what is the importance of research in senior high school

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• Published: 02 December 2020

Enhancing senior high school student engagement and academic performance using an inclusive and scalable inquiry-based program

• Locke Davenport Huyer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1526-7122 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Neal I. Callaghan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8214-3395 1 , 3   na1 ,
• Sara Dicks 4 ,
• Edward Scherer 4 ,
• Andrey I. Shukalyuk 1 ,
• Margaret Jou 4 &
• Dawn M. Kilkenny   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3899-9767 1 , 5  

npj Science of Learning volume  5 , Article number:  17 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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The multi-disciplinary nature of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers often renders difficulty for high school students navigating from classroom knowledge to post-secondary pursuits. Discrepancies between the knowledge-based high school learning approach and the experiential approach of future studies leaves some students disillusioned by STEM. We present Discovery , a term-long inquiry-focused learning model delivered by STEM graduate students in collaboration with high school teachers, in the context of biomedical engineering. Entire classes of high school STEM students representing diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds engaged in iterative, problem-based learning designed to emphasize critical thinking concomitantly within the secondary school and university environments. Assessment of grades and survey data suggested positive impact of this learning model on students’ STEM interests and engagement, notably in under-performing cohorts, as well as repeating cohorts that engage in the program on more than one occasion. Discovery presents a scalable platform that stimulates persistence in STEM learning, providing valuable learning opportunities and capturing cohorts of students that might otherwise be under-engaged in STEM.

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Introduction

High school students with diverse STEM interests often struggle to understand the STEM experience outside the classroom 1 . The multi-disciplinary nature of many career fields can foster a challenge for students in their decision to enroll in appropriate high school courses while maintaining persistence in study, particularly when these courses are not mandatory 2 . Furthermore, this challenge is amplified by the known discrepancy between the knowledge-based learning approach common in high schools and the experiential, mastery-based approaches afforded by the subsequent undergraduate model 3 . In the latter, focused classes, interdisciplinary concepts, and laboratory experiences allow for the application of accumulated knowledge, practice in problem solving, and development of both general and technical skills 4 . Such immersive cooperative learning environments are difficult to establish in the secondary school setting and high school teachers often struggle to implement within their classroom 5 . As such, high school students may become disillusioned before graduation and never experience an enriched learning environment, despite their inherent interests in STEM 6 .

It cannot be argued that early introduction to varied math and science disciplines throughout high school is vital if students are to pursue STEM fields, especially within engineering 7 . However, the majority of literature focused on student interest and retention in STEM highlights outcomes in US high school learning environments, where the sciences are often subject-specific from the onset of enrollment 8 . In contrast, students in the Ontario (Canada) high school system are required to complete Level 1 and 2 core courses in science and math during Grades 9 and 10; these courses are offered as ‘applied’ or ‘academic’ versions and present broad topics of content 9 . It is not until Levels 3 and 4 (generally Grades 11 and 12, respectively) that STEM classes become subject-specific (i.e., Biology, Chemistry, and/or Physics) and are offered as “university”, “college”, or “mixed” versions, designed to best prepare students for their desired post-secondary pursuits 9 . Given that Levels 3 and 4 science courses are not mandatory for graduation, enrollment identifies an innate student interest in continued learning. Furthermore, engagement in these post-secondary preparatory courses is also dependent upon achieving successful grades in preceding courses, but as curriculum becomes more subject-specific, students often yield lower degrees of success in achieving course credit 2 . Therefore, it is imperative that learning supports are best focused on ensuring that those students with an innate interest are able to achieve success in learning.

When given opportunity and focused support, high school students are capable of successfully completing rigorous programs at STEM-focused schools 10 . Specialized STEM schools have existed in the US for over 100 years; generally, students are admitted after their sophomore year of high school experience (equivalent to Grade 10) based on standardized test scores, essays, portfolios, references, and/or interviews 11 . Common elements to this learning framework include a diverse array of advanced STEM courses, paired with opportunities to engage in and disseminate cutting-edge research 12 . Therein, said research experience is inherently based in the processes of critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration. This learning framework supports translation of core curricular concepts to practice and is fundamental in allowing students to develop better understanding and appreciation of STEM career fields.

Despite the described positive attributes, many students do not have the ability or resources to engage within STEM-focused schools, particularly given that they are not prevalent across Canada, and other countries across the world. Consequently, many public institutions support the idea that post-secondary led engineering education programs are effective ways to expose high school students to engineering education and relevant career options, and also increase engineering awareness 13 . Although singular class field trips are used extensively to accomplish such programs, these may not allow immersive experiences for application of knowledge and practice of skills that are proven to impact long-term learning and influence career choices 14 , 15 . Longer-term immersive research experiences, such as after-school programs or summer camps, have shown successful at recruiting students into STEM degree programs and careers, where longevity of experience helps foster self-determination and interest-led, inquiry-based projects 4 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 .

Such activities convey the elements that are suggested to make a post-secondary led high school education programs successful: hands-on experience, self-motivated learning, real-life application, immediate feedback, and problem-based projects 20 , 21 . In combination with immersion in university teaching facilities, learning is authentic and relevant, similar to the STEM school-focused framework, and consequently representative of an experience found in actual STEM practice 22 . These outcomes may further be a consequence of student engagement and attitude: Brown et al. studied the relationships between STEM curriculum and student attitudes, and found the latter played a more important role in intention to persist in STEM when compared to self-efficacy 23 . This is interesting given that student self-efficacy has been identified to influence ‘motivation, persistence, and determination’ in overcoming challenges in a career pathway 24 . Taken together, this suggests that creation and delivery of modern, exciting curriculum that supports positive student attitudes is fundamental to engage and retain students in STEM programs.

Supported by the outcomes of identified effective learning strategies, University of Toronto (U of T) graduate trainees created a novel high school education program Discovery , to develop a comfortable yet stimulating environment of inquiry-focused iterative learning for senior high school students (Grades 11 & 12; Levels 3 & 4) at non-specialized schools. Built in strong collaboration with science teachers from George Harvey Collegiate Institute (Toronto District School Board), Discovery stimulates application of STEM concepts within a unique term-long applied curriculum delivered iteratively within both U of T undergraduate teaching facilities and collaborating high school classrooms 25 . Based on the volume of medically-themed news and entertainment that is communicated to the population at large, the rapidly-growing and diverse field of biomedical engineering (BME) were considered an ideal program context 26 . In its definition, BME necessitates cross-disciplinary STEM knowledge focused on the betterment of human health, wherein Discovery facilitates broadening student perspective through engaging inquiry-based projects. Importantly, Discovery allows all students within a class cohort to work together with their classroom teacher, stimulating continued development of a relevant learning community that is deemed essential for meaningful context and important for transforming student perspectives and understandings 27 , 28 . Multiple studies support the concept that relevant learning communities improve student attitudes towards learning, significantly increasing student motivation in STEM courses, and consequently improving the overall learning experience 29 . Learning communities, such as that provided by Discovery , also promote the formation of self-supporting groups, greater active involvement in class, and higher persistence rates for participating students 30 .

The objective of Discovery , through structure and dissemination, is to engage senior high school science students in challenging, inquiry-based practical BME activities as a mechanism to stimulate comprehension of STEM curriculum application to real-world concepts. Consequent focus is placed on critical thinking skill development through an atmosphere of perseverance in ambiguity, something not common in a secondary school knowledge-focused delivery but highly relevant in post-secondary STEM education strategies. Herein, we describe the observed impact of the differential project-based learning environment of Discovery on student performance and engagement. We identify the value of an inquiry-focused learning model that is tangible for students who struggle in a knowledge-focused delivery structure, where engagement in conceptual critical thinking in the relevant subject area stimulates student interest, attitudes, and resulting academic performance. Assessment of study outcomes suggests that when provided with a differential learning opportunity, student performance and interest in STEM increased. Consequently, Discovery provides an effective teaching and learning framework within a non-specialized school that motivates students, provides opportunity for critical thinking and problem-solving practice, and better prepares them for persistence in future STEM programs.

Program delivery

The outcomes of the current study result from execution of Discovery over five independent academic terms as a collaboration between Institute of Biomedical Engineering (graduate students, faculty, and support staff) and George Harvey Collegiate Institute (science teachers and administration) stakeholders. Each term, the program allowed senior secondary STEM students (Grades 11 and 12) opportunity to engage in a novel project-based learning environment. The program structure uses the problem-based engineering capstone framework as a tool of inquiry-focused learning objectives, motivated by a central BME global research topic, with research questions that are inter-related but specific to the curriculum of each STEM course subject (Fig. 1 ). Over each 12-week term, students worked in teams (3–4 students) within their class cohorts to execute projects with the guidance of U of T trainees ( Discovery instructors) and their own high school teacher(s). Student experimental work was conducted in U of T teaching facilities relevant to the research study of interest (i.e., Biology and Chemistry-based projects executed within Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories; Physics projects executed within Undergraduate Design Studios). Students were introduced to relevant techniques and safety procedures in advance of iterative experimentation. Importantly, this experience served as a course term project for students, who were assessed at several points throughout the program for performance in an inquiry-focused environment as well as within the regular classroom (Fig. 1 ). To instill the atmosphere of STEM, student teams delivered their outcomes in research poster format at a final symposium, sharing their results and recommendations with other post-secondary students, faculty, and community in an open environment.

The general program concept (blue background; top left ) highlights a global research topic examined through student dissemination of subject-specific research questions, yielding multifaceted student outcomes (orange background; top right ). Each program term (term workflow, yellow background; bottom panel ), students work on program deliverables in class (blue), iterate experimental outcomes within university facilities (orange), and are assessed accordingly at numerous deliverables in an inquiry-focused learning model.

Over the course of five terms there were 268 instances of tracked student participation, representing 170 individual students. Specifically, 94 students participated during only one term of programming, 57 students participated in two terms, 16 students participated in three terms, and 3 students participated in four terms. Multiple instances of participation represent students that enrol in more than one STEM class during their senior years of high school, or who participated in Grade 11 and subsequently Grade 12. Students were surveyed before and after each term to assess program effects on STEM interest and engagement. All grade-based assessments were performed by high school teachers for their respective STEM class cohorts using consistent grading rubrics and assignment structure. Here, we discuss the outcomes of student involvement in this experiential curriculum model.

