ABSTRACT
This study aims to characterize the strategies researchers used to cope with Covid-19 impact and to explore the relationship between those strategies, researchers' characteristics and the pandemic impact in their lives. 721 researchers, proportionally distributed among three Spanish regions, answered an online survey on the pandemic impact on their activity. Scales referred to social support, productivity, research tasks, working conditions, and work and personal life balance. An open-ended section was included to collect the strategies they used to cope with the pandemic consequences. 1528 strategies were content analysed and categorised based on their purposes and related to the rest of the impact variables. Results show the predominance of some strategies for the whole sample both at the work level, such as organizing work duties and plans, and at the personal level, such as maintaining life-work balance and improving personal well-being. Results stress to what extent a strategic approach contributed to minimize contextual issues or constraints even in an extreme situation as the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. A non-strategic approach, consisting of just reacting emotionally or dropping research, was the less effective way to maintain interest in research, sustained work and productivity and to warrant work-life balance. Developing a strategic approach was easier for those without caring responsibilities and for men. Women in our study, especially with caring responsibilities, had reduced opportunities to continue with their careers during the pandemic. No evidence of institutional strategies supporting researchers to cope with the situation was found.
ABSTRACT
Doctoral candidates rely on diverse individuals to cope with the challenges of their doctoral trajectory. In this article we define Doctoral Support Networks (DSNs) as the group of individu-als with whom the doctoral candidate intentionally collaborates in order to deal with the problems and difficulties of the doctorate. We aim to explore the characteristics of this type of networks and their relationships with doctoral program conditions and researcher identity development. Results from a cluster analysis identified two groups of doctoral candidates based on the characteristics of their network: those with Distributed and Active DSNs (56.8%) and those with Reduced and Passive DSNs (43.2%). The first group reported more frequent interactions with a wider range of individuals from both academic and extra-academic contexts, higher levels of emotional support and direct advice to cope with doctoral challenges and difficulties, and a higher level of identification with the researcher position
Los estudiantes de doctorado colaboran con múltiples personas para afrontar los retos de la trayectoria. En este artículo definimos las Redes de Apoyo Doctoral (RAD) como el grupo de individuos que colabora con el doctorando para superar los problemas y dificultades del doctorado. Nuestro objetivo es explorar las características de este tipo de redes y sus relaciones con las condiciones del programa de doctorado y el desarrollo de la identidad como investigador. Los resultados de nuestro estudio identifican dos tipos de RAD ("distribuidas y activas" versus "reducidas y pasivas") que manifiestan relaciones significativas con las demás variables de análisis
