Confidence in graduation as a measure of student success in graduate school

What factors contribute to student success in graduate school? In 2012, a mental health survey was designed for the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, and after its success in that department, has since been adopted and implemented in 23 other departments on the campus. Looking at the data from 8 of those departments who took the survey between 2016 and 2019, we wanted to understand the challenges facing graduate students at our university and provide insight for other programs, as well. By defining "success in graduate school" as "student confidence in graduation" we conducted several single predictor binary logistic regressions to assess crude associations between the independent variables and the outcome variable. Based on the logistic analysis, variables with a significance level <0.25 were screened for inclusion in a multivariate logistic regression model. A backward stepwise binary logistic regression method was performed, and parameters were obtained by the maximum likelihood method. Our model revealed that factors such as year in graduate school, mental and physical health, and score on the flourishing scale all correlate with student confidence in graduation. Here we will discuss our results and provide recommendations for improving student confidence in graduation on departmental and institutional levels.