The Implementation of National Research Project Policy: A Case Study of Kasetsart University

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) Analyze the current state of Kasetsart University research administration under the implementation of National Research Project policy, 2) to study factors affecting the effectiveness of the implementation National Research Project policy. And 3) to compare the effectiveness of the implementation of National Research Project policy classified by campuses. This study was devided into 2 sections. For the first section, the documentary analysis conference and annual summary, during the year 2550-2555 and interviews with administrators of the university for 8 people were used. The second section was the study of factors affecting the effectiveness of the implementation of National Research Project policy. The proportional simple random sampling was used to select 359 academic staff and support staff of Kasetsart University to be the respondents. The data were collected by a five-scaled questionnaire developed by the researcher. Reliability for the questionnaire was 0.869. Statistical tools used for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, one-way ANOVA and Multiple regression analysis with statistical level of significance at .05.

The results were as follows 1) from the documentary analysis, it was found that the effectiveness of Kasetsart University research administration before and after the implementation of the National Research Project policy complied with the Commission on Higher Education criteria was at a low level (12.85%, 16.09%, respectively). When each aspect was considered, it was found that all of them were at low levels which were the amount of published research (9.34%, 13.47%, respectively), the amount of research citation (18.48%, 27.38%, respectively), the amount of patented research (0.11%, 0.32%, respectively) and the number of research grants (23.45%, 23.20%, respectively). 2) The study of 4 factors including policies and plans, management, knowledge, understanding and research ethics, and attitudes of personnel who implemented the policy could hardly predict the effectiveness of the implementation at 0.05 level of significance. The predictors accounted for only 0.20 percent (R² = 0.002) which showed regression coefficients of 0.019, 0.031, 0.019 and 0.009, respectively. 3) Kasetsart University personnel’s opinions on the effectiveness of the National Research Project policy were not significantly different in the four campuses.