Student performance and engagement

Student grades were assigned, collected, and anonymized by teachers for each Discovery deliverable (background essay, client meeting, proposal, progress report, poster, and final presentation). Teachers anonymized collective Discovery grades, the component deliverable grades thereof, final course grades, attendance in class and during programming, as well as incomplete classroom assignments, for comparative study purposes. Students performed significantly higher in their cumulative Discovery grade than in their cumulative classroom grade (final course grade less the Discovery contribution; p  < 0.0001). Nevertheless, there was a highly significant correlation ( p  < 0.0001) observed between the grade representing combined Discovery deliverables and the final course grade (Fig. 2a ). Further examination of the full dataset revealed two student cohorts of interest: the “Exceeds Expectations” (EE) subset (defined as those students who achieved ≥1 SD [18.0%] grade differential in Discovery over their final course grade; N  = 99 instances), and the “Multiple Term” (MT) subset (defined as those students who participated in Discovery more than once; 76 individual students that collectively accounted for 174 single terms of assessment out of the 268 total student-terms delivered) (Fig. 2b, c ). These subsets were not unrelated; 46 individual students who had multiple experiences (60.5% of total MTs) exhibited at least one occasion in achieving a ≥18.0% grade differential. As students participated in group work, there was concern that lower-performing students might negatively influence the Discovery grade of higher-performing students (or vice versa). However, students were observed to self-organize into groups where all individuals received similar final overall course grades (Fig. 2d ), thereby alleviating these concerns.

a Linear regression of student grades reveals a significant correlation ( p  = 0.0009) between Discovery performance and final course grade less the Discovery contribution to grade, as assessed by teachers. The dashed red line and intervals represent the theoretical 1:1 correlation between Discovery and course grades and standard deviation of the Discovery -course grade differential, respectively. b , c Identification of subgroups of interest, Exceeds Expectations (EE; N  = 99, orange ) who were ≥+1 SD in Discovery -course grade differential and Multi-Term (MT; N  = 174, teal ), of which N  = 65 students were present in both subgroups. d Students tended to self-assemble in working groups according to their final course performance; data presented as mean ± SEM. e For MT students participating at least 3 terms in Discovery , there was no significant correlation between course grade and time, while ( f ) there was a significant correlation between Discovery grade and cumulative terms in the program. Histograms of total absences per student in ( g ) Discovery and ( h ) class (binned by 4 days to be equivalent in time to a single Discovery absence).

The benefits experienced by MT students seemed progressive; MT students that participated in 3 or 4 terms ( N  = 16 and 3, respectively ) showed no significant increase by linear regression in their course grade over time ( p  = 0.15, Fig. 2e ), but did show a significant increase in their Discovery grades ( p  = 0.0011, Fig. 2f ). Finally, students demonstrated excellent Discovery attendance; at least 91% of participants attended all Discovery sessions in a given term (Fig. 2g ). In contrast, class attendance rates reveal a much wider distribution where 60.8% (163 out of 268 students) missed more than 4 classes (equivalent in learning time to one Discovery session) and 14.6% (39 out of 268 students) missed 16 or more classes (equivalent in learning time to an entire program of Discovery ) in a term (Fig. 2h ).

Discovery EE students (Fig. 3 ), roughly by definition, obtained lower course grades ( p  < 0.0001, Fig. 3a ) and higher final Discovery grades ( p  = 0.0004, Fig. 3b ) than non-EE students. This cohort of students exhibited program grades higher than classmates (Fig. 3c–h ); these differences were significant in every category with the exception of essays, where they outperformed to a significantly lesser degree ( p  = 0.097; Fig. 3c ). There was no statistically significant difference in EE vs. non-EE student classroom attendance ( p  = 0.85; Fig. 3i, j ). There were only four single day absences in Discovery within the EE subset; however, this difference was not statistically significant ( p  = 0.074).

The “Exceeds Expectations” (EE) subset of students (defined as those who received a combined Discovery grade ≥1 SD (18.0%) higher than their final course grade) performed ( a ) lower on their final course grade and ( b ) higher in the Discovery program as a whole when compared to their classmates. d – h EE students received significantly higher grades on each Discovery deliverable than their classmates, except for their ( c ) introductory essays and ( h ) final presentations. The EE subset also tended ( i ) to have a higher relative rate of attendance during Discovery sessions but no difference in ( j ) classroom attendance. N  = 99 EE students and 169 non-EE students (268 total). Grade data expressed as mean ± SEM.

Discovery MT students (Fig. 4 ), although not receiving significantly higher grades in class than students participating in the program only one time ( p  = 0.29, Fig. 4a ), were observed to obtain higher final Discovery grades than single-term students ( p  = 0.0067, Fig. 4b ). Although trends were less pronounced for individual MT student deliverables (Fig. 4c–h ), this student group performed significantly better on the progress report ( p  = 0.0021; Fig. 4f ). Trends of higher performance were observed for initial proposals and final presentations ( p  = 0.081 and 0.056, respectively; Fig. 4e, h ); all other deliverables were not significantly different between MT and non-MT students (Fig. 4c, d, g ). Attendance in Discovery ( p  = 0.22) was also not significantly different between MT and non-MT students, although MT students did miss significantly less class time ( p  = 0.010) (Fig. 4i, j ). Longitudinal assessment of individual deliverables for MT students that participated in three or more Discovery terms (Fig. 5 ) further highlights trend in improvement (Fig. 2f ). Greater performance over terms of participation was observed for essay ( p  = 0.0295, Fig. 5a ), client meeting ( p  = 0.0003, Fig. 5b ), proposal ( p  = 0.0004, Fig. 5c ), progress report ( p  = 0.16, Fig. 5d ), poster ( p  = 0.0005, Fig. 5e ), and presentation ( p  = 0.0295, Fig. 5f ) deliverable grades; these trends were all significant with the exception of the progress report ( p  = 0.16, Fig. 5d ) owing to strong performance in this deliverable in all terms.

The “multi-term” (MT) subset of students (defined as having attended more than one term of Discovery ) demonstrated favorable performance in Discovery , ( a ) showing no difference in course grade compared to single-term students, but ( b outperforming them in final Discovery grade. Independent of the number of times participating in Discovery , MT students did not score significantly differently on their ( c ) essay, ( d ) client meeting, or ( g ) poster. They tended to outperform their single-term classmates on the ( e ) proposal and ( h ) final presentation and scored significantly higher on their ( f ) progress report. MT students showed no statistical difference in ( i ) Discovery attendance but did show ( j ) higher rates of classroom attendance than single-term students. N  = 174 MT instances of student participation (76 individual students) and 94 single-term students. Grade data expressed as mean ± SEM.

Longitudinal assessment of a subset of MT student participants that participated in three ( N  = 16) or four ( N  = 3) terms presents a significant trend of improvement in their ( a ) essay, ( b ) client meeting, ( c ) proposal, ( e ) poster, and ( f ) presentation grade. d Progress report grades present a trend in improvement but demonstrate strong performance in all terms, limiting potential for student improvement. Grade data are presented as individual student performance; each student is represented by one color; data is fitted with a linear trendline (black).

Finally, the expansion of Discovery to a second school of lower LOI (i.e., nominally higher aggregate SES) allowed for the assessment of program impact in a new population over 2 terms of programming. A significant ( p  = 0.040) divergence in Discovery vs. course grade distribution from the theoretical 1:1 relationship was found in the new cohort (S 1 Appendix , Fig. S 1 ), in keeping with the pattern established in this study.

Teacher perceptions

Qualitative observation in the classroom by high school teachers emphasized the value students independently placed on program participation and deliverables. Throughout the term, students often prioritized Discovery group assignments over other tasks for their STEM courses, regardless of academic weight and/or due date. Comparing within this student population, teachers spoke of difficulties with late and incomplete assignments in the regular curriculum but found very few such instances with respect to Discovery -associated deliverables. Further, teachers speculated on the good behavior and focus of students in Discovery programming in contrast to attentiveness and behavior issues in their school classrooms. Multiple anecdotal examples were shared of renewed perception of student potential; students that exhibited poor academic performance in the classroom often engaged with high performance in this inquiry-focused atmosphere. Students appeared to take a sense of ownership, excitement, and pride in the setting of group projects oriented around scientific inquiry, discovery, and dissemination.

Student perceptions

Students were asked to consider and rank the academic difficulty (scale of 1–5, with 1 = not challenging and 5 = highly challenging) of the work they conducted within the Discovery learning model. Considering individual Discovery terms, at least 91% of students felt the curriculum to be sufficiently challenging with a 3/5 or higher ranking (Term 1: 87.5%, Term 2: 93.4%, Term 3: 85%, Term 4: 93.3%, Term 5: 100%), and a minimum of 58% of students indicating a 4/5 or higher ranking (Term 1: 58.3%, Term 2: 70.5%, Term 3: 67.5%, Term 4: 69.1%, Term 5: 86.4%) (Fig. 6a ).

a Histogram of relative frequency of perceived Discovery programming academic difficulty ranked from not challenging (1) to highly challenging (5) for each session demonstrated the consistently perceived high degree of difficulty for Discovery programming (total responses: 223). b Program participation increased student comfort (94.6%) with navigating lab work in a university or college setting (total responses: 220). c Considering participation in Discovery programming, students indicated their increased (72.4%) or decreased (10.1%) likelihood to pursue future experiences in STEM as a measure of program impact (total responses: 217). d Large majority of participating students (84.9%) indicated their interest for future participation in Discovery (total responses: 212). Students were given the opportunity to opt out of individual survey questions, partially completed surveys were included in totals.

The majority of students (94.6%) indicated they felt more comfortable with the idea of performing future work in a university STEM laboratory environment given exposure to university teaching facilities throughout the program (Fig. 6b ). Students were also queried whether they were (i) more likely, (ii) less likely, or (iii) not impacted by their experience in the pursuit of STEM in the future. The majority of participants (>82%) perceived impact on STEM interests, with 72.4% indicating they were more likely to pursue these interests in the future (Fig. 6c ). When surveyed at the end of term, 84.9% of students indicated they would participate in the program again (Fig. 6d ).

We have described an inquiry-based framework for implementing experiential STEM education in a BME setting. Using this model, we engaged 268 instances of student participation (170 individual students who participated 1–4 times) over five terms in project-based learning wherein students worked in peer-based teams under the mentorship of U of T trainees to design and execute the scientific method in answering a relevant research question. Collaboration between high school teachers and Discovery instructors allowed for high school student exposure to cutting-edge BME research topics, participation in facilitated inquiry, and acquisition of knowledge through scientific discovery. All assessments were conducted by high school teachers and constituted a fraction (10–15%) of the overall course grade, instilling academic value for participating students. As such, students exhibited excitement to learn as well as commitment to their studies in the program.

Through our observations and analysis, we suggest there is value in differential learning environments for students that struggle in a knowledge acquisition-focused classroom setting. In general, we observed a high level of academic performance in Discovery programming (Fig. 2a ), which was highlighted exceptionally in EE students who exhibited greater academic performance in Discovery deliverables compared to normal coursework (>18% grade improvement in relevant deliverables). We initially considered whether this was the result of strong students influencing weaker students; however, group organization within each course suggests this is not the case (Fig. 2d ). With the exception of one class in one term (24 participants assigned by their teacher), students were allowed to self-organize into working groups and they chose to work with other students of relatively similar academic performance (as indicated by course grade), a trend observed in other studies 31 , 32 . Remarkably, EE students not only excelled during Discovery when compared to their own performance in class, but this cohort also achieved significantly higher average grades in each of the deliverables throughout the program when compared to the remaining Discovery cohort (Fig. 3 ). This data demonstrates the value of an inquiry-based learning environment compared to knowledge-focused delivery in the classroom in allowing students to excel. We expect that part of this engagement was resultant of student excitement with a novel learning opportunity. It is however a well-supported concept that students who struggle in traditional settings tend to demonstrate improved interest and motivation in STEM when given opportunity to interact in a hands-on fashion, which supports our outcomes 4 , 33 . Furthermore, these outcomes clearly represent variable student learning styles, where some students benefit from a greater exchange of information, knowledge and skills in a cooperative learning environment 34 . The performance of the EE group may not be by itself surprising, as the identification of the subset by definition required high performers in Discovery who did not have exceptionally high course grades; in addition, the final Discovery grade is dependent on the component assignment grades. However, the discrepancies between EE and non-EE groups attendance suggests that students were engaged by Discovery in a way that they were not by regular classroom curriculum.

