Parameters influencing completion of research projects by postgraduate students in School of Education, Makerere University

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the factors that influence the postgraduates’ completion of research projects in the School of Education, Makerere University. There have been several complaints about the fact that postgraduate students in the School of Education take longer than the required time to finish their research and so this study set out to find out the reasons behind this problem. The study was guided by the following objectives: first, to examine the relationship between supervision and completion of research projects in the School of Education, Makerere University; second, to establish the relationship between facilities and completion of research projects; and thirdly to analyze the relationship between student characteristics and the completion of research projects. The study adopted an Ex -post factor design in nature and both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. Seventy two postgraduates and sixteen lecturers constituted the sample of the study. The researcher used on set of self administered questionnaire for the postgraduates and an interview guide for the lecturers. Data analysis was based on means, medians, deviations, frequencies and percentages from frequency tables. The independent samples t-test was employed to correlate the factors with completion of research. When the mean scores of the two categories of the postgraduate respondents were tested using the Independent Samples t test, the results revealed a positive relationship between supervision and completion of research projects by postgraduates, and a significant relationship between both facilities and student characteristics with the completion of research by the same. The conclusions of the study were that, whereas supervision is very crucial for a postgraduate to finish the research process on time, when there are other factors in play, the supervision may be futile. It was also concluded that facilities and student characteristics are very important factors in completion of research. Recommendations were made focusing mainly on the need for the supervisors to try and offer all the necessary guidance to the students, the stakeholders to avail facilities especially in the library for the postgraduates’ research and for the students to adapt positive characteristics when enrolling for postgraduate studies.