Postgraduate Students’ Attitudes towards Research

Students often rate courses in research methods negatively and regard them as difficult. This study used the Attitudes towards Research Scale (Papanastasiou, 2005) to assess the attitudes of 201 randomly selected postgraduate students of teacher education programs from public and private universities in Pakistan. It was hypothesized that students hold positive attitudes toward different aspects of research. This scale consisted of 32 items having 5 constructs: usefulness of research in a career, research anxiety, positive attitudes toward research, research relevance to life, and research difficulty. Data were collected by self-administered approach. Data were gathered from the trainee teachers during their class time. Three programs (B.S honors/ M.A education, (N = 63), M.Phil / MS education (N = 114), and PhD education (N = 24) were selected as a sample of the study. Data were analyzed by using t-test and ANOVA. Results indicated that the males had significantly positive attitudes towards research than the females. Similarly significant results were found on age, different programs of study, and university type.