In addition to quantified engagement in Discovery observed in academic performance, we believe remarkable attendance rates are indicative of the value students place in the differential learning structure. Given the differences in number of Discovery days and implications of missing one day of regular class compared to this immersive program, we acknowledge it is challenging to directly compare attendance data and therefore approximate this comparison with consideration of learning time equivalence. When combined with other subjective data including student focus, requests to work on Discovery during class time, and lack of discipline/behavior issues, the attendance data importantly suggests that students were especially engaged by the Discovery model. Further, we believe the increased commute time to the university campus (students are responsible for independent transit to campus, a much longer endeavour than the normal school commute), early program start time, and students’ lack of familiarity with the location are non-trivial considerations when determining the propensity of students to participate enthusiastically in Discovery . We feel this suggests the students place value on this team-focused learning and find it to be more applicable and meaningful to their interests.

Given post-secondary admission requirements for STEM programs, it would be prudent to think that students participating in multiple STEM classes across terms are the ones with the most inherent interest in post-secondary STEM programs. The MT subset, representing students who participated in Discovery for more than one term, averaged significantly higher final Discovery grades. The increase in the final Discovery grade was observed to result from a general confluence of improved performance over multiple deliverables and a continuous effort to improve in a STEM curriculum. This was reflected in longitudinal tracking of Discovery performance, where we observed a significant trend of improved performance. Interestingly, the high number of MT students who were included in the EE group suggests that students who had a keen interest in science enrolled in more than one course and in general responded well to the inquiry-based teaching method of Discovery , where scientific method was put into action. It stands to reason that students interested in science will continue to take STEM courses and will respond favorably to opportunities to put classroom theory to practical application.

The true value of an inquiry-based program such as Discovery may not be based in inspiring students to perform at a higher standard in STEM within the high school setting, as skills in critical thinking do not necessarily translate to knowledge-based assessment. Notably, students found the programming equally challenging throughout each of the sequential sessions, perhaps somewhat surprising considering the increasing number of repeat attendees in successive sessions (Fig. 6a ). Regardless of sub-discipline, there was an emphasis of perceived value demonstrated through student surveys where we observed indicated interest in STEM and comfort with laboratory work environments, and desire to engage in future iterations given the opportunity. Although non-quantitative, we perceive this as an indicator of significant student engagement, even though some participants did not yield academic success in the program and found it highly challenging given its ambiguity.

Although we observed that students become more certain of their direction in STEM, further longitudinal study is warranted to make claim of this outcome. Additionally, at this point in our assessment we cannot effectively assess the practical outcomes of participation, understanding that the immediate effects observed are subject to a number of factors associated with performance in the high school learning environment. Future studies that track graduates from this program will be prudent, in conjunction with an ever-growing dataset of assessment as well as surveys designed to better elucidate underlying perceptions and attitudes, to continue to understand the expected benefits of this inquiry-focused and partnered approach. Altogether, a multifaceted assessment of our early outcomes suggests significant value of an immersive and iterative interaction with STEM as part of the high school experience. A well-defined divergence from knowledge-based learning, focused on engagement in critical thinking development framed in the cutting-edge of STEM, may be an important step to broadening student perspectives.

In this study, we describe the short-term effects of an inquiry-based STEM educational experience on a cohort of secondary students attending a non-specialized school, and suggest that the framework can be widely applied across virtually all subjects where inquiry-driven and mentored projects can be undertaken. Although we have demonstrated replication in a second cohort of nominally higher SES (S 1 Appendix , Supplementary Fig. 1 ), a larger collection period with more students will be necessary to conclusively determine impact independent of both SES and specific cohort effects. Teachers may also find this framework difficult to implement depending on resources and/or institutional investment and support, particularly if post-secondary collaboration is inaccessible. Offerings to a specific subject (e.g., physics) where experiments yielding empirical data are logistically or financially simpler to perform may be valid routes of adoption as opposed to the current study where all subject cohorts were included.

As we consider Discovery in a bigger picture context, expansion and implementation of this model is translatable. Execution of the scientific method is an important aspect of citizen science, as the concepts of critical thing become ever-more important in a landscape of changing technological landscapes. Giving students critical thinking and problem-solving skills in their primary and secondary education provides value in the context of any career path. Further, we feel that this model is scalable across disciplines, STEM or otherwise, as a means of building the tools of inquiry. We have observed here the value of differential inclusive student engagement and critical thinking through an inquiry-focused model for a subset of students, but further to this an engagement, interest, and excitement across the body of student participants. As we educate the leaders of tomorrow, we suggest that use of an inquiry-focused model such as Discovery could facilitate growth of a data-driven critical thinking framework.

In conclusion, we have presented a model of inquiry-based STEM education for secondary students that emphasizes inclusion, quantitative analysis, and critical thinking. Student grades suggest significant performance benefits, and engagement data suggests positive student attitude despite the perceived challenges of the program. We also note a particular performance benefit to students who repeatedly engage in the program. This framework may carry benefits in a wide variety of settings and disciplines for enhancing student engagement and performance, particularly in non-specialized school environments.

Study design and implementation

Participants in Discovery include all students enrolled in university-stream Grade 11 or 12 biology, chemistry, or physics at the participating school over five consecutive terms (cohort summary shown in Table 1 ). Although student participation in educational content was mandatory, student grades and survey responses (administered by high school teachers) were collected from only those students with parent or guardian consent. Teachers replaced each student name with a unique coded identifier to preserve anonymity but enable individual student tracking over multiple terms. All data collected were analyzed without any exclusions save for missing survey responses; no power analysis was performed prior to data collection.

Ethics statement

This study was approved by the University of Toronto Health Sciences Research Ethics Board (Protocol # 34825) and the Toronto District School Board External Research Review Committee (Protocol # 2017-2018-20). Written informed consent was collected from parents or guardians of participating students prior to the acquisition of student data (both post-hoc academic data and survey administration). Data were anonymized by high school teachers for maintenance of academic confidentiality of individual students prior to release to U of T researchers.

Educational program overview

Students enrolled in university-preparatory STEM classes at the participating school completed a term-long project under the guidance of graduate student instructors and undergraduate student mentors as a mandatory component of their respective course. Project curriculum developed collaboratively between graduate students and participating high school teachers was delivered within U of T Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (FASE) teaching facilities. Participation allows high school students to garner a better understanding as to how undergraduate learning and career workflows in STEM vary from traditional high school classroom learning, meanwhile reinforcing the benefits of problem solving, perseverance, teamwork, and creative thinking competencies. Given that Discovery was a mandatory component of course curriculum, students participated as class cohorts and addressed questions specific to their course subject knowledge base but related to the defined global health research topic (Fig. 1 ). Assessment of program deliverables was collectively assigned to represent 10–15% of the final course grade for each subject at the discretion of the respective STEM teacher.

The Discovery program framework was developed, prior to initiation of student assessment, in collaboration with one high school selected from the local public school board over a 1.5 year period of time. This partner school consistently scores highly (top decile) in the school board’s Learning Opportunities Index (LOI). The LOI ranks each school based on measures of external challenges affecting its student population therefore schools with the greatest level of external challenge receive a higher ranking 35 . A high LOI ranking is inversely correlated with socioeconomic status (SES); therefore, participating students are identified as having a significant number of external challenges that may affect their academic success. The mandatory nature of program participation was established to reach highly capable students who may be reluctant to engage on their own initiative, as a means of enhancing the inclusivity and impact of the program. The selected school partner is located within a reasonable geographical radius of our campus (i.e., ~40 min transit time from school to campus). This is relevant as participating students are required to independently commute to campus for Discovery hands-on experiences.

Each program term of Discovery corresponds with a five-month high school term. Lead university trainee instructors (3–6 each term) engaged with high school teachers 1–2 months in advance of high school student engagement to discern a relevant overarching global healthcare theme. Each theme was selected with consideration of (a) topics that university faculty identify as cutting-edge biomedical research, (b) expertise that Discovery instructors provide, and (c) capacity to showcase the diversity of BME. Each theme was sub-divided into STEM subject-specific research questions aligning with provincial Ministry of Education curriculum concepts for university-preparatory Biology, Chemistry, and Physics 9 that students worked to address, both on-campus and in-class, during a term-long project. The Discovery framework therefore provides students a problem-based learning experience reflective of an engineering capstone design project, including a motivating scientific problem (i.e., global topic), subject-specific research question, and systematic determination of a professional recommendation addressing the needs of the presented problem.

Discovery instructors were volunteers recruited primarily from graduate and undergraduate BME programs in the FASE. Instructors were organized into subject-specific instructional teams based on laboratory skills, teaching experience, and research expertise. The lead instructors of each subject (the identified 1–2 trainees that built curriculum with high school teachers) were responsible to organize the remaining team members as mentors for specific student groups over the course of the program term (~1:8 mentor to student ratio).

All Discovery instructors were familiarized with program expectations and trained in relevant workspace safety, in addition to engagement at a teaching workshop delivered by the Faculty Advisor (a Teaching Stream faculty member) at the onset of term. This workshop was designed to provide practical information on teaching and was co-developed with high school teachers based on their extensive training and experience in fundamental teaching methods. In addition, group mentors received hands-on training and guidance from lead instructors regarding the specific activities outlined for their respective subject programming (an exemplary term of student programming is available in S 2 Appendix) .

Discovery instructors were responsible for introducing relevant STEM skills and mentoring high school students for the duration of their projects, with support and mentorship from the Faculty Mentor. Each instructor worked exclusively throughout the term with the student groups to which they had been assigned, ensuring consistent mentorship across all disciplinary components of the project. In addition to further supporting university trainees in on-campus mentorship, high school teachers were responsible for academic assessment of all student program deliverables (Fig. 1 ; the standardized grade distribution available in S 3 Appendix ). Importantly, trainees never engaged in deliverable assessment; for continuity of overall course assessment, this remained the responsibility of the relevant teacher for each student cohort.

Throughout each term, students engaged within the university facilities four times. The first three sessions included hands-on lab sessions while the fourth visit included a culminating symposium for students to present their scientific findings (Fig. 1 ). On average, there were 4–5 groups of students per subject (3–4 students per group; ~20 students/class). Discovery instructors worked exclusively with 1–2 groups each term in the capacity of mentor to monitor and guide student progress in all project deliverables.

After introducing the selected global research topic in class, teachers led students in completion of background research essays. Students subsequently engaged in a subject-relevant skill-building protocol during their first visit to university teaching laboratory facilities, allowing opportunity to understand analysis techniques and equipment relevant for their assessment projects. At completion of this session, student groups were presented with a subject-specific research question as well as the relevant laboratory inventory available for use during their projects. Armed with this information, student groups continued to work in their classroom setting to develop group-specific experimental plans. Teachers and Discovery instructors provided written and oral feedback, respectively , allowing students an opportunity to revise their plans in class prior to on-campus experimental execution.

