Supervision of graduate students has been well-studied from many different angles, but the power relationships have been the subject of only a few investigations. This thesis reports on a survey of the power relationship perceptions of Victoria University graduate students and supervising staff. A US instrument (Aguinis, Nesler, Quigley, Lee & Tedeschi, 1996) was used in a modified to obtain power relationship factors based on French and Raven’s categorisation of power relationships. These Victoria university power instrument (VUPI) scales were those of Aguinis, modified for Australian intitutions. Item analysis showed that the new scales to be well behaved and to replicate and extend the US findings. The VUPI scales provide a basis for further Australian work. Coercive power was confirmed to be negatively related to the perceived Trustworthiness of the supervisor. Compliance with and Credibility of supervisors were both positively correlated to expert and referent power. The extended VUPI scales were also used to assess the students view of supervisors, and to estimate what supervisors thought themselves - and what they thought were the students perceptions. This considerably extended the range of power perceptions under study from the basic student views recorded in the US study. Supervisors were found to systematically overestimate both the degree of coercive power that they are seen to exert and the Expert and Referent power that they are seen to have. A full scale survey using the VUPI scales would be cost effective to undertake, and yield useful results.