Difficulties and Research Students' Attitude: A Multifaceted Analysis

Author(s) : Zain ul Abdin Rind1 & Amjad Ali Arain2

Abstract:

This study had been designed to explore the research difficulties faced by MS/M.Phil students in conducting research and its effect on their research attitude. A sample of 165 research students enrolled in MS/ M.Phil program in University of Sindh. Sample was drawn through simple random sampling technique. Two data collection tools were employed; first scale was developed to explore research difficulties faced by studentresearchers and second tool was adopted from Elena C. Papanastasiou (2005) “Attitude Towards Research” (ATR) to study the student-researchers’ research attitude. The results showed that MS/M.Phil students face a range of difficulties when conducting research. They face more administrative difficulties (M= 5.20) than personal difficulties (M= 4.98). The results also showed that students had positive attitudes in two factors; research usefulness (M= 5.61) and general attitude towards research (M= 5.45) and they had negative attitude on other factors; research anxiety (M= 4.98) and research difficulty (M= 4.54) factors. Likewise a moderate positive correlation was found between the research difficulties and the each factors of research attitude. Regression was also used to estimate the impact of research difficulties on research attitude of students; personal difficulties had a week impact on student’s research attitude (β =.233, P <.002) whereas administrative difficulties had higher impact (β =.348, P <.00001) on student’s research attitude. Thus, it can be concluded that research difficulties faced by students cause to change their research attitude.

Keywords: Research, Attitude, Impact, personal and administrative factors