[MUSIC] Hi, in this module I'm going to share some insights into the mentor/student relationship, in particular some ethical or professional issues that arise in the context of that relationship. I'll be doing so based on my own experience with graduate training. So when we think about mentor/student relationships, we have to remember that ethical and professional issues can arise in those relationships. Norms about the responsibilities of mentors and students actually vary across disciplines. And it is important that whatever discipline you choose to pursue research training in, you need to understand the customs, the traditions, the norms of that particular discipline, but I'll talk about some of the more general norms. So I should also point out that mentors within the same discipline or even in the same department may have very different styles, and their own customs and practices. So when you're looking for a mentor or an advisor, it's important to talk to other students, and learn more about the styles of different faculty, even in the same department. Now, through communication, mentors and students should develop a common understanding of their roles, and their expectations for each other. I think this is the most important way of avoiding the development of problems between mentor and student is for communication about expectations to start early and then continue as the relationship proceeds. Now, in terms of what we commonly expect for a graduate student, I'll share some of my own thoughts. One of the important ones is that the qualities that allows students to excel as undergraduates or research assistants don't always translate into success in graduate school. Undergraduates and research assistants are considered outstanding or they may excel generally if they complete well-defined tasks that have been set for them. So, we give undergraduates good grades if they do exactly what they are told. And perhaps they have a senior thesis where they were mentored and given a lot of handholding and instruction and they produce a nice thesis. Similarly for research student assistants, we're happy to have a research assistant who essentially does everything we ask, does it promptly, does it quickly and does it efficiently. But we expect different things from graduate students. Graduate students are expected to demonstrate intellectual independence, to set their own intellectual agenda, and make their own plans. So even the brightest, the most motivated, and the best prepared students in transitioning to graduate school don't always make that successful transition. Again, some of the people that were outstanding undergraduates, or did fabulously working as research assistants, because they could always complete the tasks that were set for them, are not successful graduate students, because they fail to develop, to set their own intellectual agenda. Now that's not entirely the responsibility of the graduate student to make that transition. The mentor is supposed to help make that transition. A mentor should develop a student's ability to define and pursue their own research agenda. So a mentor is not simply exploiting a student to pursue their own research agenda. But rather if a mentor uses a graduate student as a research assistant, that should be in order to provide them relevant hands-on experience that will help them with their own intellectual development, that will expose them to the important topics of the field, the important methods. And again help them develop practical experience with conducting research. So the mentor should help facilitate a student's transition from the executor of discrete, well-defined tasks that are set for them into an independent researcher who can set their own questions and then collect the data and choose the methods to do their own research. Now one of the issues that always comes up when there is collaboration between a student and a mentor is co-authorship. Negotiating co-authorship is one of the most common issues that actually causes problems with mentor-student relations. Expectations about co-authorship should be clear and should be based on the norms of the discipline. Now in general, students or others who are closely supervised by their mentor, and in fact paid for the specific tasks that they are carrying out. And if those tasks are fairly routine ones, where there's not much room for intellectual agenda setting for creativity, we typically don't think of that sort of work as meriting co-authorship. But when a student rises and makes independent intellectual contributions that shape the content of a paper in a substantive important way, that should merit inclusion as a co-author. Now, simply being a student's advisor, normally by itself doesn't merit being listed as a co-author. But again, it's complex. There's no, you might say, hard boundary between, or fixed rules for where co-authorship should come in and where it shouldn't. Rather, we tend to think of different things that a mentor might have done as part of the relationship that might merit coauthorship. So providing key ideas, access to data, support, or certainly contributing text usually merits inclusion as a co-author. Now when you get into specific disciplines or sub-disciplines, then it gets even more complicated. There may be in certain disciplines a default assumption that the advisor is always listed as a co-author, perhaps the last author, on anything their student does while making use of resources within that advisor's lab. But again that's a special case and I'm talking mainly about social science research. One way or the other it's important to have a clear understanding with a mentor about what the expectations are in order to have one's name listed on a paper, and whether or not the mentor's name, and under which circumstances it should be listed as well. Then there's the issue of access to data. Mentors and students need to have a common understanding related to data and code. Students need to understand whether they can use data or code provided by an advisor in their other work, in their independent work or in collaboration with other people. Sometimes they may have an agreement with their advisor that it's fine. In other situations the data may be proprietary and it's not supposed to be shared with others. Now, generally we think that data collected at the instruction of a mentor under their direction with their financial support generally belongs to the mentor, and it's at some level their decision about whether that data should be shared and with whom. Now if a student goes out and collects data at their own initiative, with their own resources, we generally think that data belong to them. So if a student, on their own, without being directed by their advispr, perhaps without being supported by their advisor goes to some archive and creates a data set by transcribing information there, generally tend to think of that as the student's own data. But in the case that the mentor has already collected the source materials and simply hires the student to transcribe the data and directs the student as they carry out the transcription, then generally we tend to think that data belong to the mentor. Now for situations between these extremes, a common understanding developed between student and mentor is necessary. As I've said before the best way to avoid problem is by communication between student and mentor, so that there's a common understanding. Now that understanding may be revised on a continuous basis, based on who actually does what and so forth. But there needs to be continuous dialogue between student and mentor to avoid problems in these domains. So overall, I hope I've at least given you some insight into the expectations of the relationship between student and mentor and some of the issues that come up, especially when it comes to graduate training. I hope this is useful to you as you pursue post-graduate training and become a social science researcher.
