Quality Assessment of Doctoral Programs by Surveying Doctoral Students’ Satisfaction in Bulgaria

Introduction and problem

Doctoral education is the third and highest cycle of higher education and serves a dual purpose: preparing future academic staff and developing highly qualified research professionals for practice. The quality of doctoral programmes therefore affects university competitiveness, research capacity and the sustainability of national academic expertise.

In Bulgaria, programme quality is influenced by external accreditation, internal university quality systems and competition within higher education. Doctoral-student satisfaction is widely treated as a quality indicator because it captures the actual experience of trainees and the programme's ability to meet academic, organisational and professional expectations.

The central problem identified in the study is the absence of a unified approach to satisfaction measurement. Universities use different questionnaires, indicator sets and question structures, limiting comparability across programmes and institutions.

Aim

To analyse doctoral-student satisfaction questionnaires used by Bulgarian universities and identify the principal criteria through which the quality of doctoral training is assessed.

Materials and methods

The analysis included nine questionnaires from nine Bulgarian public universities, publicly available on official institutional websites in September 2022. The sample comprised three medical universities, one university with a medical faculty and five non-medical universities.

The study used content analysis, comparative analysis and descriptive statistics. It compared questionnaire content, length, question type and order, rating formats and administration methods.

Key quantitative findings

The nine instruments contained 228 questions in total, an average of 25.3 questions per questionnaire. Closed questions accounted for 206 items (90.35%), while open questions represented only 22 items (9.64%).

Seventy-four questions — approximately 32.5% of all items — used a Likert-type rating scale. While appropriate for measuring opinion, the use of Likert scales did not compensate for substantial differences in content and structure among universities.

Large variation between institutions

Questionnaire length ranged from 14 to 48 questions. Five universities used 1–20 questions, three used 21–40, and one used 41–60. In six of nine universities, demographic/profile questions appeared at the beginning, but the sequence of programme-specific satisfaction items varied considerably.

Only four universities attempted to group questions according to the factor being assessed, and no common structure was identified.

Online versus non-digital administration

Only four of nine questionnaires were implemented as online forms, whereas five were standard text documents without direct electronic completion. This matters because reports from some universities indicate that fewer than half of doctoral students complete the surveys offered to them.

What is actually being measured?

The most important finding is the uneven distribution of quality indicators. Organisational and administrative aspects dominate, while personal and interpersonal dimensions are much less visible.

The 228 questions were distributed as follows: 39 on motivation to begin and select a doctoral programme; 27 on research projects; 23 on habilitated academic staff; 22 on administrative services; 15 on difficulties and problems during doctoral training; 14 demographic/profile questions; 12 on programme organisation and quality; 12 on infrastructure and material resources; and 8 on specific lectures and training activities.

Important dimensions of research development were much less represented: only five questions addressed publication opportunities, five programme information, and five recommendations for improvement; only three addressed participation in scientific forums, three academic ethics/atmosphere/workplace relations, and three business collaboration; two concerned specialised doctoral publications and only one addressed safe and healthy working conditions.

Medical versus non-medical universities

No fundamental differences were found between medical and non-medical universities in how doctoral-student satisfaction was assessed. The problem therefore appears systemic rather than discipline-specific: the higher-education sector lacks a common measurement standard.

Periodicity and comparability

Across the institutions studied, doctoral-student surveys were conducted once per year. Regular administration is useful, but without a standardised structure and methodology it does not ensure comparability over time or between universities.

Main contributions

• moves beyond the general claim that satisfaction is a quality indicator and analyses how it is actually measured;
• provides a structured comparison of nine public-university survey instruments;
• quantifies methodological heterogeneity in questionnaire length, format and indicator coverage;
• identifies underrepresented dimensions directly relevant to researcher development, including publication activity, scientific forums and academic ethics;
• supports development of a unified questionnaire and methodology that could improve inter-university and inter-programme comparability.

Conclusions

Doctoral-student satisfaction is an important component of quality assurance, but its value is limited when universities measure different constructs using non-comparable instruments.

A unified methodological framework would not eliminate institutional autonomy; rather, it would create a common core of indicators while allowing universities to retain programme-specific questions. Such a model could strengthen quality management, accreditation evidence and national benchmarking of doctoral education.

Scientific Key Terms