one explaining
that ‘definitely a big factor for me is enjoying working with those people
and being comfortable continuing working with those people.’
Encouragement from Honours supervisors, repeated if necessary,
was also important. One focus group exchange went:

Student: ‘As I said I had really good supervisors during Honours

and they were happy to continue with me if I pursued a PhD. That
was definitely a big factor.’
Interviewer: ‘Did they suggest it?’
Student: ‘Yes, yes, multiple times – yep.’

Other participants made similar comments:

‘He was very encouraging he was very good. When I first started
thinking about it I came to him after advice and he was very good
about it.’

‘One of the lecturers I did a research project with in my

undergrad convinced me.’

‘It was during my Honours year where my supervisor for one of

those projects, became my supervisor for my PhD. So, she was a
big part of convincing me to have a go at doing it. […] It’s a lot
of validation.’

In explanation, one participant said:

‘They sort of push you because they could see something I

couldn’t see and that’s good, that’s what you’re here for. You’re
not just here to get a big piece of paper and go away. You’re here
to grow and even at 45 you can start growing. [My supervisor]

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 actually crossed the line of the academics coming out [of the
graduation ceremony] to come and shake my hands saying, “Well
done! You should do more.” So that was quite nice.’

One interviewee reported that, although her father was an academic who
had encouraged her to continue her studies, it was her supervisor’s
encouragement to take up research that really persuaded her to do so.
Although we know that encouragement from friends and family
members plays an important role in this decision-making (Guerin and
Ranasinghe, 2010), lecturers can be more convincing, both as insiders
who have first-hand experience of the university system and also as
independent advice-givers who are not emotionally involved.
Mechanisms put in place by universities to expose undergraduates to
research and senior researchers also had an impact. One international
student recalled his experience with a ‘living book’:

‘I was studying in [name of university] and in 2010 the library

organised some events. They invited some professor […] and
students can book the professor just like a book [laughing] Yes
like a living book exactly [...] yeah and then the last time I book
[professor] and I ask him some question and I said with my
bachelor degree in computer science, actually I could not find any
job available in [name of city]. It’s really hard to find and my
background is actually mathematics so I could not find any job
here so what I’m going to do? And he said in his opinion my
background is very suitable for doing research. At that time it just
come into my head, “Oh, I can do research’” so I just follow him
[laughing] I just follow him...until now.’

Finally, another linked relatedness to autonomy and also goals, saying:

‘I enjoy the autonomy the PhD brings […] It was always a long term
goal to perhaps be involved in academia because it’s the closest to fitting
in that I’ve experienced.’

Outcome expectations
This category is associated with students approaching doctoral study as
a means to an end. For some, rather than commencing the degree
primarily through a desire to undertake research, they may do so for the
purpose of becoming (or maintaining their position as) university
teachers. Typical comments included: ‘If I do want to continue doing the
teaching I’d need to do it [a PhD] anyway’, ‘I want to be a lecturer that’s
why I want to get a PhD’, and ‘Basically I started working as a lecturer

98 Higher Education Review, Vol 49, No 2, 2017. ISSN 0018-1609.

in one of the management institutes in Bhutan, so then it was the
requirement that you have to have PhD.’ Another comment was:

‘I wanted to be a lecturer and […] around that time there was a

down-size in the university and all the lecturers that got sacked
haven’t got a PhD degree. Even though they are those who can
teach […] I didn’t want to do research, I want to be a lecturer but
[…] as an undergrad student I didn’t even know to be a lecturer
you needed to do research.’

For a significant proportion of the group, doing a PhD was seen as a way
of enhancing career opportunities and prospects more generally. One
said, ‘After my PhD I can get more opportunities for better jobs’, and
another, ‘Because I heard my mates told me there are many good
companies […] that prefer PhD students.’ A third told the group that ‘it
seemed that RFiD engineers were in demand […] Might as well do
something that would get me the edge could get a job […] and make you
make you stand out.’ A fourth explained that, ‘The main reason is to
pursue higher degree for my future career path’ and a fifth that, ‘To
make yourself more suitable in the job market you need a higher degree
so I always thought of having a higher degree just after my undergrad’.
One student identified a specific ambition to work in research:

‘Yeah, maybe it’s for my career – I think because I want to work

in research [...] my previous boss kept telling me that [...] if you
just keep working in the university there’s no career path no
future for you […] so he encouraged me to do a PhD if I want to
work in research.’

