Research Self-Efficacy, Interest in Research and Research Knowledge of Graduate Students

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue X, October 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Research Self-Efficacy, Interest in Research and Research Knowledge of Graduate Students

Jovelyn G Delosa, Charity Rose A Pagara, Edralin C. Manla
School of Education, Xavier University, Philippines

Abstract— One of the goals of graduate education is to produce graduates equipped with excellent research skills. With the challenges on the quality education and demands on excellence, the current priority of the Commission of Higher Education is on research. Graduate schools offering graduate programs are mandated to guide students develop the research skills expected of them. The purpose of this study is to determine how specific factors such as research efficacy and research interest contributed to research knowledge of the students. The participants of the study are the Master’s and Doctoral student enrolled in the school. The study utilized descriptive research design. The results showed that the Graduate students have good research interest and good level of self-efficacy, but poor research knowledge. Moreover, there is a significant contribution of interest in research to research knowledge, but a negative contribution of research self-efficacy to students’ research knowledge. These findings imply that the development of the graduate students’ research interest should be prioritized by the School of Education. These also denotes that there could be other factors to be looked into that may have contribution to students’ research knowledge, not only efficacy and interest.

Keywords— research self-efficacy, interest in research, research knowledge, graduate research, graduate programs

I. INTRODUCTION

Research plays a major role in the graduate school curriculum. Research preparation is vital in the education profession. Graduate students are expected to be better research writers with advanced writing abilities to cope with the demands of their academic requirements. The creation of Higher Education Act of 1994, RA No. 7722, monitors the level or degree of standards in the tertiary and graduate education in the areas of institution, research and extension. With the challenges on the quality education and demands on excellence, the current priority of the Commission of Higher Education is on research. However, graduate students are experiencing research difficulties (Rogers, 2010) in constructing scholarly work, doing statistics and writing professional literature. In addition, students often hold negative attitude towards research courses (Boswell, 2013) thus the attitude towards research is of importance in their research related-tasks. Moreover, some graduate students were observed to delay the making of their required research proposal. Literature has reported that graduate students are experiencing research difficulties and there are non-cognitive factors which contributed to the acquisition of research knowledge.
This study is anchored on Albert Bandura’s (1994), self-efficacy theory. It is defined as ones’ beliefs on their capability to do a particular task. People with high regard of

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