A Study on the Influencing Factors of Postgraduate Dropout Intention—Exploratory Analysis Based on Grounded Theory

Absrtact: Dropping out of graduate school can have adverse effects on both universities and individuals. Studying dropout intention as a antecedent variable of dropout behavior can help reduce the occurrence of graduate dropout behavior. Based on the self-reported case text of "why do graduate students want to quit school" in the "Zhihu" Q&A community, and combined with the Grounded theory, this paper analyzes the factors affecting the intention to quit school, in order to build a model of graduate students' intention to quit school. According to the results of the study, the factors that affect the dropout intention of postgraduates mainly include the following six aspects: external motivation for postgraduate study, negative outcome expectations, important others, low self-efficacy, lack of academic interest, and freshmen's adaptation. Based on this, this article proposes intervention measures for the intention of graduate students to drop out, including cultivating positive academic emotions, optimizing the training mode of graduate students, emphasizing the construction of teacher culture, and providing guidance for the transition period of new students, in order to provide reference for effectively reducing the dropout rate of graduate students.


Raising Questions
For universities, dropping out of graduate school means a waste of educational resources; For students, it means a dual loss of time and money. Therefore, it is necessary for academic research to pay attention to graduate dropout behavior and explore how to actively intervene. Some researchers in China have conducted research on the reasons for graduate dropout and the mandatory dropout system in universities. The main reason for graduate students being "dropped out" is that they have not completed their studies on time, which is considered a knockout dropout [1] ; On the other hand, there is also active dropout, which means that students voluntarily choose to suspend their studies due to reasons such as wanting to work as soon as possible, weak and sickly health, and family difficulties. However, whether it is "being dropped out" or actively dropping out, both belong to the result state, and there is a series of intermediate processes from enrollment to dropout for graduate students. Therefore, it is not only necessary to study the dropout group, but also to pay attention to the group of graduate students who have the intention to drop out and provide timely intervention to fundamentally reduce the occurrence of graduate dropout behavior .
Dropout intention is a psychological state in which students want to drop out but have not yet developed substantial dropout behavior, which plays an important predictive role in graduate student dropout behavior . Intention to drop out serves as an early warning signal for dropout behavior, and timely intervention can effectively reduce the occurrence of graduate students' "dropout" or active dropout behavior. Given that existing research focuses on the group of students who have already dropped out, this article selects current master's students with intention to drop out as the research object, analyzes the factors that affect their intention to drop out, constructs an influencing factor model, and analyzes its mechanism of action, in order to provide reference for effectively reducing the dropout rate of graduate students.

Research Methods
Currently, there is relatively little research on graduate student dropout intention in the academic community, and existing studies mainly focus on the explanatory and predictive role of dropout intention on dropout behavior [2] , lacking analysis of the reasons for dropout intention. Intention to drop out, as a psychological state during the process of graduate student dropout, objectively exists in the master's student population. Exploring the reasons for its occurrence and applying the right medicine to the case play an important role in reducing the occurrence of graduate student dropout intention. Therefore, this paper attempts to use the Grounded theory to explore the influencing factors of graduate students' dropout intention. As a bottom-up theoretical construction method, Grounded theory requires systematic collection of original data from phenomena and an open attitude towards coding analysis of the original data. It can explore specific areas that people have not yet or have limited understanding of, which is consistent with the exploratory analysis to be carried out in this study, and helps to comprehensively and deeply explore the influencing factors of graduate dropout intention.

Data sources
The data in this study is sourced from "Zhihu". As a large Q&A community, "Zhihu" allows users to produce and upload content on their own. Generally speaking, users' answers have strong objectivity. The "Zhihu" data has long-term storage and easy accessibility, and conducting research based on such data can to some extent ensure the repeatability of research and the testability of theory [3] . By collecting self explanatory texts related to "Why do graduate students want to drop out" on "Zhihu" as the data source, and through repeated reading and screening, selecting texts that describe their intention to drop out and provide detailed explanations of the reasons for their intention to drop out, 106 pieces of data, approximately 60000 words, were obtained as the analysis text of this article, with data numbers from A1 to A106.

Extraction of influencing factors
Based on the Grounded theory, this paper analyzes the collected data text, and through open coding, spindle coding and selective coding, constantly excavates the influencing factors of graduate dropout intention and forms core concepts. The three-level coding results are shown in Table 1.

