Student retention and absenteeism is a long-standing problem confronted by many educators working at different school types. Much of the literature regarding student retention has focused mostly on undergraduate students. However, retention has become a more prominent issue in doctoral education (Fairbanks, 2016). Individual and/or institutional factors play a key role in this process. Social and academic characteristics of the individual student may limit or enhance the quality of the academic output. On the other hand, overall quality of the university/graduate school environment has profound effects on students. One of the significant component of the school milieu is the quality of the relationships between students and teaching staff.

Research results revealed that the interactions between graduate student and his/her advisor play an important role in terms of graduate students’ completion of the program, their scientific productivity, professional development and overall satisfaction from the program (Barnes & Austin, 2009; Jacks, Chubin, Porter, & Connelly, 1983; Primé, Bernstein, Wilkins, & Bekki, 2015; Schlosser, Knox, Moskovitz, & Hill, 2003). For example Jacks et al. (1983) in their study found that 44% of participating students reporting poor working relationships with their advisor or committee members as the key reason for leaving the doctoral program. Braxton, Hirschy, & McClendon (2004) stressed that as students develop meaningful connections with their advisors both socially and academically their graduate persistence will also increase. Therefore it can be asserted that the advising relationship at graduate level has the potential to profoundly affect a student’s professional development and career advancement.

Purpose

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the advisor-advisee relationships from the point view of the graduate students (both in M.A and Ph. D.). It was also aimed to explore if there is any significant differences in terms of student gender, graduate level (M.A or Ph. D.) and advisor title.

Design The study was designed based on quantitative associational model. To this end after reporting about basic descriptive results on the issue, we are going to compare students’ views in terms of the research variables. Participants It is planned to collect data from the M.A and Ph. D. students studying at the different graduate schools, at Inonu University in Malatya during the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. We will use “Advisory Working Alliance Inventory (AWAI-S) Scale” originally developed by Schlosser and Gelso (2001) to collect the data. The scale comprised of 30 items on a five-point (Always-Never) Likert scale. The AWAI-S has three sub-scales namely: rapport, apprenticeship and identification-individuation (Schlosser & Gelso, 2001). Turkish adaptation of the scale will be conducted by the researchers, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, test-retest correlation coefficients and internal consistency coefficients will be estimated.

It is planned to report the results and relevant discussions in the light literature after analyzing the data gathered

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