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Who Is (Not) Under Stress? A Comparison of Doctoral Students’ Effort–Reward Profiles

Melanie Vilser et al.

Zeitschrift fur Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie2026https://doi.org/10.1026/0932-4089/a000463article
AJG 1
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

The doctoral phase can be considered demanding and stressful, but also insightful and rewarding. To identify which doctoral students feel particularly stressed (vs. less stressed), the effort–reward imbalance model ( Siegrist, 1996 ) was applied to data from 1,275 doctoral students in an online survey. Latent profile analyses revealed three groups: a high-risk group (10 %), a medium-risk group (65 %), and a low-risk group (25 %). The high-risk group reported high effort, low reward, considerable exhaustion, and low social support. The medium-risk group showed a balanced relationship between effort and reward, while the low-risk group reported more rewards than efforts and the highest level of social support as well as the lowest level of exhaustion. These findings were validated in a follow-up survey after 6 weeks. Overall, the study shows that during doctoral studies, social support – especially from doctoral supervisors – protects against stress.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1026/0932-4089/a000463

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@article{melanie2026,
  title        = {{Who Is (Not) Under Stress? A Comparison of Doctoral Students’ Effort–Reward Profiles}},
  author       = {Melanie Vilser et al.},
  journal      = {Zeitschrift fur Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1026/0932-4089/a000463},
}

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Who Is (Not) Under Stress? A Comparison of Doctoral Students’ Effort–Reward Profiles

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.