Open coding stage
Open coding is a first level coding that conceptualizes and labels raw materials, identifies logical relationships between concepts, and categorizes concepts with similar meanings. The purpose of this stage is to develop concepts and refine categories. This study encodes the collected self-reported text data sentence by sentence, reorganizes and classifies the data in the process of conceptualization and categorization, and removes a large number of repetitive and personalized words. A total of 58 initial concepts were extracted in this study (see Table 1).

Spindle encoding stage
Principal axis encoding is a secondary encoding that divides the initial encoding into categories and establishes organic connections between concepts and genera based on open encoding. This stage further abstracts and refines the 58 sub generic concepts formed by the first stage coding, and ultimately summarizes 18 categories (see Table 1).

Selective encoding stage
Selective encoding is a more dominant main category that further explores the core categories based on spindle encoding. To explore the factors that affect the intention of master's students to drop out, the relationship between each category is described and explained around the main category and encoded. Through induction, integration and verification, the core category of this study was finally determined as "external motivation for postgraduate study", "negative outcome expectation", "important others", "low self-efficacy", "lack of academic interest" and "freshmen adaptation".

Model Construction and Analysis of Factors Influencing the Intention of Master's Students to Quit School
Based on the above coding analysis, this study believes that the factors influencing the generation of graduate students' dropout intention include external motivation, negative outcome expectations, important others, low self-efficacy, lack of academic interest, and freshmen's adaptation. The influencing factor model of graduate students' dropout intention is as shown in Figure 1.

External Postgraduate Motivation
The motivation for pursuing postgraduate studies to some extent reflects students' learning goals and has a direct impact on their learning engagement. The motivation of master's students to pursue postgraduate studies can be divided into external motivation and internal motivation. External motivation refers to students' learning behavior being driven by external factors and having weak autonomy. Internal motivation refers to students choosing to pursue postgraduate studies out of their research interests. Compared to external motivation, internal motivation has a greater impact on graduate students' academic engagement [4] , which is more conducive to students completing their studies smoothly. We extracted four categories through principal axis coding: diploma value, avoiding employment, blindly following the trend, and parental expectations. All four categories belong to the core category of external motivation, which has limited impact on the academic persistence intention of master's students. Usually, the intrinsic driving force generated by the value of a diploma is greater than the three categories of avoiding employment, blindly following the trend, and parental expectations. However, overall, the learning driving force generated by the four categories is often insufficient to cope with the pressure brought by graduate studies, making students more likely to have the intention to drop out.
Among them, the category of diploma value mainly refers to the instrumental value of the master's degree. When students perceive that the cost paid is greater than the instrumental value of the master's degree, their academic persistence will be reduced, and then they will have the intention to quit. If a student says to themselves, "I just want to get a master's degree and then take the civil service exam, but it's really difficult to graduate now and I regret it" (A105). Especially in the context of increasing national requirements for the quality of graduate education, the learning driving force brought by the value of a diploma makes it difficult for students to cope with academic pressure and often leads to a tendency to drop out. In addition, for students who choose to pursue postgraduate studies due to avoiding employment, blindly following the trend, and parents' expectations, their willingness to persist in their studies is lower and they are more likely to have the intention to drop out. Many students expressed that "it is really difficult to sustain themselves by pursuing graduate studies because they do not want to find a job" (A1); I was confused and pushed to avoid it, but after the start of school, I constantly wanted to drop out, feeling like I shouldn't have gone to graduate school at all "(A63); My postgraduate studies were entirely planned and expected by my parents, but I am very hopeless about scientific research and graduation. From this, it can be seen that students who lack internal motivation are more likely to have an intention to drop out of graduate school if they hold external motivation. This is consistent with existing research findings that when students lack academic motivation, it can lead to dropout behavior .

