Doctoral resilience is easier to improve when universities measure real obstacles
Updated Aug 01, 2026
Doctoral resilience is easy to invoke and hard to measure in time to do anything useful with it. In a recent Journal of Further and Higher Education paper, Dimitra Kokotsaki develops a resilience scale built around the real obstacles doctoral students describe, and that makes it relevant for universities trying to use student voice as early evidence rather than a late warning. Instead of asking whether PGRs are generally "coping", the paper asks how they respond when supervision, writing, milestones, family responsibilities, or isolation become hard to manage. That is a more actionable starting point for UK doctoral schools.
Context and research question
Doctoral wellbeing and attrition are familiar concerns across higher education, but universities often measure them in broad terms. A generic wellbeing score can tell you that something is wrong, yet still leave you unclear about what is creating the pressure or which part of the doctoral experience needs to change first.
Kokotsaki starts from a sharper question: how can the stumbling blocks of doctoral study be detected early enough to support students before progress stalls? The study builds on earlier interviews with doctoral students and tests whether resilience can be measured through realistic adversity scenarios rather than abstract statements. For UK institutions facing stronger expectations around PGR support, completion, and evidence use, that question is operational rather than theoretical.
Key findings
The paper starts from lived doctoral adversity, not an abstract wellbeing model. The scale was developed from earlier qualitative work with 13 doctoral students, which produced 10 recurring adversity scenarios. Those scenarios covered supervisor support and supervisor change, self-regulation and working patterns, key milestones, being international or part-time, data collection and analysis, writing, family responsibilities, and Covid-19 disruption. That matters because the instrument is anchored in the situations students actually describe, not just in a generic resilience vocabulary.
"How can these stumbling blocks be readily and timely detected?"
Resilience emerged as three related but distinct dimensions. Using a pilot survey of 59 doctoral social science students and Rasch analysis, the paper develops the Doctoral Resilience Scale, DoRS-42, across three sub-scales: Perseverance, Reflecting and Adaptive Help-Seeking, and Emotional Response. For student experience teams, that is the key measurement lesson. Resilience is not one thing. A student may keep going, struggle emotionally, and still hesitate to seek help, or show a different pattern altogether.
International and non-international students did not look the same across the scale. The paper reports significant differences between those groups on all three sub-scales. Even with a small exploratory sample, that is a useful warning against relying on one average PGR score. If doctoral schools want to understand where resilience risks sit, they need to segment their evidence and look carefully at how support is experienced by students with different circumstances.
The study is exploratory, but its survey-design lesson is strong. The paper tests fit, reliability, dimensionality, and differential item functioning across several student characteristics, which gives the instrument more rigour than an ad hoc set of wellbeing questions. The sample is still small and drawn from one social science context, so this is not a sector-ready benchmark yet. Even so, the paper shows that a better survey starts by asking about concrete pressure points, which is a practical takeaway for UK teams designing PGR feedback questions.
Practical implications
Universities should treat doctoral resilience as a design and evidence problem, not just a pastoral one. If your PGR surveys ask only broad satisfaction or wellbeing questions, add a small number of scenario-based items about supervision, milestone pressure, working patterns, belonging, and help-seeking. Pair those with one open-text prompt that asks what made progress harder this term. That will usually produce more diagnostic evidence than a single abstract resilience question, especially when read alongside PRES 2025 and local PGR feedback practice. The benefit for UK teams is clearer signal about what needs to change first.
The paper also supports a more segmented approach to doctoral feedback. International status, mode of study, stage, and discipline can all shape how pressure is felt and how readily students ask for help. Doctoral schools should expect to review resilience-related comments and survey results by subgroup rather than relying on an institutional average. That gives supervisors, doctoral colleges, and PVCs a better chance of spotting uneven support early, which is especially important when institutions are trying to evidence whether their PGR offer is landing consistently.
Finally, the paper points towards a better partnership between scales and comments. A short resilience measure can show where strain is clustering, but open text is often what explains whether the issue is supervisory responsiveness, writing isolation, unclear milestones, administrative friction, or something else. In small PGR cohorts, that qualitative evidence needs careful handling, which is why a student comment analysis governance checklist matters as much as a good question set. The takeaway is simple: better measurement should lead to earlier, more defensible action.
FAQ
Q: How could a doctoral school use this paper without adopting DoRS-42 in full?
A: Start smaller. Review your PRES, local doctoral survey, or supervision review questions and add a few adversity-based items that reflect real pressure points in your own context. Then add one open-text question asking what has made doctoral progress harder or easier recently. That gives you a practical pilot before committing to a longer instrument.
Q: What are the main methodological limits of the study?
A: The survey is exploratory, based on 59 doctoral social science students, and comes from one institutional context. That means the scale needs further validation before it should be treated as a benchmark or used mechanically across the sector. The value for UK teams is less "adopt this exact instrument tomorrow" and more "design resilience questions around real doctoral obstacles, then test them properly".
Q: What does this mean for student voice work more broadly?
A: It reinforces that the most useful feedback systems surface pressure while there is still time to respond. Universities that want a more joined-up picture should connect PGR comments, local pulse surveys, and annual instruments rather than leaving each source in isolation, much like a joined-up student feedback system does for broader wellbeing evidence. That makes student voice more useful for intervention, not just reporting.
References
[Paper Source]: Dimitra Kokotsaki "Doctoral students' resilience and coping strategies: scale development and exploratory survey using Rasch analysis" DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2026.2642269
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