Gaining insight into doctoral persistence: Development and validation of Doctorate-related Need Support and Need Satisfaction short scales

Based on self-determination theory, a few studies have identified competence satisfaction as a major determinant of doctoral persistence. However, these studies did not use scales validated in the domain of doctoral studies, and failed to include all dimensions of the target constructs of need support and need satisfaction, or used a composite score of need support. To address these limitations, we conducted two studies (total N = 1458) aimed at developing and validating short, self-report scales of Doctorate-related Need Support and Need Satisfaction (D-N2S). The scales exhibited satisfactory psychometric properties of reliability as well as construct, criterion-related, known-groups, predictive, and face kinds of validity. All but one dimension (i.e., relatedness satisfaction) was positively related to doctoral persistence intentions and all but two dimensions (i.e., autonomy support and relatedness satisfaction) were negatively related to actual dropout. As expected, doctoral students in social sciences and humanities reported higher levels of autonomy support and autonomy satisfaction but lower levels of relatedness satisfaction than doctoral students in sciences and technology or health sciences. Representing another important contribution of our research, results further suggest that dimensions of need support (or satisfaction) should not be combined into a general measure of support (or satisfaction).