Once at the relevant laboratory environment, student groups executed their protocols in an effort to collect experimental data. Data analysis was performed in the classroom and students learned by trial & error to optimize their protocols before returning to the university lab for a second opportunity of data collection. All methods and data were re-analyzed in class in order for students to create a scientific poster for the purpose of study/experience dissemination. During a final visit to campus, all groups presented their findings at a research symposium, allowing students to verbally defend their process, analyses, interpretations, and design recommendations to a diverse audience including peers, STEM teachers, undergraduate and graduate university students, postdoctoral fellows and U of T faculty.

Data collection

Teachers evaluated their students on the following associated deliverables: (i) global theme background research essay; (ii) experimental plan; (iii) progress report; (iv) final poster content and presentation; and (v) attendance. For research purposes, these grades were examined individually and also as a collective Discovery program grade for each student. For students consenting to participation in the research study, all Discovery grades were anonymized by the classroom teacher before being shared with study authors. Each student was assigned a code by the teacher for direct comparison of deliverable outcomes and survey responses. All instances of “Final course grade” represent the prorated course grade without the Discovery component, to prevent confounding of quantitative analyses.

Survey instruments were used to gain insight into student attitudes and perceptions of STEM and post-secondary study, as well as Discovery program experience and impact (S 4 Appendix ). High school teachers administered surveys in the classroom only to students supported by parental permission. Pre-program surveys were completed at minimum 1 week prior to program initiation each term and exit surveys were completed at maximum 2 weeks post- Discovery term completion. Surveys results were validated using a principal component analysis (S 1 Appendix , Supplementary Fig. 2 ).

Identification and comparison of population subsets

From initial analysis, we identified two student subpopulations of particular interest: students who performed ≥1 SD [18.0%] or greater in the collective Discovery components of the course compared to their final course grade (“EE”), and students who participated in Discovery more than once (“MT”). These groups were compared individually against the rest of the respective Discovery population (“non-EE” and “non-MT”, respectively ). Additionally, MT students who participated in three or four (the maximum observed) terms of Discovery were assessed for longitudinal changes to performance in their course and Discovery grades. Comparisons were made for all Discovery deliverables (introductory essay, client meeting, proposal, progress report, poster, and presentation), final Discovery grade, final course grade, Discovery attendance, and overall attendance.

Statistical analysis

Student course grades were analyzed in all instances without the Discovery contribution (calculated from all deliverable component grades and ranging from 10 to 15% of final course grade depending on class and year) to prevent correlation. Aggregate course grades and Discovery grades were first compared by paired t-test, matching each student’s course grade to their Discovery grade for the term. Student performance in Discovery ( N  = 268 instances of student participation, comprising 170 individual students that participated 1–4 times) was initially assessed in a linear regression of Discovery grade vs. final course grade. Trends in course and Discovery performance over time for students participating 3 or 4 terms ( N  = 16 and 3 individuals, respectively ) were also assessed by linear regression. For subpopulation analysis (EE and MT, N  = 99 instances from 81 individuals and 174 instances from 76 individuals, respectively ), each dataset was tested for normality using the D’Agostino and Pearson omnibus normality test. All subgroup comparisons vs. the remaining population were performed by Mann–Whitney U -test. Data are plotted as individual points with mean ± SEM overlaid (grades), or in histogram bins of 1 and 4 days, respectively , for Discovery and class attendance. Significance was set at α ≤ 0.05.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author DMK. These data are not publicly available due to privacy concerns of personal data according to the ethical research agreements supporting this study.

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Acknowledgements

This study has been possible due to the support of many University of Toronto trainee volunteers, including Genevieve Conant, Sherif Ramadan, Daniel Smieja, Rami Saab, Andrew Effat, Serena Mandla, Cindy Bui, Janice Wong, Dawn Bannerman, Allison Clement, Shouka Parvin Nejad, Nicolas Ivanov, Jose Cardenas, Huntley Chang, Romario Regeenes, Dr. Henrik Persson, Ali Mojdeh, Nhien Tran-Nguyen, Ileana Co, and Jonathan Rubianto. We further acknowledge the staff and administration of George Harvey Collegiate Institute and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME), as well as Benjamin Rocheleau and Madeleine Rocheleau for contributions to data collation. Discovery has grown with continued support of Dean Christopher Yip (Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, U of T), and the financial support of the IBME and the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) PromoScience program (PROSC 515876-2017; IBME “Igniting Youth Curiosity in STEM” initiative co-directed by DMK and Dr. Penney Gilbert). LDH and NIC were supported by Vanier Canada graduate scholarships from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and NSERC, respectively . DMK holds a Dean’s Emerging Innovation in Teaching Professorship in the Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science, U of T.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Locke Davenport Huyer, Neal I. Callaghan.

Authors and Affiliations

Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Locke Davenport Huyer, Neal I. Callaghan, Andrey I. Shukalyuk & Dawn M. Kilkenny

Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Locke Davenport Huyer

Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Neal I. Callaghan

George Harvey Collegiate Institute, Toronto District School Board, Toronto, ON, Canada

Sara Dicks, Edward Scherer & Margaret Jou

Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Dawn M. Kilkenny

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Contributions

LDH, NIC and DMK conceived the program structure, designed the study, and interpreted the data. LDH and NIC ideated programming, coordinated execution, and performed all data analysis. SD, ES, and MJ designed and assessed student deliverables, collected data, and anonymized data for assessment. SD assisted in data interpretation. AIS assisted in programming ideation and design. All authors provided feedback and approved the manuscript that was written by LDH, NIC and DMK.

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Correspondence to Dawn M. Kilkenny .

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Davenport Huyer, L., Callaghan, N.I., Dicks, S. et al. Enhancing senior high school student engagement and academic performance using an inclusive and scalable inquiry-based program. npj Sci. Learn. 5 , 17 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-020-00076-2

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Articles & Advice > Majors and Academics > Blog

Why and How You Can Get Into Research in High School

Conducting a research project in high school can give you a huge leg up on college applications. Here's why it's important and how to find opportunities.

by Stephen Turban Director, Lumiere Education

Last Updated: May 30, 2024

Originally Posted: Mar 9, 2022

As standardized tests are becoming optional for many major colleges and universities, admission teams are looking for new ways to distinguish between strong candidates. Qualitative opportunities like research projects have grown in popularity for students applying to college. These projects showcase passion and help provide proof of depth of a student’s abilities. Many students may be interested in doing research but often face the problem of how to get started. Where do you find research opportunities in high school? What should you look for? Here’s why research experience is so important for students and college admission, plus different ways to get into it.

Why do research in high school?

Research is becoming increasingly common for high school students. It’s a great way to explore areas of interest more deeply and develop academic passions—and not just in STEM fields. As a director of the Lumiere Research Scholar Program , I’ve seen students gain a truly world-class level of knowledge in fields they’re interested in through independent research. Students have investigated the strongest machine learning algorithm to detect cell nuclei, novel ways to detect ocean health in the high seas, and comparisons of 14 th -century Japanese and 19 th -century Impressionist art. In each project, students leave with a unique, deep understanding of the area they explored.

Research experience also has benefits when students apply to colleges and universities. In a recent survey of students who did research in high school, 99% of them used their experience in some way in the application for early admission. In addition, students who had done research were 26% more likely to be accepted to an Ivy League school for Early Action or Early Decision admission than the average applicant. As researchers, we want to be careful not to draw a causal link between these two. But what is true is that students who get into top schools are more likely to do research.

Related: Easy Ways to Find Research Experience in High School

How to find research opportunities

If research is so valuable, how do you find opportunities to do it? Unlike in college, where research universities often provide opportunities for students to get involved, high schools rarely provide chances for research in the curriculum—AP Research or the IB extended essay being notable exceptions. With this in mind, there are two main ways to get research experience in high school.

Research programs

Your first option is to find a research program designed for high school students. This could range from highly competitive national programs like MIT’s Research Science Institute to programs that are only available for local populations. There’s also been an increase in online research programs that provide opportunities for students to work with researchers, like this list of 24 research programs that are available this upcoming summer that students could consider. 

Cold-emailing professors and networking

Another way to pursue research is to try contacting a college faculty member directly. This can be a great way to find a research mentor and get involved in a project. If you have any connections to faculty members through family or your school, this is probably the most effective first step. This usually means there will already be some level of trust between the faculty member and you as the student, making it more likely for the researcher to take you on. If you don’t have any personal connections, try cold-emailing faculty members. To do this, you need to create an example email that shows why you’re interested in working with the faculty member and what you would add to the project. Here’s an example email to a professor who has done research on open offices:

Subject: Helping your research—Rock Bridge High School junior

Hi Professor Smith,

This is Stephen—a rising junior at Rock Bridge High School. I recently read your research paper on open offices in the Harvard Business Review , was fascinated, and wanted to reach out. Would you have 15 minutes to discuss how I could help your research?  

For a bit of background, I’ve spent the past three years working on my skills in Python and data analysis. I know that your research involves a lot of quantitative work, so I wanted to see if I could help out with that—or anything else that needs some work!

Long-term, I’m hoping to become researcher like you. So, I’d love the opportunity to work with a researcher that I admire like yourself!  

Yours, Stephen

The key here is to cast a wide net—you should try reaching out to at least 25 faculty members or PhD researchers—and show the value you can add to their work. Note how in this email I talk about how I have skills with Python that I could use to help Professor Smith’s research. I also try to draw a connection between him and myself by talking about my long-term ambitions to be a researcher. The key to email is keeping it short and to the point as well as making sure to follow up. Researchers are busy people, so they might miss your first email. Don’t be afraid to send a follow-up message. They’ll appreciate the persistence that shows!

Related: How to Write a Strong Professional Email People Will Read

How to showcase research experience on college applications

So let’s say you’ve done research—now what? How do you show it to potential schools? There are numerous ways to showcase your research in your college applications , from including it on your activities list to writing about it in some of your supplemental essays. In our most recent survey of Early Decision admits, we found that students who were accepted Early Decision and Early Action were 33% more likely to ask their research advisor for a letter of recommendation. The key is to make your research one data point in a broader story about you and your interests. It should connect to what you want to study and the other activities you’ve done. For example, one student who did research with us completed a project related to astrophysics. In her essay, she wrote about working as a stocker at a local grocery store and how some of these same astrophysics concepts related to the movement of customers in the store. The key is to make the research a proof point connected to other proof points of the type of student you are.

Does research need to be published to showcase?

A question I often get is whether you need to publish your research for colleges to take notice. The short answer is no—very few college students, much less high school students, will ever get their research published. There are some selective high school research publications you could consider. If a student gets published, it does give an added level of legitimacy to their research, but it’s certainly not necessary. The key is that the research process itself is rigorous and that you’re able to write about it clearly on your applications.

Related: Unique Ways to Stand Out on Your College Applications  

Research is hard but worthwhile. If you’re excited by a subject and would like to explore it more deeply, then research could be a great opportunity for you. It won’t be easy, and some papers can take years to finish!  But if you’re interested in it, you can join the emerging number of students who are doing research in high school!

Looking for research powerhouses to add to your college search? Check out our list of Excellent Research Universities   that are members of the American Association of Universities!

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About Stephen Turban

Stephen Turban is one of the founders of Lumiere Education  and a Harvard University graduate. He founded the Lumiere Research Scholar Program as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-on-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.

