A Leg Up in the Ivory Tower: Navigating the Hidden Criteria of Doctoral Education Through Family Support
This study explores how first-year doctoral students and their family members understand and navigate the role of family support in doctoral education. The objective is to examine how family involvement, motivational beliefs, and perceptions of academic competencies affect student persistence, particularly among historically underrepresented and first-generation doctoral students.
Using dyadic interviews, this study addresses gaps in the literature by simultaneously capturing the perspectives of both doctoral students and their family members.
A qualitative descriptive study was employed, involving dyadic interviews with 44 participants, including first-year doctoral students (n = 22) and their selected family members (n = 22). Data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis grounded in hermeneutic principles, emphasizing empathic interpretation and contextual meaning-making to explore participants’ lived experiences.
This research offers new insight into the Family Involvement in Graduate School (FIGS) model through a dyadic perspective, particularly on how support is perceived and negotiated, shedding light on how families influence and are influenced by the graduate school experience.
The findings reveal that doctoral students and their families navigate invitations for involvement, motivational beliefs, and perceptions of necessary skills through complex relational and financial dynamics. Five themes emerged, highlighting the importance of practical and emotional support, strategic time investments, and efforts to bridge knowledge gaps about graduate education. Family involvement was characterized as a mutual investment and a critical resource for student persistence, especially among first-gen and historically underrepresented students.
Practitioners should implement AI-augmented asynchronous support to alleviate “time poverty” and institutionalize low-cost initiatives, such as family-inclusive summaries that normalize family involvement and redirect resources toward community-building.
Researchers should conduct longitudinal studies to track the retention impact of hybrid support models while identifying and reinforcing the existing cultural and communicative strengths within students’ support networks.
The FIGS model supports the development of university-community partnerships to provide holistic support that can increase the retention of future leaders, educators, and professionals, thereby alleviating burdens on society at large.
Future studies should track long-term retention rates for students using AI-augmented models compared to those using traditional synchronous models. Future research should evaluate outreach initiatives that support family involvement and employ longitudinal designs to understand better the evolving needs and strengths of doctoral students and their families.
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