Factors Affecting the Research Productivity of Teachers in Basic Educational Schools

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to study external and internal personal factors
affecting research productivity, attitude towards research, motivation for research
achievement, and features of schools conducive to research; to develop a model of
factors enhancing to enhance the overall research productivity of teachers at basic
educational schools and to examine the invariance of the model of the factors that
positively affected the research productivity of the teachers regardless of the difference in
the size of their schools.
The sample group consisted of 360 teachers attached to secondary education
service areas in the Northeast of Thailand who had at least one research conducted since
the stating of their job as a teacher. They were selected by means of the stratified random
sampling. The research instrument consisted of a questionnaire eliciting research
background of the subjects, an evaluation for school features conducive to research
activities, an evaluation for research skills, an evaluation for attitude towards research, an
evaluation for motivation for research achievement, a questionnaire for opinions about the
school features enhancing research, and questionnaire asking about the number of research
studies conducted by the teachers. The instruments revealed the range of reliability values from
.834 - .971. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, validity and invariance
testing. The research findings were as follows:
1. The factors on external and internal personal characteristics, attitude
towards research, and motivation for research achievement were found to be at a high level.
The school features conducive to research productivity was found at a moderate level,
while the actual research productivity was perceived to be at a low level, about 0.64
pieces per person per year.
2. The developed factor model to enhance the overall research productivity
was found to be in congruence with the actual data, with the ability to describe the
invariance of the research productivity at the percentages of 88.30 respectively. The factors
affecting research productivity were external personal characteristics, motivation for research
achievement and internal personal characteristics.
3. The results of invariance testing of the model factors revealed that the
model was not changed in form regardless of the school sizes, but there were some
changes in weighing parameter of the components and in other parameters .