Introduction The process of doctoral students engaging in academic research involves a series of positive and negative academic-related emotional experiences, to cope with the change in emotional states, the use of emotional regulation strategies is encouraged. Although inseparable, few scholars have linked the two for explorations. This study explored Chinese doctoral students’ academic emotional experiences and the corresponding emotional regulation strategies, especially the potential links. Methods A total of 15 in-depth interviews were applied to encode and interpret the emotional context of doctoral students. The analytic process was informed by a qualitative interpretive paradigm according to the operation steps of the grounded theory. Results The study found that Ph.D. students reported mixed emotions in doctoral programs and supervisor-student interactions, and evident negative emotions in academic writing and academic environment. Furthermore, four emotional regulation strategies were identified to cope with changes in emotional states linked to academic emotional experiences: presupposition, cognitive conversion, restraining, and physiological modulation. Discussion The study explores the emotional experience characteristics and emotion regulation strategies of doctoral students throughout their academic period. Links between academic emotional experiences and emotional regulation are highlighted from both relational and context-level perspectives. This not only fills the gap in the study of the relationship between academic emotion experiences and regulation, but also provides a practical basis for reforming doctoral training in terms of ways and environment.
Ji et al. (Thu,) studied this question.