Aim/Purpose: The present work focuses on French PhD students’ well-being: an understudied working population thus far, which impedes the development of evidence-based policies on this issue in France.The focus of this work is the well-being of French PhD students, on which almost nothing has been published thus far, impeding any evidence-based policy on this issue to be carried out in France. Background: Research studies from several countries have shown that carrying out a PhD can be a difficult experience resulting in high attrition rates with significant financial and human costs. Methodology: The two studies presented in this article focus on biology PhD students from University Lyon 1, a very large French university (~40,000 students). A first study aimed at measuring the mental health and well-being of PhD students using generalist and PhD-specific tools. In a second study, we carried out and assessed a positive psychology intervention (PPI) aimed at improving PhD students’ well-being. Contribution: Our work is one of the first characterizations of French PhD students’ mental health and well-being. As with other recent studies conducted in Western coun-tries, we found a high level of mental distress among PhD students. Our work also underlines the importance of taking many dimensions of the PhD (not only supervisor behaviour) in order to understand PhD student well-being. Cultural specificities are highlighted and can help inform the design of interventions adapted to each situation. The PPI showed pre-to-post positive changes on PhD students’ well-being. Further research is needed on a larger sample size in order to detect more subtle effects. However, these results are promising in terms of interventions that help reduce PhD student distress. Findings: Study 1 involved 136 participants and showed that a large fraction of the PhD students experiences abnormal levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. We found that career training and prospects, research experience, and the impact of carrying out a thesis on health and private life have more impact on PhD students’ mental health than the supervisors’ behaviour. French PhD students’ well-being is specifically affected by career uncertainty, perceived lack of progress in the PhD, and perceived lack of competence compared to UK PhD students well-being, which suggests cultural differences about the PhD experi-ence in France compared to other countries. In study 2, the scores of the test and control groups (N = 10 and N = 13, respectively) showed a clear effect of the intervention on reducing anxiety. Impact on Society: The high levels of mental health issues and reduced well-being in French PhD students reported in this study underline the importance of developing interventions in this field. Improving the supervisor-student relationship is one possibility but is not the only one. Interventions aimed at learning how to cope with the research experience and with the uncertainty with career pathways, and a good balance between PhD work and personal life present other promising possibilities

Validation française de l'Echelle des Processus Emotionnels (EPS-25) Résumé Objectif: l'Echelle des Processus Emotionnels (Emotional Processing Scale-EPS) est un autoquestionnaire de 25 items utilisé pour évaluer les styles de traitement émotionnels et leurs dysfonctionnements. Notre objectif était de traduire et de valider cette échelle en français auprès d'une population tout venant et clinique. Méthode: après une traduction et une rétrotraduction, l'étude de validation a été menée auprès de 1176 adultes (215 adultes de la population générale, 251 étudiants et 686 personnes présentant des troubles somatiques (VIH, Sclérose en Plaques, douleurs chroniques, leucémie) et 24 personnes bipolaires hospitalisées pour dépression. Résultats: la fiabilité interne de l'échelle totale est bonne, avec un alpha de Cronbach de .91. La structure en cinq facteurs est très proche de celle de l'échelle anglaise. Conclusion: La version française de l'EPS possède une bonne validité. Les corrélations avec d'autres outils proches sur le plan conceptuel (e.g. TAS-20, CERQ, STAXI) sont conformes aux attendus. Les scores à l'EPS permettent de distinguer les populations tout-venant et clinique.

et sommeil. Dans une perspective transactionnelle, cette recherche apporte des éléments significatifs de compréhension d'une population encore peu étudiée et propose des pistes de recherche et d'application.