PhD
Methodology
We were intentional with our survey development, sampling, and data synthesis to ensure the PhD GPS would be useful for all PhD students.
Survey Development
We began by generating a list of common areas where PhD students ask questions based on our own experiences and sorted these based on common themes. We then vetted this list with multiple scholars (both PhD students and faculty advising PhD students). We curated a survey in which contributors could select any (or all) of the themes they wanted to add advice/resources for. These themes included:
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General Process and Building Scholarly Competencies (e.g., comps, writing, idea generation, work-life balance)​
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Research Collaborations & Processes (e.g., advising, productivity, time management)
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Research Tools & Approaches (e.g., stats tools, methods courses)
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Honing Your Scholarly Craft (e.g., research-teaching-service balance, finding identity)
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Foundational Academic Knowledge (e.g., From the Editors articles, core readings)
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Non-Academic Resources for Entering Academia (e.g., social media groups to join, podcasts, books)
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Additional Miscellaneous Thoughts (e.g., any random lessons that don’t fit within the above categories)
For each theme, a contributor could free-write and/or upload documents, providing the data we would ultimately use.
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You can see the most recent version of the survey here: z.umn.edu/lessons2self
Sampling
​We employed two sampling strategies in August through September 2024 that yielded 114 contributors:
The first was a targeted sampling strategy of PhD students at all levels of the PhD process. This included incoming through 2nd-year PhD students at the New Doctoral Student Consortium, 3rd- and 4th-year PhD students at the OB Division's Halfway There PDW, and 4th-year and beyond PhD students at the OB Division's Doctoral Consortium.
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The second was a convenience sampling strategy of known advisors of PhD students within our networks.
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Additional sampling is ongoing--including via this page on this site.
Data Synthesis
​We leveraged AI (ChatGPT 4.0) and our own qualitative expertise to synthesize common themes and present the advice/resources in a way that would be most helpful to PhD students.
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We first split the advice/themes based on the seven survey categories and plugged that into ChatGPT using the following prompt: "Compile a list of all of this advice and then content analyze this advice based on type of advice". Multiple themes emerged from each set of advice/resources, with each theme containing consolidated sentences of advice. We then looked at each of the higher-level themes across the initial seven categories to aggregate them into the three "roadmaps" displayed on this site:
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​Pursuing Your PhD Along The PhD Roadmap
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Honing Your Management Abilities Along The Academia Life Roadmap
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​Developing Your Research Skills Along The Research Roadmap
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We grouped similar advice/resources within each of these three "roadmaps". We then manually looked through each of the responses and pulled out any important quotes, advice, and/or resources that were removed during the AI content analysis process.
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The end-result is this site, the PhD GPS, that provides PhD students with compiled and synthesized advice and resources from more than 100 academics.
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