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• Aug 14, 2021

5 Reasons Why High School Students Should Research

Updated: Dec 31, 2021

For many students, research is something which is done by people who are scholars, professionals working in labs, scientists, and other researchers. Well, this is certainly not true! In today’s modern world, research plays a key role in ensuring that students are well aware of certain concepts and are interested in exploring the unexplored areas. Although there are a majority of students who are well-versed in research activity, they find it pretty interesting in experimenting with new things.

If you also want to be a pro at research and know its importance, here are some reasons that will amaze you-

It is fascinating: When high school students indulge in research activity, it makes them think differently on various topics with a new perspective. It enables students to think critically, enhance their problem-solving skills, and know more about the technical aspects of different fields.

It can set you apart: Many schools have started implementing blended learning where both teachers and students are equally involved. Teachers involve students in different activities which ultimately include research on various projects. Students get a chance to showcase their research skills by presenting case studies, giving presentations, and doing activities in an online class or physical classroom. Therefore, this approach can set students apart from other candidates.

It expands your knowledge: In high school, many students often get confused about courses, universities, and their future. However, if students have strong research skills, they can resolve their problems easily. The process of Research helps them in enhancing their thinking pattern and opens new opportunities for learning and implementing them in their life.

It gives you the latest information: Some students are born curious; they love to question everything they see or notice. Being inquisitive is a good sign and it shows that you have a habit of keeping up with the trend in any field that interests you. Research gives you a way to strengthen your knowledge, you get to know about what is being evolved, get accuracy of facts and the impact of external and internal factors. With the help of research, students can share their opinions or views while interacting with their friends, peers or groups.

It introduces new ideas: Ideas never come with a blink of an eye, it requires a proper knowledge and understanding of a specific topic. Students can generate ideas only if they have effective research skills. Good research skills are only possible when students read a lot, make notes, and can put their thoughts into it.

In conclusion, there are many advantages one can grab when it comes to research. If you’re a high school student and still haven’t thought about developing research skills, then you might want to look at these points. It will not only help you in developing your knowledge but makes you unique as an individual.

Got any queries? If you have any questions regarding profile building, choosing a career, universities, internships, student club, scholarships and much more, you can reach out to us at [email protected] . We would be happy to answer any queries you may have.

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Research Skills: What They Are and How They Benefit You

• Published May 23, 2024

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Research skills give you the ability to gather relevant information from different sources and analyse it critically in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of a subject. Thus, research skills are fundamental to academic success.

Developing these skills will improve your studies, helping you understand subjects better and positioning you for academic success.

That said, how can you develop important research skills? This will explore what research skills are, identify the core ones, and explain how you can develop them.

What Are Research Skills?

Research skills are a set of abilities that allow individuals to find and gather reliable information and then evaluate the information to find answers to questions.

Good research skills are important in academic settings, as finding and critically evaluating relevant information can help you gain a deeper understanding of a subject.

These skills are also important in professional and personal settings. When you graduate and are working in a professional capacity, you’ll often need to analyse sets of data to identify issues and determine how to solve them.

In personal contexts, you’ll always need to assess relevant information to make an informed decision. Whether you’re deciding on a major purchase, choosing a healthcare provider, or planning to make an investment, you’ll need to evaluate options to ensure better decision outcomes.

Different Types of Research Skills

Research skills are categorised into different sub-skills. The most common types are:

Quantitative Skills

Quantitative skills refer to the ability to work with numerical data and perform mathematical and statistical analyses to extract meaningful insights and draw conclusions. 

When you have quantitative skills, you’ll be able to apply mathematical concepts and operations in research design and data analysis. 

You’ll also be proficient in using statistical methods to analyse data and interpreting numerical data to draw meaningful conclusions. 

Analytical Skills

Analytical skills refer to the ability to gather data, evaluate it, and draw sound conclusions. When you have analytical skills, you’ll be able to systematically analyse information to reach a reasonable conclusion. 

Analytical skills are important in problem-solving. They help you to break down complex problems into more manageable components, think critically about the information at hand, analyse root causes, and develop effective solutions.

Qualitative Skills

Qualitative skills refer to the ability to collect, analyse, and interpret non-numerical data. When you have qualitative skills, you’ll be proficient in observation, interviewing, and other methods for collecting qualitative research data. 

You’ll also be able to analyse non-numerical data, such as documents and images, to identify themes, patterns, and meanings.

Research Skills Examples

The core research skills you need for success in academic, professional, and personal contexts include:

Data Collection

Data is at the centre of every research, as data is what you assess to find the answers you seek. Thus, research starts with collecting relevant data.

Depending on the research, there are two broad categories of data you can collect: primary and secondary.

Primary data is generated by the researcher, like data from interviews, observations, or experiments. Secondary data is pre-existing data obtained from different existing databases, like published literature, government reports, etc. 

Thus, data collection is more than gathering information from the Internet. Depending on the research, it can require more advanced skills for conducting experiments to generate your own data.

Source Evaluation

When doing research on any subject (especially when using the Internet), you’ll be amazed at the volume of information you’ll find. And a lot is pure garbage that can compromise your research work.

Thus, an important research skill is being able to dig through the garbage to get to the real facts. This is where source evaluation comes in!

Good research skills call for being able to identify biases, assess the authority of the author, and determine the accuracy of information before using it.

Time Management Skills

Have you ever felt that there is not enough time in a day for all that you need to do? When you already have so much to do, adding research can be overwhelming.

Good time management skills can help you find the time to do all you need to do, including relevant research work, making it an essential research skill.

Time management allows you to plan and manage your research project effectively. It includes breaking down research tasks into more manageable parts, setting priorities, and allocating time to the different stages of the research.

Communication Skills

Communication is an important aspect of every research, as it aids in data collection and sharing research findings. 

Important communication skills needed in research include active listening, active speaking, interviewing, report writing, data visualisation, and presentation, etc.

For example, when research involves collecting primary data via interviews, you must have sound speaking and listening skills. 

When you conclude the research and need to share findings, you’ll need to write a research report and present key findings in easy-to-understand formats like charts. 

Attention to Detail

Attention to detail is the ability to achieve thoroughness and accuracy when doing something. It requires focusing on every aspect of the tasks, even small ones. 

Anything you miss during your research will affect the quality of your research findings. Thus, the ability to pay close attention to details is an important research skill.

You need attention to detail at every stage of the research process. During data collection, it helps you ensure reliable data. 

During analysis, it reduces the risk of error to ensure your results are trustworthy. It also helps you express findings precisely to minimise ambiguity and facilitate understanding.

Note-Taking

Note-taking is exactly what it sounds like—writing down key information during the research process.

Remember that research involves sifting through and taking in a lot of information. It’s impossible to take in all the information and recall it from memory. This is where note-taking comes in!

Note-taking helps you capture key information, making it easier to remember and utilise for the research later. It also involves writing down where to look for important information.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to think rationally and synthesise information in a thoughtful way. It is an important skill needed in virtually all stages of the research process.

For example, when collecting data, you need critical thinking to assess the quality and relevance of data. It can help you identify gaps in data to formulate your research question and hypothesis. 

It can also help you to identify patterns and make reasonable connections when interpreting research findings.

Data Analysis

Data may not mean anything until you analyse it qualitatively or quantitatively (using techniques like Excel or SPSS). For this reason, data analysis analysis is an important research skill.

Researchers need to be able to build hypotheses and test these using appropriate research techniques. This helps to draw meaningful conclusions and gain a comprehensive understanding of research data.

Problem-Solving Skills

Research often involves addressing specific questions and solving problems. For this reason, problem-solving skills are important skills when conducting research. 

Problem-solving skills refer to the ability to identify, analyse, and solve problems effectively. 

With problem-solving skills, you’ll be able to assess a situation, consider various solutions, and choose the most appropriate course of action toward finding a solution.

Benefits of Research Skills

Research skills have many benefits, including:

Enhances Critical Thinking

Research skills and critical thinking are intertwined such that developing one enhances the other.

Research requires people to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, analyse information, and draw conclusions. These activities require you to think critically about the information at hand. Hence, engaging in research enhances critical thinking.

Develops Problem-Solving Skills

Research helps you acquire a set of critical skills that are directly transferable to problem-solving. 

For example, research fosters creative thinking, as it often requires synthesising data from different sources and connecting different concepts. After developing creative thinking via research, you can apply the skill to generate innovative solutions in problem-solving situations. 

Helps in Knowledge Acquisition

Engaging in research is a powerful way to acquire knowledge. Research involves exploring new ideas, and this helps you expand your breadth of knowledge.

It also involves applying research methods and methodologies. So, you’ll acquire knowledge about research methods, enhancing your ability to design and conduct studies in your higher education or professional life.

Why Are Research Skills Important?

Strong research skills offer numerous benefits, especially for students’ academic learning and development. 

When you develop good research skills, you’ll reap great academic rewards that include:

In-Depth Understanding

Conducting research allows you to delve deep into specific topics, helping you gain a thorough understanding of the subject matter beyond what is covered in standard coursework.

Critical Thinking Development

Research involves critical evaluation of information and making informed decisions. This builds your ability to think critically.

This skill will not only help you solve academic problems better, but it’s also crucial to your personal and professional growth.

Encouragement of Independent Learning

Research encourages independent learning. When you engage in research, you seek answers independently. You take the initiative to find, retrieve, and evaluate information relevant to your research.

That helps you develop self-directed study habits. You’ll be able to take ownership of your education and actively seek out information for a better understanding of the subject matter.

Intellectual Curiosity Development

Research skills encourage intellectual curiosity and a love of learning, as they’ll make you explore topics you find intriguing or important. Thus, you’ll be more motivated to explore topics beyond the scope of your coursework.

Enhanced Communication Skills

Research helps you build better interpersonal skills as well as report-writing skills.

Research helps you sharpen your communication skills when you interact with research subjects during data collection. Communicating research findings to an audience also helps sharpen your presentation skills or report writing skills.

Assistance in Career Preparation 

Many professions find people with good research skills. Whether you’ll pursue a career in academia, business, healthcare, or IT, being able to conduct research will make you a valuable asset.

So, researching skills for students prepares you for a successful career when you graduate.

Contribution to Personal Growth

Research also contributes to your personal growth. Know that research projects often come with setbacks, unexpected challenges, and moments of uncertainty. Navigating these difficulties helps you build resilience and confidence.

Acquisition of Time Management Skills

Research projects often come with deadlines. Such research projects force you to set goals, prioritise tasks, and manage your time effectively.

That helps you acquire important time management skills that you can use in other areas of academic life and your professional life when you graduate.

Ways to Improve Research Skills

The ways to improve your research skills involve a combination of learning and practice. 

You should consider enrolling in research-related programmes, learning to use data analysis tools, practising summarising and synthesising information from multiple sources, collaborating with more experienced researchers, and more. 

Looking to improve your research skills? Read our 11 ways to improve research skills article.

How Can I Learn Research Skills?

You can learn research skills using these simple three-point framework:

Clarifying the Objective

Start by articulating the purpose of your research. Identify the specific question you are trying to answer or the problem you are aiming to solve.

Then, determine the scope of your research to help you stay focused and avoid going after irrelevant information.

Cross-Referencing Sources

The next step is to search for existing research on the topic. Use academic databases, journals, books, and reputable online sources.

It’s important to compare information from multiple sources, taking note of consensus among studies and any conflicting findings. 