Negative outcome expectations
The intention of master's students to drop out is not only influenced by their motivation to pursue graduate studies, but also by other factors. This study extracts the core category into expected results based on text analysis data. Outcome expectations can be divided into positive and negative outcomes, referring to students' judgments of the potential positive or negative outcomes of graduate studies. Result expectation is the subjective perception of individual students, so the types of result expectations generated are different. According to the encoding of the text, it can be divided into four categories: degree acquisition, academic achievement, employment needs, and interest satisfaction. Students often form positive or negative outcome expectations during the learning process and are constantly reinforced. When students form positive outcome expectations, even with external motivation to pursue graduate studies, they can still persist in completing their studies effectively; On the contrary, when students form negative outcome expectations, they are more likely to have the intention to drop out [5] .
Firstly, in terms of the category of obtaining a master's degree, it refers to the perception and expectations of master's students about whether they can obtain a master's degree, which plays an important guiding role in students' learning behavior. When students believe that the availability of a master's degree is low, they tend to have a negative attitude towards graduate studies. I have no job, no direction, and I'm afraid I won't be able to graduate. I want to drop out of school. At the same time, when students have the intention to drop out, it will have a negative impact on their learning and psychology, leading to a further decrease in the availability of master's degrees. Countless times I have thought about dropping out of school, countless times I want to give up, and I'm afraid I won't be able to complete my studies like this (A12). Secondly, academic gain refers to the subjective estimation of whether a master's student can acquire knowledge or ability. When students have negative expectations of academic gain, they are more likely to have the intention to drop out. "After two years of studying nothing, graduate students will not learn anything. Is it a timely stop loss for dropping out of graduate school (A54); I have been running for a year in graduate school and doing miscellaneous work for a year. Others are either focusing on their studies or taking over the work of their predecessors with serious scientific research, and I have not gained anything (A73). Finally, when learning cannot meet the employment needs and professional interests, students are also prone to drop out. "Now I feel in my heart that I do not plan to work in physics in the future, and I feel that spending three years here is a waste of time (A96) . The above analysis indicates that master's students are more likely to have a withdrawal intention when they have negative expectations of uncertain outcomes.

Important Others
In the process of graduate learning, mentors and fellow teachers play an important role in the development of graduate students. Mentors play roles such as moral evangelists, professional skill instructors, emotional and material supporters, and ability and quality mentors in the process of graduate student development. If the role of a mentor is not played properly, it can easily lead to students' intention to drop out. In addition, as another important person in the learning process of graduate students, their interactions emphasize emotional logic and have informal constraint mechanisms [6] . The impact on individual graduate students cannot be ignored, and it is also an important factor affecting graduate students' intention to drop out.
This article extracts four categories of "mentor guidance, mentor ability, mentor personality, and mentor peers" through principal axis coding, and classifies them into the core category of "important others" through selective coding. Among them, the influence of mentors on the intention of master's students to drop out is mainly manifested in aspects such as free range, limited guidance, unreliable academic ability, bad temper, and being too strict. Many students mentioned: The meaning of a mentor's laissez faire is like signing one's own name in the signature column (A80); "Not in the same direction as the mentor, and never caring about me, it's just trying to figure it out (A20);" Three times a week, the group will be scolded for about 20 minutes each time, and the boss is very irritable. The reason for being crazy is not just for scientific research, but also for your intelligence, clothing, and work is very tiring. At least 11 hours a day (A48) . From the above self statements of master's students, it is not difficult to see that both mentor guidance, ability, and personality can have an impact on students' intention to drop out. The influence of peer teachers on the intention of master's students to drop out is mainly reflected in two aspects: peer communication and learning exchange; When peer communication is not smooth and there is inequality in communication and learning, students will have the intention to drop out. We each work on different topics, and our relationship with senior brothers and sisters is also very delicate. We always want to drop out of school (A38); "I wanted to drop out of school from the first year of graduate school, and everyone advised me to persevere. I haven't had a happy day for three years, and senior sisters force you to work every day. I can't achieve any results myself, but later I fell out with senior sisters (A51) . In addition, although the negative influence of fellow teachers can lead to the intention of master's students to drop out, the lack of fellow teachers can also lead to their intention to drop out. I don't have senior brothers and sisters to guide me, so I have to think about everything myself. Since the beginning of the third month of school, my peers at the same level have almost been led by senior brothers and sisters to publish papers, and I haven't had anything yet (A6). It can be seen that my peers in the school have an impact on the intention of graduate students to drop out.

