What do doctoral supervisors actually do? An attempt at describing supervisor's behaviour

Abstract

This paper reports on construction of an instrument, Inventory of Supervisor Activities, which makes it possible to self-rate the supervisor behaviour during interaction with doctoral students. The instrument concentrates on supervisor interaction activities in three phases of doctoral studies: before enrolment of the student, during the study and after completion of the study. The core activities are those that are accomplished during the study. They are divided into 10 sections, which are further broken down into 100 specific activities. These activities cover guidance and support in the learning process, scientific socialisation, building self-confidence, advice in research, dissertation and academic publishing. The instrument uses low inference categories to ensure good reliability and was designed to cover supervising interaction in behavioural sciences.