Determinants of attitude of postgraduate students towards research

Introduction

Research is a systematic process of inquiry that helps generate knowledge, address problems, and support innovation and societal development. In higher education, particularly at the postgraduate level, it plays a crucial role in developing critical thinking, analytical ability, and scientific reasoning, while enabling students to apply structured methods to investigate and understand complex issues (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) [4] . Students' involvement in research activities is greatly shaped by their attitudes toward research. Attitude can be understood as an individual's tendency to respond positively or negatively toward a particular object, activity, or idea, as explained by Icek Ajzen (1991) [1] . In academic settings, attitude toward research encompasses students' beliefs, emotions, and behavioural intentions related to research processes and tasks. Favourable attitudes encourage curiosity, persistence, and active engagement in scholarly work, whereas unfavourable attitudes may result in anxiety, avoidance, and weaker research performance, as noted by Papanastasiou (2005) [6] . Understanding students' attitudes toward research is important in educational studies because these attitudes influence motivation, research competence, and academic performance. Positive attitudes support engagement and skill development, whereas negative perceptions such as viewing research as difficult or stressful can reduce participation and hinder learning outcomes (Brew, 2002) [2] . Research attitudes are shaped by several personal, academic, and environmental factors. Variables such as prior academic performance, research experience, achievement motivation, and self-efficacy influence students' perceptions of research (Lei, 2008; Papanastasiou, 2014) [5,6] . Institutional support, mentoring, resources, and peer environment also play a significant role in shaping research engagement (Brew, 2002) [2] . These determinants interact to influence students' willingness to engage in research and their ability to complete research tasks successfully. Understanding these determinants is particularly important in postgraduate education, where students are expected to produce original research and contribute to the advancement of knowledge. By identifying the factors that influence attitudes toward research, educational institutions can design targeted interventions such as research training programmes, mentoring systems, and supportive learning environments to enhance research engagement and productivity. Therefore, examining the determinants of postgraduate students' attitudes toward research is essential for promoting positive research orientation, improving academic performance, and strengthening research culture within higher education institutions.

Objectives

Keeping this in view, the present study has been conducted to measure the attitude of the postgraduate students towards research. 1. To analyse the determinants of postgraduate students' attitude towards research.

Methodology

The Adjusted R 2 = 0.575 F = 6.530** ** Significant ('F' at (K-1) and (N-K-1) df) at 1% level of probability * Significant at 0.05 level of probability, ** Significant at 0.01 level of probability From the Table 1, it can be seen that, coefficient of determination, R 2 value was significant. The R 2 value 0.679 indicates that, all the independent variables put together explained about 67.90% of variation in the dependent variable i.e. attitude of post graduate students towards research. Remaining 32.10% variation was due to the extraneous variables.

Step down regression analysis

In this method, one independent variable was dropped at each step based on its least contribution to R2 (Co-efficient of multiple determination). All the independent variables together accounted for 70.09% variation towards farmers innovativeness. The final resulting variables with regression co-efficient (b), Standard Error (Seb), partial regression coefficient are presented in table 2. From Table 2, it could be concluded that the variables in the last model accounted for 63.10% of variation in the dependent variable. Among all the independent variables, number of members in the family, achievement motivation and innovativeness were the most influential variables and hence they are retained in the model. The results of stepdown regression analysis in the Table 3 showed that, three variables i.e., achievement motivation and innovativeness were significant at 1% level of probability. A unit increase in achievement motivation (X 10 ) and innovativeness (X 11 ) results in increase of 0.506 and 0.404 units ceteris paribus in attitude of postgraduate students towards research. Number of members in the family was significant at 5% level of probability. These are in line with the findings of Christian (2012) [3] . This may be due to the reason that high achievement motivation drives the students towards the objectives and helps the students to develop favourable attitude towards research.

Conclusion

The study concludes that achievement motivation and innovativeness are the most significant determinants of postgraduate students' attitudes toward research, while family size also plays a notable role. Psychological characteristics were found to be more influential than most socio-economic factors. Enhancing motivation and promoting innovativeness among students can help develop positive research attitudes. Therefore, educational institutions should focus on supportive learning environments, mentoring, and motivation-building strategies to strengthen research engagement and improve the overall research culture.

Acknowledgement

AcknowledgementNone.

References

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4. Creswell JW, Creswell JD. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications; 2018.
5. Lei SA. Factors changing attitudes of graduate school students toward an introductory statistics course. Educational Research Quarterly. 2008;32(2):3-15.
6. Papanastasiou EC. Factor structure of the attitudes toward research scale. Statistics Education Research Journal. 2005;4(1):16-26.