Also, check the credibility of each source by looking at the author’s expertise, information recency, and reputation of the publication’s outlet.

Organise the Research

Develop a note-taking system to document key findings as you search for existing research. Create a research outline, then arrange your ideas logically, ensuring that each section aligns with your research objective.

As you progress, be adaptable. Be open to refining your research plan as new understanding evolves.

Enrolling in online research programmes can also help you build strong research skills. These programmes combine subject study with academic research project development to help you hone the skills you need to succeed in higher education.

Immerse Education is a foremost provider of online research programmes.

Acquire Research Skills with Immerse Education 

Research skills are essential to academic success. They help you gain an in-depth understanding of subjects, enhance your critical thinking and problem-solving skills, improve your time management skills, and more. 

In addition to boosting you academically, they contribute to your personal growth and prepare you for a successful professional career.

Thankfully, you can learn research skills and reap these benefits. There are different ways to improve research skills, including enrolling in research-based programmes. This is why you need Immerse Education!

Immerse Education provides participants aged 13-18 with unparalleled educational experience. All our programmes are designed by tutors from top global universities and help prepare participants for future success.

Our online research programme expertly combines subject study with academic research projects to help you gain subject matter knowledge and the important research skills you need to succeed in higher education.  With one-on-one tutoring or group sessions from an expert academic from Oxford or Cambridge University and a flexible delivery mode, the programme is designed for you to succeed. Subsequently, enrolling in our accredited Online Research Programme will award students with 8 UCAS points upon completion.

Related Content

11 tips to improve your research skills for academic success.

• 1 Social Sciences Department, St. Monica's College of Education, Mampong, Ghana
• 2 Mampong Technical College of Education, Mampong, Ghana

The study examines senior high school students' understanding and attitudes toward information on their health in the Kumasi Metropolis. Multiple sampling techniques (convenient and simple random sampling techniques) were used in the study. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 391 respondents for the study. Frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the sociodemographic data. Again, the study used Pearson's correlation coefficient to show the degree of relationship between the level of knowledge of health information and attitudes toward seeking and sharing health information. The study found students' knowledge of the causes and symptoms of malaria, cholera, and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) to be appreciably high as a result of readings from textbooks and health professionals. Again, the study found that the students preferred sharing their health information with friends than their parents and schools' authorities. The study further found that the major sources of students' health information included health professionals and textbooks. Lastly, even though some of the students claimed internet sources to their health information, it was not a major source to the student body at large. The study recommends strong health systems on the campuses of senior high schools as they have become communities on their own as a result of the emergence of the free senior high school program. The monitored positive peer-counseling group should also be encouraged by the schools' management and by extension the counseling units for the students to share views on themselves, particularly on health issues where they deem fit.

Introduction

Information about health is very important if society wants its citizens to stay healthy. Information on health is data collected regarding a person's medical history that include signs and symptoms of disease, diagnoses, medical procedures, and outcomes ( 1 , 2 ). To ensure improved information on people's health, a health information system is introduced (Chen et al., 2018) ( 3 ). The goal of health information systems is to improve treatment for patients by having the most current patient's data available to every healthcare practitioner who treats this client ( 3 , 4 ). However, health information system is available only at healthcare facilities and accessed and used by health professionals for treatment.

It is, however, imperative to note that a patient's information on health can be viewed in two ways; either gathered individually or through a gathered data set of the population ( 5 , 6 ). Apart from information on health gotten directly from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health practitioners, it can be gotten from the internet, textbooks, and newsletters as well ( 7 , 8 ). However, not all the sources of information on health are credible. For instance, Hampton ( 8 ) indicated that people facing medical decisions often look beyond their physicians to social media, websites, videos, and mobile applications which do not proffer the needed remedy. It is further explained that these people who most often seek information on health from the internet have not experienced any positive change in their lives ( 8 – 10 ). This was confirmed by Keselman et al. ( 11 ) that most information on health on the internet is poor and not credible leading to more harm than good.

On the other hand, seeking information on health among the populace has brought some changes in the lives of people toward medical use and lifestyle due to increased understanding of health issues ( 12 – 14 ). McNicol ( 15 ) and Dutta-Bergman ( 16 ) explained that the current increase in consumer freedom to act in health care accompanied by the use of social media, websites, and mobile applications for information on health gathering has led to increasing interest of understanding the consumer health information. Osei-Assibey et al. ( 17 ) further noted that this act has led to increased adherence to medical prescriptions.

That notwithstanding, the youth have been deemed to be more vulnerable to information on health sourced from the social media and websites ( 18 , 19 ). Valle et al. further explained that senior high school students enter a critical transition and begin to become independent and responsible for their own health during high school years. Moreover, high school students are thought to be a vulnerable population in that they are exposed to all kinds of health risks ( 20 , 21 ). Common health risk among senior high school students (especially those in the boarding houses) includes skin rashes due to congestion in dormitory, malaria, and cholera due to unsanitary environment, and sexually transmitted diseases due to indiscriminate sex ( 22 ).

In view of this, more health education programs are organized from time to time by government agencies and non-governmental organizations for the students. The programs most often center on current diseases and infirmities and diseases that are more prevalent ( 13 , 17 , 23 – 25 ). However, despite these attempts, communicable diseases are prevalent in the senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis. This has raised concerns about students' understanding and attitudes toward seeking information on their health.

Again, despite the various attempts to increase knowledge on health among the students, understanding and attitudes among students toward some health issues are not positive. Ezeala-Adilkaibe et al. ( 26 ) revealed in South East Nigeria that the majority of students have poor knowledge, attitude, and practice of epilepsy. Brass et al. ( 27 ) added that students' knowledge about HIV or AIDS is inadequate and their attitudes were stigmatized. Meanwhile, Thanavanh et al. ( 2 ) noted that students with medium- and high-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding HIV or AIDS are likely to display a positive attitude toward people living with HIV.

In view of the importance of information on health among students, there have been several attempts to help senior high school students get more oriented with the information on their health. Thus, this study examines senior high school students' understanding and attitudes toward information on their health in the Kumasi Metropolis.

Materials and Methods

Research design.

This study was a cross-sectional study where primary data were collected from students in selected senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis. Based on the formulated research questions that the researchers wanted to answer and the nature of the study, the quantitative research design was most appropriate, hence its adoption in this study. The quantitative design helped the researcher to estimate the relationships between the variables understudy. Thus, in this study, the quantitative research design helped the researcher to determine the relationship among the level of knowledge and seeking and sharing health information among the students.

Study Population and Sampling Procedure

Students in senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis were the target population. The metropolis has a number of senior high schools, both near and far from the researchers. This study employed convenience sampling to sample the schools and students ( 28 ). The schools were selected based on proximity and the willingness of the schools' administration and individual students to participate. Based on these two criteria, five schools were sampled from the study area. The study considered proximity to be how the schools were closer to each other and to the researchers as well. The researchers choose 5 out of 21 senior high schools in the metropolis based on the assumption of similar characteristics of the students. The age range of senior high school students was between 15 and 18 years. This connotes homogenous adolescent characteristics for these students understudy; hence, the study's generalization is justified. The study admits that the heterogeneous socioeconomic background of students might have caused different perspectives about the problem understudy. However, since the students were all in the same schools facing virtually the same problems, such differences were not significant to be noticed.

Again, premised on the principle of anonymity and ethical consideration, the names of the schools have been withheld and classified them as Schools A, B, C, D, and E. It is imperative to note that Schools A and B were strictly boys' schools, C and D were strictly girls' schools whereas E was a mixed school (both boys and girls). These schools were chosen because they are considered as the elite schools with most of the best educational facilities for academic work in the study area. Again, as stated earlier, the researchers assumed that since the students were in their teens, their perspectives about their health information would not differ much. Based on the aforementioned assumptions, the schools were chosen for the study. The respective population of the sampled schools are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1 . Student population of sampled schools.

Aside the study sampling of the schools, the study sampled the students through convenience sampling. The criteria used here were “easy access to students” ( 29 ). This study realized four places where students could be found easily. First, in classrooms during the lesson; second, at dining hall during dining time; third, at the canteen during break time, and fourth, at school entrance both in the morning and after school. Among these four places, canteen during break time and at the entrance of dining hall after dining periods were most convenient due to time and activities of the students. The assumption for choosing these places was that at least, a student would be found at one of the venues at the time of data collection. The researchers first sought the consent of participants and assured them of strict confidentiality. The researchers then read and explained the questions to the participants before answers were required. Because the researchers had a fair knowledge about the exact number of sample size they were seeking to sample, they did not continue the data collection after accurately getting the exact number (391).

Sample Size Determination

The study employed Yamane ( 30 ) sample size determination formula in Equation (1) to compute the overall size for the study.

where: N signifies the population under study = 16523

e signifies the margin of error = 0.5

n signifies the sample size = 391

From the formula in Equation (1);

Therefore, the overall sample size for this study was 391. This study further used a proportionate stratified population sampling technique to determine the sample size for each school as shown in Table 2 .

Table 2 . Sample size for each student population of sampled schools.

Data Collection Instrument

Among the data collection instruments (questionnaire and interview guide), this study relied on the questionnaire to collect all primary data from the students. This study used a structured questionnaire because it helped the researcher to collect standardized data, and second to collect data at a cheaper administration cost ( 31 , 32 ). The questionnaire design has four sections. Section I focused on demographic data; Section II focused on the level of knowledge of health information; Section III focused on attitudes toward seeking health information; and Section IV on the attitudes toward sharing health information. All the questions contained in the questionnaire, except those under Section I (demographic data), were in the form of a five-point Likert scale.

Data Collection Procedures

This study collected all primary data between December 9, and December 13, 2020. The study sought permission from the headmasters or headmistresses of the selected senior high schools through an introductory letter obtained from St. Monica's College of Education. The researchers administered questionnaires in the selected schools by themselves. A strategy was devised to ensure a high response rate. This was achieved by encouraging all respondents to fill in the questionnaire in the presence of the researchers. This did not only ensure a high response rate but also offered the opportunity to clarify all misunderstandings surrounding some of the research questions.

The participation in the study was not compulsory but students willingly participated and gave out accurate data ( 33 , 34 ). The study informed the purpose of the study to all respondents and assured them strict confidentiality and anonymity. Before the actual data collection, this study ensured that the instrument used is valid and reliable. The researchers showed the research instruments to their colleagues who helped to restructure the questionnaire to be more consistent with the research objectives. For reliability, the researchers pre-tested the questionnaire at SIMMS Senior High School in the Kwabre East Municipality on 25 students. This was performed to ensure that errors in the questionnaire were corrected before actual administration.

Data Analysis

The data collected were analyzed with the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The data were cleaned and entered into Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 21.0. For the descriptive analysis, frequencies and percentages were used to analyze the data. For the inferential analysis, this study used Pearson's correlation coefficient to show the degree of relationship among the level of knowledge of health information and attitudes toward seeking and sharing information on health. In furtherance, data were presented as numbers and percentages for categorical variables.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Committee on Human Research, Publication, and Ethics of the School of Medical Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology/Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital with reference number CHRPE/AP/317/20. Again, all participants gave verbal consent for their participation in the study.

Results and Discussion

This section presents and discusses data collected from 391 students in Kumasi Metropolis concerning health information through questionnaire administration. The presentations and discussions of data were in accordance with the arrangement of research questions. The sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents were first presented and discussed to form the basis of discussions in this study.