Low self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is an individual's belief in whether he or she is capable of achieving specific achievement goals , and it is a kind of efficacy expectation for whether he or she can complete graduate studies. It emphasizes the decisive role of individual subjective cognitive judgment on behavior [7] . Self-efficacy not only affects the individual's choice of behavior and the degree of persistence and effort to the behavior, but also affects the individual's attitude and emotion when encountering difficulties, thus affecting their behavior performance. The students with high self-efficacy are happy to accept the challenges encountered in the learning process, while the students with low self-efficacy tend to be helpless in the face of pressure, which is easy to cause dropout intention.
Low self-efficacy has the most direct impact on the generation of graduate dropout intention, which can be divided into two categories: ability cognition and stress coping. The former refers to master's students' understanding of self-learning ability, while the latter refers to their ability to cope with academic pressure. When master's students have a low understanding of their learning ability, they are more likely to have the intention to drop out if they encounter professional technical difficulties or learning difficulties. If a master's student mentions: "In the first semester of my first year of graduate school, I realized that I was distracted and wanted to drop out as soon as I encountered technical difficulties (A6) . In addition to lower learning ability cognition, lower academic stress coping ability can also lead to students' intention to drop out. For example, when research directions are uncertain, project progress is not smooth, or experimental results are not ideal, students with poor academic stress coping ability are more likely to have the intention to drop out. "I don't know where to start, nor what my research direction is. School is about to start. I was so anxious that I cried one night without restraint. I told my mother that I wanted to quit school (A60) while crying. It can be seen that low self-efficacy also has an important impact on the production of graduate students' intention to quit school.

Lack of academic interest
Academic interest refers to an individual's great interest and enthusiasm for academic research, including three dimensions: academic identity, academic effort, and academic interest. It plays an important role in stimulating graduate students' academic enthusiasm, stimulating academic participation, and enhancing their abilities. Academic interest is gradually formed in the process of academic practice and is an important factor affecting graduate students' learning behavior. If students lack academic interest, it will affect their sense of identification with academic research, lack enthusiasm for participating in academic research, and have less psychological inclination to engage in academic research in the future. Therefore, they are more likely to have the intention to drop out.
From the perspective of the core category of lack of academic interest, the lack of professional or scientific research interest among master's students can have an impact on their intention to drop out, which is reflected in aspects such as dislike of their major, aversion to their major, dislike of scientific research, and lack of interest in scientific research. Graduate students need to invest more time and energy in their studies. If they lack a strong interest in their major and scientific research, they will have doubts about their academic persistence and thus have the intention to drop out. As some students say, "Why force oneself to do things that one is not interested in at all? Why compare oneself with others in areas one does not like? Therefore, the idea of dropping out is very strong" (A67); I am not interested in my major at all now. of school. From the above students' self statements, it can be found that most of them who have no professional interest or research spirit and want to drop out are first-year graduate students. As an adaptation period for graduate studies, the lack of professional or research interests in the first year of postgraduate studies can easily lead to the intention to drop out.

New Student Adaptation
For a long time, new students, as a high turnover group, have attracted the attention of foreign scholars, and their adaptation and dropout behavior are closely related. The first year, especially the first semester, is a particularly important period for students to persist in learning, which plays a very important role in whether students can complete or complete their studies with high quality. If one cannot pass the adaptation period well, they will feel confused and academic burnout due to the loss of their original goals and the uncertainty of their existing goals, leading to self doubt about the significance of pursuing postgraduate studies, and even negating their choice to pursue postgraduate studies [8] . This will be accompanied by negative psychology such as low emotions, weakened learning motivation, and reduced learning efficiency, ultimately leading to the intention to drop out of school; The generation of dropout intention will further strengthen students' negative state, thereby increasing the probability of dropout behavior occurring.
This study extracted the core category of freshmen's adaptation through spindle encoding, which includes two subcategories: psychological expectations and school environment. Firstly, psychological expectations include assumptions about mentors, learning, life, etc. When there is a significant gap between reality and psychological expectations, students' intention to drop out arises spontaneously. Many students mentioned: 'When I first entered graduate school, no one took care of me, I didn't study a bachelor's degree, and my dropout mood became more severe' (A39); One month after entering graduate school, I realized that it was completely different from what I had imagined before. I thought that graduate students were in a fun and harmonious research group, guided by senior brothers, sisters, and teachers, with goals and goals. I easily published one or two articles, and successfully graduated. However, the reality is that everything is something I want to do on my own "(A88). From this, it can be seen that the failure to meet psychological expectations is one of the reasons for the intention of graduate students to drop out. Secondly, adapting to the school environment includes the training conditions and hardware environment of the school. When students step into a new graduate study unit from an undergraduate institution, they unconsciously make comparisons. Among them, some students mentioned, "I really want to drop out, but I feel that my undergraduate school is not good, which is not as good as my undergraduate school. The environment, dormitories, everything is not good, and I feel that everything is out of place with me" (A100). From the above analysis, it can be seen that freshmen's adaptation has a significant impact on graduate students' intention to drop out.

