TY - JOUR
T1 - Exploring graduate students' attitudes towards team research and their scholarly productivity
T2 - A survey guided by the theory of planned behavior
AU - Wei, Tianlan
AU - Sadikova, Alime N.
AU - Barnard-Brak, Lucy
AU - Wang, Eugene W.
AU - Sodikov, Dilshod
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Informing Science Institute. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - This study explores the attitudinal and motivational factors underlying graduate students' attitudes towards team research. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior, we hypothesize that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are three major determinants of graduate students' intentions to conduct team research. An instrument was developed to measure the influences of these factors on students' intentions and relevant scholarly productivity. A total of 281 graduate students from a large, comprehensive university in the southwest United States participated in the survey. Descriptive statistics reveal that around two-thirds of graduate students have no co-authored manuscripts submitted for publication since they started graduate school. Factor analyses validated the factor structure of the instrument, and the results of Structural Equation Modeling show that (a) graduate students' attitudes towards team research have a positive correlation with their attitudes towards individual research; (b) attitude towards team research, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, along with students' discipline/major areas and classification, account for 58% of the variance in the intention to conduct team research; and (c) subjective norm appears to be the most influential factor in the model, followed by attitude; while perceived behavioral control is not of much importance. These findings provide implications for academic departments and programs to promote graduate students' team research. Specifically, creating a climate for collaborative research in academic programs/disciplines/universities may work jointly with enhancing students' appraisals of such collaborations.
AB - This study explores the attitudinal and motivational factors underlying graduate students' attitudes towards team research. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior, we hypothesize that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are three major determinants of graduate students' intentions to conduct team research. An instrument was developed to measure the influences of these factors on students' intentions and relevant scholarly productivity. A total of 281 graduate students from a large, comprehensive university in the southwest United States participated in the survey. Descriptive statistics reveal that around two-thirds of graduate students have no co-authored manuscripts submitted for publication since they started graduate school. Factor analyses validated the factor structure of the instrument, and the results of Structural Equation Modeling show that (a) graduate students' attitudes towards team research have a positive correlation with their attitudes towards individual research; (b) attitude towards team research, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, along with students' discipline/major areas and classification, account for 58% of the variance in the intention to conduct team research; and (c) subjective norm appears to be the most influential factor in the model, followed by attitude; while perceived behavioral control is not of much importance. These findings provide implications for academic departments and programs to promote graduate students' team research. Specifically, creating a climate for collaborative research in academic programs/disciplines/universities may work jointly with enhancing students' appraisals of such collaborations.
KW - Attitude
KW - Graduate student
KW - Intention
KW - Perceived behavioral control
KW - Scholarly productivity
KW - Subjective norm
KW - Team research
KW - The theory of planned behavior
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84929899036&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.28945/2089
DO - 10.28945/2089
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84929899036
SN - 1556-8881
VL - 10
SP - 1
EP - 17
JO - International Journal of Doctoral Studies
JF - International Journal of Doctoral Studies
ER -