Finally, another had the simple desire to know more based on his
experience in a friendship group:

I was out to dinner one night with friends [and] with my degree I
was the least educated person on the table […] and there were 24
of us including people with multiple PhDs and you know […] I
felt quite – I didn’t feel stupid but I wanted to know more.

Goals
Unlike the outcome expectations in which individuals are focused on
where they think certain actions are likely to lead, goals are the desired
endpoint of those actions. The goals are formed ‘as people develop an
affinity for an activity at which they feel efficacious and expect positive

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outcomes’ and act to ‘sustain or increase their involvement in that
activity’ (Lent et al., 2002: 265). In the case of one student, the goal was
externally directed and involved contributing to the greater good:

‘It was from my childhood […] Then, after my graduation – I’m

Bachelors, I was hired for Motorola. I had been there for four
years and I found that, yeah, it was interesting working there. I
had a lot of opportunities but I found sometimes working for
somebody, we cannot achieve all the aspirations we have […] So
I thought, “If I do, if I search into this research area, I can achieve
more and give something more to the society and to the whole
knowledge”. And my research area is on smart home care […]
and most of the people can benefit.’

For some, it was the realisation that research was their ‘passion’ and that
they wanted a career where they could pursue that passion. One said that
they ‘did a research assistant’s job for two years in the same university
and I realised that research is my passion’, while another ‘thought
research is best suited for me and I have passion for that.’

Conclusions
Decisions about major life events such as pursuing a research degree are
very rarely mono-causal. As doctoral candidates discuss their reasons
for choosing doctoral study, it becomes apparent that the reasons are
intertwined and mutually reinforcing. For example, an opportunity
might have arisen at a time when the job market changed for the worse
and an individual felt that their current situation (in industry or in
teaching) would be improved with a higher qualification. Or that a
student might always have aspired to doctoral studies, but other life
events, such as supporting a young family or commitment to another
job, had prevented the pursuit of the dream until later in life. It was also
clear that there was no single decision profile in the students
participating in the focus groups and that the full raft of factors was
present in each of the groups. The decision to pursue doctoral study was
an individual one but, despite this, the complexity of peoples’ lives, and
the associated decision-making processes, the five-category framework
developed in this paper coped well with the data across the four diverse
focus groups.
During the focus groups, participants talked about their experiences
and understanding of research as undergraduates, what they had done
since completing their earlier degrees (whether Bachelors or Masters),
the point at which research degrees became real for them and the

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important influences impacting on their decisions. The five categories in
the framework were capable of organizing the contents of those
conversations in a robust, comprehensive and coherent way with only a
very small amount of data not fitting easily into the framework.
Examples of this additional data were references to television programs
(for example, those on the Discovery Channel), authors (for example,
Arthur C Clarke), and friends and relatives who had been awarded
PhDs. Even here, however, it is possible to argue that, had additional
detail been available, these would have fitted the categories of either
competence and self-efficacy or goals.
There were some limitations to the case study. One was that
participants in the focus groups were successful entrants to programs
rather than applicants in general and thus it was not possible to examine
the framework in the light of the decision processes of unsuccessful
applicants. This may be a fruitful avenue for future research. It is worth
noting, however, that by focusing on current students we have collected
data relatively close in time to the point of the decision to apply. This
avoids the issue faced by Leonard et al. (2005), in which the respondents
were students who had graduated two, seven and twelve years earlier
who were asked about their reasons for entering doctoral study (a point
in time which could have been anything up to twenty years previous).
Leonard et al. (2005: 137) found that ‘the number of reasons given
tended to increase across the years’, suggesting that the passage of time
might have had the effect of enhancing memories. A second limitation is
that the data was not collected explicitly to assess the utility of the
framework. Rather, it was data with which the current authors were
engaged and from which they had already published. However, the data
is typical of that collected for research examining choices to pursue
doctoral degrees and, as such, provides an appropriate challenge for the
framework. Third, the allocation of data to categories within the
framework requires careful reading and is always to some degree
subjective. However, this is offset by the current research team’s
experience in the use of qualitative methods and careful multiple
readings of the data. Finally, it is important to note that, in addition to
these psycho-socio-cognitive categories, other practical and logistical
factors may impact on decision-making about the pursuit of a doctoral
qualification, for example, physical, financial or time constraints. Such
barriers cannot be dismissed, but have been discussed elsewhere (Guerin
et al., 2015a), leaving the current article to focus on the framework.
Despite these limitations, the framework moves beyond previous largely
piecemeal approaches and towards a more systematic understanding of
decisions about the pursuit of doctoral education. Drawing on

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established psychological theories (SDt and SCCT), it offers a set of
categories through which the factors affecting decisions on choosing
doctoral study can be examined: autonomy, relatedness, competence
and self-efficacy, outcome expectations and goals. The framework and
its five constituent categories provide a powerful way of making sense
of the many individual answers to the question, ‘Why did you choose to
do a PhD?’ and also a way of generating studies that are more
comparable than those currently available.