Sociodemographic Characteristics of Respondents

This section talks about the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents. These characteristics included sex, class, and program of study of students understudy. The sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents (students) are shown in Table 3 .

Table 3 . Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents ( N = 391).

From Table 3 , out of 391 respondents, 213 (54.5%) were boys whereas 178 (45.5) were girls. Even though gender parity at the senior high schools has been attained in Ghana, male students dominated in the study as against their female counterparts. This may be attributed to the willingness of the male students to take part in the study at the time of data collection. The class distribution of the respondents is shown in Table 3 as 165 (42.2%) for Form 2 and the remaining 226 (57.8%) for Form 3. The number of the Form three (3) students increased because, at the time of the data collection, all the Form 3 students were in school. However, only the gold track Form one and two students were present. This explained why the number of students from Form two was relatively lower compared with the Form three students. The students from form one were not considered since they were new to the schools; hence, any information from them may be insignificant since it would not be a true reflection of information on their health and usage behavior of the students on campus.

In relation to program of study in senior high schools in Kumasi Metropolis, Table 3 shows that 90 (23.0%) of the respondents offered home economics, 75 (19.2%) offered business, 100 (25.6%) offered general arts, 80 (20.5%) offered visual arts, and 46 (11.7%) offered science. The study shows that majority of the students offered general arts and home economics. This may be because general arts and home economic courses are now the mostly considered courses in the admission into nurses training colleges and colleges of education in Ghana. As a result, most students who want to pursue nursing end up pursuing general arts and home economics. Moreover, most of the students have the notion that general arts and home economics are easy to pass and this influences most of the students to offer both.

Level of Knowledge on the Sign and Symptoms of Common Diseases

The study sought the respondents' knowledge on the symptoms and causes of some common diseases (malaria, cholera, and STIs) among the students. The responses were collected from the questionnaire and summarized in Table 4 .

Table 4 . Level of knowledge on the sign and symptoms of common diseases.

From Table 4 , out of 391 respondents, 76 (19.4%) noted a low level of knowledge, 125 (32.0%) expressed a high level of knowledge, and 190 (48.6%) indicated a very high level of knowledge on the cause of malaria among students in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study shows that most of the students in Kumasi Metropolis have a high level of knowledge on the causes of malaria. This is because malaria is one of the common diseases that affect most of the students in the study schools. In addition, Table 4 further shows that 74 (18.9%) of the respondents expressed a low level of knowledge, 140 (35.8%) noted a high level of knowledge, and 177 (45.3%) indicated a very high level of knowledge on the symptoms of malaria. Thus, the study revealed that the majority of the respondents had a high level of knowledge on the symptoms of malaria. The respondents gave some of the symptoms of malaria to include feeling hot and shivery, headaches, vomiting, muscle pains, diarrhea, and generally feeling unwell. They however added that some of the symptoms are often mild and can sometimes be difficult to identify as malaria.

Again, Table 4 shows that 90 (23.0%), 135 (34.5%), and 166 (42.5%) expressed low, high, and very high levels of knowledge on the cause of cholera, respectively. The study shows that majority of students in Kumasi Metropolis have a high level of knowledge on the causes of cholera. This may be as a result of the fact that most of the students asserted, that they had suffered from the disease since they came to the school. The results in Table 4 reveal that 85 (21.7%) expressed a low level of knowledge, 145 (37.1%) showed a high level of knowledge, and 161 (41.2%) indicated a very high level of knowledge on the symptoms of cholera among students in senior high schools in Kumasi Metropolis. The results show that majority of the students have more information and knowledge about the symptom of cholera.

Moreover, from Table 4 , out of 391 respondents, 78 (19.9%) noted a low level of knowledge, 165 (42.2%) indicated a high level of knowledge, and 148 (37.9%) expressed a very high level of knowledge about the causes of sexually transmitted infections (gonorrhea and syphilis). The study revealed that students in senior high schools in the Kumasi Metropolis have a high level of knowledge on the causes of STIs (gonorrhea and syphilis). Table 4 shows that 88 (22.5%) noted a low level of knowledge, 158 (40.4%) indicated a high level of knowledge, and 145 (37.1%) expressed a very high level of knowledge on the symptoms of STIs in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study revealed that most of the students in Kumasi Metropolis know the symptom of STIs. They however could not give more important symptoms of STIs.

Attitudes Toward Seeking Health Information

The section further sought to determine the attitudes of students toward seeking information on their health in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study asked the respondents to indicate how often they use any of the following sources to seek information on their health. The responses were collected from the questionnaire and summarized in Table 5 .

Table 5 . Attitudes toward seeking health information ( N = 391).

Results from Table 5 show that 90 (23.0%) noted rarely, 145 (37.1%) not often, 75 (19.2%) often, 43 (11.0%) very often, and 38 (9.7%) expressed extremely often that they seek information on their health using the internet. This shows that most of the students in Kumasi Metropolis do not use the internet to seek information on their health. Again, from Table 5 , the results show that 34 (8.7%), 54 (13.8%), 48 (12.3%), 130 (33.2%), and 125 (32.0%) noted rarely, not often, often, very often, and extremely often, respectively, that they seek information on their health from health professionals. This clearly shows that the majority (77.5%) of the respondents often seek information on their health from the health professionals.

Moreover, results in Table 5 show that 39 (10.0%) indicated rarely, 42 (10.7%) not often, 20 (5.1%) often, 120 (30.7%) very often, and 170 (43.5%) extremely often seek information on their health from their friends. This suggests that the majority (79.3%) of the respondents asserted that they seek information on their health from their friends. In addition, from Table 5 , 37 (9.5%), 32 (8.1%), 30 (7.7%), 168 (43.0%), and 124 (31.7) of the respondents noted rarely, not often, often, very often, and extremely often, respectively, that they seek information on their health from textbooks. The study reveals that most of the students in Kumasi Metropolis seek information on their health from their textbooks.

Last but not least, Table 5 shows that 165 (42.2%) noted rarely, 80 (20.4%) not often, 50 (12.8%) often, 55 (14.1%) very often, and 41 (10.5%) extremely often that they seek information on their health from newsletters. This suggests that the students in Kumasi Metropolis do not seek health information from newsletters.

Association Between Information Sources and Level of Health Knowledge

This study used the chi-square test to test for a statistical association between each source of information on their health and the level of knowledge on the same. The results have been illustrated in Table 6 .

Table 6 . Association between level of knowledge and sources of information on health.

From Table 6 , the study found a significant association between the level of knowledge of the causes of malaria and seeking health information from the internet (chi-square value = 15.456, p = 0.014), health professional (chi-square value = 20.354, p < 0.001), friends (chi-square value = 18.867; p < 0.001), and textbooks (chi-square value = 19.578, p < 0.001). That is, as the students seek information on their health from the internet, health professionals, friends, and textbooks, their level of knowledge on the causes of malaria is increased.

Further, Table 6 shows that there is significant association between the level of knowledge on the symptoms of malaria and seeking information on their health from the internet (chi-square value = 13.322, p = 0.012), health professionals (chi-square value = 19.689, p < 0.001), and textbooks (chi-square value = 18.795, p < 0.001) at 5% significant level. This shows that students' level of knowledge on the symptoms of malaria increases when they seek information on their health from the internet, health professional, and textbooks.

The analysis in Table 6 shows that there is significant association between the level of knowledge on the causes of cholera and seeking information on their health from the internet (chi-square value = 14.482, p = 0.022), health professional (chi-square value = 21.856; p < 0.001), and textbooks (chi-square value =14.533, p = 0.022). This shows that students' level of knowledge on the causes of cholera increases when they seek information on their health from the internet, health professional, and textbooks. Similarly, the level of knowledge on symptoms of cholera was significantly associated with seeking information on health from the internet, health professionals, and textbooks. Again, from Table 6 , there is a significant association between the level of knowledge of the causes of STIs and seeking information on their health from the internet (chi-square value = 22.259, p < 0.001), health professional (chi-square value = 23.523, p < 0.001), and textbooks (chi-square value = 18.120, p < 0.001). That is, the more the students seek information on their health from the internet, health professional, and textbooks, the higher their level of knowledge on the causes of STIs. Similarly, the level of knowledge on symptoms of STIs is significantly associated with seeking information on health from the internet, health professionals, textbooks, and newsletters.

Attitudes Toward Sharing Health Information

Again, this section sought to know the attitudes of students toward sharing information on their health. The researchers asked the respondents to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each of the following statements. The responses were collected from the questionnaire and summarized in Table 7 . This study further used the chi-square to test the significance of association between attitudes toward sharing information on their health and the characteristics of the respondents.

Table 7 . Attitudes toward sharing health information by students.

From Table 7 , out of 42 respondents who noted strongly disagree that they share information on their health with friends, 18 (42.9%) were boys and 24 (57.1%) were girls. From Table 7 , out of 38 respondents disagreed that they share information on their health with friends and of out this number, 22 (57.9%) were boys and 16 (42.1) were girls. Furthermore, out of 391 respondents, 25 of the respondents who expressed neutral that they share information on their health with friends 10 (40.0%) and 15 (60.0%) were boys and girls, respectively. Among the 184 of the respondents who agreed that they share information on their health with friends, 58 (31.5) were boys and 126 (68.5%) were girls. In addition, out of 102 respondents who noted strongly agree, 37 (36.3%) were – boys and 65 (63.7%) were girls. The study further reveals that there is a strong association between the sex of student and sharing information on their health with friends (chi-square value = 17.285, p < 0.001). Thus, the study ascertained that female students strongly share their information on health with friends than their male counterparts.

Table 7 further revealed that out of 42 respondents strongly disagreed that they share information on their health with friends, 16 (38.1%) were in Form two and 26 (61.9%) were in Form three. Out of 38 respondents who noted disagree, 18 (42.4%) were in Form two and 20 (52.6) were in Form three. From Table 7 , out of 25 respondents who expressed neutral, 14 (56.0%) were in Form two and 11 (40.0%) were in Form three, and out of 184 respondents who indicated agree, 65 (35.3%) were in Form two and 119 (64.7%) were in Form three. In Table 7 , out of 102 respondents who strongly agreed that they share information on their health with friends, 52 (51.0%) were in Form two and 50 (49.0%) were in Form three. The study also reveals that there is a significant association between the class of the student and sharing information on their health with friends (chi-square value = 19.258; p < 0.001). Thus, the study gives an indication that Form three students strongly share their information on health with friends than Form two students.

In furtherance, Table 7 shows that out of 105 respondents who strongly disagreed that they share information on their health with parents, 60 (57.1%) were boys and 45 (42.9%) were girls. From Table 7 , out of 58 respondents who noted disagree, 32 (55.2%) were boys and 26 (44.8) were girls; and out of 55 of the respondents who expressed neutral, 18 (32.7%) were boys whereas 37 (67.3%) were girls. As shown in Table 7 , out of 125 respondents who agreed, 50 (31.5%) were boys and 75 (68.5%) were girls. Again, out of 48 respondents who strongly agreed, 28 (58.3%) were boys and 20 (41.7%) were girls. The study reveals that there is a significant association between the sex of student and sharing information on their health with parents (chi-square value = 13.285, p = 0.004). Thus, the study gives an indication that female students share information on their health with their parents more than their male counterparts.

