Supervisor roles A qualitative and quantitative study of supervisors’ and students’ perception of supervisor roles in PhD supervision

Abstract

This report investigates the different roles of the supervisor both by means of interviews with five
different supervisors and by a survey with 58 participating PhD students. Four different types of roles were defined, the leader/boss, the friend, the coach/mentor and the colleague. Both groups were asked questions of how they perceive the different roles and the most evident outcome was that they both preferred the role of the coach/mentor of the supervisor. The role of the friend was also appreciated, but with the exception of the supervisor being more limited in sharing personal issues than the student. The collegial role was more common at the end of the students education while the leader/boss role was used very sparsely and only when required.