Conclusion and suggestions
In the context of the connotative development of graduate education in China, which has shifted from focusing on scale expansion to focusing on quality, studying the intention of graduate dropout not only helps to reduce the occurrence of graduate dropout behavior from the root, but also helps to improve the quality of graduate education [9] . This study constructs the influencing factors model of graduate students' dropout intention through the Grounded theory. The study found that external motivation, negative outcome expectations, important others, low self-efficacy, lack of academic interest and freshmen's adaptation had a significant impact on graduate dropout intention. At the same time, dropout intention would react on students' psychology and behavior. Although the intention of master's students to drop out is not equivalent to actual dropout behavior, it can reduce students' learning engagement and affect their mental health, have a negative impact on students' completion or high-quality academic performance, and hinder the achievement of China's goal of improving the quality of graduate education. To reduce the negative impact of dropout intention on graduate learning and reduce the dropout rate, this article proposes the following suggestions based on the above research results.

Cultivating Positive Academic Emotions for Master's Students
This study found that the diverse external motivation and lack of academic interest of graduate students lead to insufficient learning motivation, which can easily lead to their intention to drop out. Academic emotion is a stable and sustained internal academic tendency formed by students in the process of academic practice [10] . It is a high-level emotion of humans and plays an important regulatory role in individual academic behavior. It not only helps to transform the external motivation of master's students to pursue graduate studies, but also stimulates their academic interest, thereby reducing the generation of students' intention to drop out. In addition, it can also regulate the negative emotions brought about by the intention to drop out. Academic emotions are the continuous strengthening and gradual formation of positive academic emotional experiences for students in the process of learning and practice. Therefore, universities can cultivate students' positive academic emotions by enriching academic activities, providing opportunities for interdisciplinary academic practice, and emphasizing students' academic emotional experiences.

Optimizing the Master's Education Model
The master's training model follows the laws of talent growth and social needs [11] , and needs to be continuously developed and optimized. This study found that the negative outcome expectations, mentors, low self-efficacy and other factors that affect the intention of graduate students to quit school can be improved by optimizing the training mode of graduate students. First of all, optimize the evaluation method of graduate education quality, focus on diagnostic evaluation and formative evaluation, pay attention to the acquisition of knowledge and ability in students' learning process, enhance students' self-confidence, enhance their self-efficacy, and reduce students' negative expectations of uncertain results; Secondly, providing opportunities for graduate students to pursue a second master's degree to meet their professional interests and needs; Finally, implementing a supervisor group responsibility system or establishing an interdisciplinary supervisor group can avoid the negative impact of a single supervisor due to guidance, abilities, and personality. On the other hand, it can also meet the different interests and pursuits of students.

Pay attention to the construction of teacher culture
As an informal organizational form of graduate education, teacher culture has a more comprehensive and in-depth impact on the development of graduate students, playing an increasingly important role in graduate education [12] . This study found that the influence of peer teachers on the intention of graduate students to drop out is mainly manifested in the alienation of peer relationships and lack of learning guidance, which has a negative impact on the development of graduate students. Therefore, paying attention to the construction of teacher culture and strengthening informal interaction and emotional connections among teacher members plays an important role in reducing the intention of master's students to drop out. Universities can strengthen the construction of teacher culture by providing official dissemination of positive teacher culture, encouraging mentors to build positive teacher organizational culture, and encouraging graduate students to actively participate in teacher culture construction, fully leveraging the positive influence of teachers on the development of graduate students.

Provide guidance for the transition period of freshmen
This study found that freshmen are more likely to have the intention to drop out of school. As individuals with more mature physiology and psychology, their adaptation issues are often overlooked [13] . Based on the research results of this article, it can be concluded that first-year graduate students are prone to dropout intentions due to issues such as psychological expectations, environmental adaptation, and lack of academic interest. Therefore, in the process of cultivating graduate students, universities should increase their attention to first-year graduate students, provide them with transitional guidance, help them smoothly pass the new student adaptation period, and lay a good foundation for their subsequent learning and life. Universities can provide behavioral transition guidance for new students, such as guidance and assistance in learning and daily life; Universities also need to pay attention to guidance for the psychological transition period of new students, help them complete the role transformation and positioning as soon as possible, and enhance their active adaptability. It should be pointed out that although this article analyzed the influencing factors of master's student dropout intention by selecting "Zhihu" data, the differential effects of major, gender, degree type, etc. have not been considered in the constructed theoretical model. Further research can be conducted through more in-depth and comprehensive analysis. The model has been revised and improved.