Exploring the doctoral experience through the advisor-advisee relationship*

This work explores the graduate experiences of PhD-holders by examining the advisor-advisee relationship. Using regression analysis on survey data taken from 1084 practicing professional physicists, we find a number of factors that influence an individual's satisfaction with their personal and professional relationship with their dissertation advisor, including: the primary reason for choosing an advisor, mutual expectations towards making contact with respect to research, having too frequent (or not frequent enough) contact, and the nature of an advisor's support with respect to research direction. Note also that gender was not a significant predictor of satisfaction, nor was time-to-degree or an advisor's academic rank. The long-term impact of the advisor-advisee relationship will also be discussed.