Implications for policy and practice

In addition to its academic utility, we believe that our research allows us
to draw conclusions of interest to higher education institutions regarding
the recruitment of research students. The first is that the PhD must be
seen as one alternative amongst a number about which a potential
student makes a choice. We found evidence that current students were
encouraged to enrol for their PhD because of what the doctorate was not,
for example, non-academic employment which was viewed as routine
and potentially (or actually) boring. Students also positioned doctoral
study as ‘not taught’. A very important implication to be drawn from this
is that university careers services should be actively positioning doctoral
education as a ‘career-choice’ as much as an ‘educational choice’.
Universities can assist this by providing development pathways tailored
to research student goals, including for those students who are pursuing
PhDs as mid-career professional development opportunities. The study
also suggests strongly that, in doing this, autonomy should be
emphasized as a key value implicit in PhD study.
A second conclusion relates to the importance of a sense of self-
efficacy to intending PhD students. Universities, or more accurately
university departments and research groups, can work to de-mystify the
PhD and develop self-belief in students where they recognize talent,
ability and potential. In particular, they can do this where potential
students demonstrate recognition that they have the key character trait
necessary for doctoral study – perseverance. This can be achieved via a
variety of routes – Honours study, involvement in publication and
involvement in research either as a student on a taught program or as an
employed research assistant. These types of activities can help develop
the sense of relatedness students reported as being important, a
relatedness developed through university units being welcoming,
involving and embracing of potential students, by making them feel they
belong to and are part of the research community in that institution.
The idea of shaping potential student goals underpins many of these
concluding comments. We are suggesting that universities (and other

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stakeholders) could benefit from trying to shape student goals during
their taught degrees, that is, before they pursue a research degree, even
before entry to undergraduate study. In the US, the Council of Graduate
Schools has begun to undertake work with students in their final years
of compulsory schooling and in the UK similar initiatives are in train
(Council of Graduate Schools and Educational Testing Service, 2012).
Finally, it became clear during the project that robust decision-
making relies on being well informed, and the framework draws
attention to that. The motivations discussed in each of the categories
rely to a greater or lesser extent on an individual’s possession of
information about a future situation. That information can be held as a
result of previous experience or learning, or provided by others during
periods of decision-making. Alternatively, the information an
individual already possesses can be reinforced or modified by others
during periods of decision-making. Whatever the source or sources of
that information for the students participating in the focus groups, its
importance to the decision-making process means that universities and
those working within them would be well advised to identify key
messages about the nature of doctoral study and, in particular, the
autonomy associated with it. In the focus groups, it became clear that a
major issue for a number of students was that they had a very limited
understanding of what ‘research’ was in ICT. As one stated: ‘It’s almost
a closed door’ for many undergraduates. Another said: ‘I understand the
research after I start my PhD’ and another that, despite pursuing the
question at his previous institution, ‘We couldn’t get insight into what
research actually meant until we got here’. While these three students
took up their doctoral studies primarily because they were interested in
university teaching, these comments stand as an important reminder of
the potential loss of suitable candidates if the nature of research as a
lived activity is not communicated to undergraduates. Certainly, other
research pinpoints a lack of understanding of the nature of research as
a significant barrier to embarking on doctoral study in ICT (Guerin et
al., in press). While this study has focused on the decision making of
students in ICT, much of what is reported here can be usefully extended
to other disciplines. In addition to offering a framework to guide
research and help make comparative studies into the decision-making
of potential PhD students more profitable, we also offer a number of
recommendations to help universities maximize their recruitment of
well-prepared and well-motivated PhD students. This will help
individual universities achieve their goals and also contribute to
governments’ policy objectives in the areas of high-level skills,
economic development and innovation.

Higher Education Review, Vol 49, No 2, 2017. ISSN 0018-1609. 103

Acknowledgements
Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Council of
Deans of ICT under its Learning and Teaching Academy.

Address for correspondence

Professor Alistair McCulloch, Teaching Innovation Unit, University of
South Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

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