The results in Table 7 show that out of 105 respondents who strongly disagreed, 30 (28.6%) were in Form two and 75 (71.4%) were in Form three, and out of 58 respondents who noted disagree, 24 (41.4%) were in Form two and 34 (58.6%) were in Form three. From Table 7 , out of 55 respondents who expressed neutral, 14 (25.5%) were in Form two and 41 (75.5%) were in Form three; out of 125 respondents who agreed, 68 (54.4%) were in Form two and 57 (45.6%) were in Form three. Table 7 shows that out of 48 respondents who noted strongly agree that they share information on their health with parents, 29 (60.4%) were in Form two and 19 (39.6%) were in Form three. The study found no significant association between the class of the student and sharing information on their health with parents (chi-square value = 9.527, p = 0.069).

Furthermore, Table 7 shows that out of 44 respondents who strongly disagreed that they share their information on health with the health professionals, 26 (59.1%) were boys and 18 (40.9%) were girls. Again, out of 49 respondents who noted disagree, 22 (44.9%) were boys and 27 (51.1%) were girls, and out of 38 respondents who expressed neutral, 16 (42.1%) were boys and 22 (57.9%) were girls. In addition, out of 145 respondents who indicated agree, 70 (48.3%) were boys and 75 (51.7%) were girls; out of 115 respondents who noted strongly agree, 82 (71.3%) were boys and 33 (28.7%) were girls who expressed that they share their information on health with health professionals. The study reveals that there is a strong significant association between the sex of student and sharing information on their health with health professionals (chi-square value = 17.987, p = 0.015). The implication of this is that female students share their information on health with the health professionals more than their male counterparts.

The results in Table 7 further show that out of 44 respondents who strongly disagreed, 16 (36.4%) were in Form two and 28 (63.6%) were in Form three; out of 49 of the respondents who noted disagree, 20 (40.8%) were in Form two and 29 (59.1%) were in Form three; out of 38 of the respondents who expressed neutral, 14 (36.8%) were in Form two and 24 (63.2%) were in Form three; out of 145 of the respondents who indicated agree, 60 (41.4%) were in Form two and 85 (58.6%) were in Form three; and out of 115 respondents who noted strongly agree, 55 (47.8%) were in Form two and 60 (52.2%) were in Form three, who noted that they share information on their health with health professionals. The study reveals that there is a significant association between the class of the student and sharing information on their health with health professionals (chi-square = 19.527, p < 0.001). The senior students were found to share their health problems with the health professionals.

From Table 7 , out of 32 respondents who strongly disagreed that they share information on their health with school authorities, 18 (56.3%) were boys and 14 (43.8%) were girls; out of 52 of the respondents who noted disagree, 32 (61.5%) were boys and 20 (38.5) were girls; out of 42 of the respondents who expressed neutral, 24 (57.1%) were boys and 18 (42.9%) were girls. Again, from 155 of the respondents who indicated agree, 85 (54.8%) were boys and 70 (45.2%) were girls, and out of 110 respondents who noted strongly agree, 54 (49.1%) were boys and 56 (50.9%) were girls. The study did not find any significant association between the sex of students and sharing information on their health with school authorities (chi-square value = 16.231, p = 0.023).

Table 7 further revealed that out of 32 respondents who strongly disagreed for sharing information on their health with school authorities, 17 (53.1%) were in Form two and 15 (46.9%) were in Form three; from 52 of the respondents who noted disagree, 17 (32.7%) were in Form two and 35 (67.3%) were in Form three; out of 42 of the respondents who expressed neutral, 19 (44.5%) were in Form two and 23 (54.8%) were in Form three; from 155 of the respondents who indicated agree, 69 (44.5%) were in Form two and 86 (64.7%) were in Form three and out of 110 respondents who noted strongly agree, 43 (39.1%) were in Form two and 67 (60.9%) were in Form three. The study also reveals that there is a significant association between the class of students and sharing information on their health with school authorities (chi-square value = 18.258, p < 0.001). Thus, the study gives an indication that Form three students strongly share information on their health with school authorities than Form two students.

The study examines senior high school students' understanding and attitudes toward information on their health on campus in the Kumasi Metropolis. The study found that the students had fair knowledge about the causes and symptoms of malaria. This is not surprising as malaria is a staple disease in the tropical regions where the study area (Kumasi Metropolis) falls. In fact, according to the Ghana Health Service ( 13 ), malaria is the number one outpatient disease in Ghana which is likely to underpin the students' familiarity with the disease. Again, the students expressed enormous knowledge on the causes and symptoms of cholera. The students asserted that they experience an occasional outbreak of cholera on campus, particularly when they eat contaminated foods on campus. It is worthy to mention that the students' familiarity with the causes and symptoms of cholera may be as a result of the perennial outbreak of the cholera disease in the study areas. Some of the respondents attributed the outbreak of cholera to contaminated sources, foods and drinks sold by market vendors, heaped human waste, and undercooked food from the dining.

Again, the students showed fair knowledge about the causes and symptoms of the sexually transmitted diseases (gonorrhea and syphilis). The students' awareness about these diseases could be attributed to the fact that some aspects of these STIs are treated as part of their curriculum content at the junior high and senior school levels. Subjects such as integrated science and social studies contain some contents that bother on these diseases. Again, several adverts are run on radio and television concerning these diseases giving the students fair knowledge and understanding about the causes and symptoms of STIs (gonorrhea and syphilis). This is an indication that students in the metropolis have in-depth knowledge on the causes of STIs and this supports the study conducted by KHademian et al. ( 12 ), Waldman et al. ( 14 ), and Thanavanh et al. ( 2 ), which reveals that students have a high level of knowledge about the causes of STIs, particularly HIV or AIDS.

Moreover, the study found that most of the students in the Kumasi Metropolis do not use the internet to seek information on their health. This may be attributed to the reason that most of the schools do not have access to the internet in their respective schools and this impedes their accessibility to internet facilities to seek information on their health while on campus. Again, the students are not permitted to use phones in the school which further hinders their accessibility to the internet. However, the students who asserted that they seek information on their health from the internet claimed that they had high knowledge of their health. This contravenes the study of Hampton ( 8 ) that the people who most often seek information from the internet have not experienced any positive change in their lives.

On the other hand, the students were found to seek information on their health from health professionals in their schools. This is due to the fact that the selected schools are urban schools and have access to health facilities (sick bays) being operated by the health professionals on their campuses. This makes most of the students go to them to seek information concerning their health issues. This confirms a study by Chen et al. (2018) and Jordan et al. ( 3 ) that there is the need for health professionals to help and guide efforts by educating children and adults about their health information (issues) through more comprehensive tests. It is those health professionals who can detect one's health problems through a series of medical tests. The study further found that the students sought information on their health from their friends. The students expressed that they were comfortable in sharing information on their health with their friends because they believe their friends could keep the information to themselves without divulging it to a third party. Also, the students claimed that they incur costs when they consult the health professionals so they rather attend to their friends they perceive to be knowledgeable for help. However, they noted that the information they seek from their friends is sometimes not authentic.

In addition, the study found that the majority of the students do not seek information on their health from newsletters. This is because most of the students do not have access to newsletters on health while on campus. Even the library which was supposed to be a repository of these materials did not have them and the students barely sought information on their health for this source. However, the study found that the students sought information on their health from their textbooks. The students claimed that the information they seek are part of the things they learn in school. Such information includes the signs and symptoms of some common diseases such as malaria, STIs, and cholera. They further noted that they get some of the ways to treat certain diseases in their textbooks. Finally, the study found a strong association between the students' level of knowledge on the causes and symptoms of malaria, cholera, and STIs and the seeking information on their health from the internet, health professionals, and textbooks.

With respect to sharing information on their health by the students, the study found that most of the students in Kumasi Metropolis share their information with friends. The students claimed that their friends are always around them any time they are in need of help especially in schools and make them feel comfortable by sharing their information on health with them. They further asserted that they have confidence and trust in their friends that they will not share their information with a third party. The study further found a strong association between the sex of students and the sharing health information with friends. Female students were found more to be sharing information on their health with their friends than their male counterparts.

That notwithstanding, the study found that the students were hesitant in sharing information on their health with their parents. This may be attributed to the fact that most of the students are boarders in their respective schools, and as a result, they spend less time with their parents. It may also as a result of the bully nature of many Ghanaian parents. Because of the intimidating nature of some parents, the motherly or fatherly relationship between child and parents is marred, which culminates into students finding it difficult to share information on their health with their parents. This makes them keep information on their health to themselves as Sbaffi and Zhao ( 20 ) and Paterson (2010) noted that young people have a strong desire to be in control of their own record than sharing with intimidating parents.

However, the study reveals that the students in the Kumasi Metropolis share information on their health with the health professional in the school. The students asserted that they believe the health professionals keep the information confidential. This gives them some comfort and confidence to share information on their health with them. Again, it may also be attributed to the fact that the students believe in them to have the expertise to solve their health problems and therefore are willing to share information on their health with these professionals. This corroborates the study of Tran et al. ( 23 ), Ghana Health Service ( 13 ), and Teixeira et al. ( 35 ) that sharing information on their health with health professionals is hinged on their knowledge and their ability to keep the information confidential. Again, the sex of students was found to have a strong association with the sharing information on their health with health professionals. Female students were found to share information on their health with the health professionals more than their male counterparts. This may be precipitated by the Ghanaian culture where female students are mostly found to access health care whenever they fall sick as compared to their male counterparts who will keep their health problems to themselves.

Conclusion and Policy Implications

The study examined senior high school students' understanding and attitude toward health information access in schools. The findings of the study have brought to the fore pertinent health issues that have been neglected in the educational sector for many decades, particularly in many developing countries such as Ghana. The study found students' knowledge of the causes and symptoms of malaria, cholera, and STIs to be appreciably high as a result of readings from textbooks and health professionals. Again, the study found that the students preferred sharing their health information with friends than their parents, particularly the female students. Again, the study found that the students felt uncomfortable sharing their health information with the schools' authorities for fear of stigmatization. Finally, the study further posits a strong association between the students' level of knowledge on the causes and symptoms of malaria, cholera, and STIs and the seeking health information from the internet, health professionals, and textbooks.

Following from the findings, the study recommends that the counseling units in the senior high schools should have a health professional in their team who would provide clinical counseling services to the students. Monitored positive peer-counseling group (this is where students are electronically and/or manually put into micro-groups of three in addition to a counseling expert for them to share their personal problems they feel to share hinged on the principle of trust and confidentiality) should also be encouraged by the schools' management and by extension the counseling units for the students to share views on themselves, particularly on health issues where they deem fit. In this case, the counseling expert would be able to moderate the conversations of the students and give expert advice appropriately. The study further proposes that schools' management should institute a telemedicine program in the schools to well-inform the students on health matters to prevent abuse of health information. Finally, the study recommends a strong health system on the campuses of senior high schools as they have become communities on their own as a result of the emergence of the free senior high school program.

Limitations of the Study

Despite the innovative contributions of this study to the literature and policy of health information among students, certain limitations that might affect the generalizability and accuracy of findings were inevitable, particularly during the design and data collection phases of the study. Therefore, it is incumbent to note that the findings of this study should be interpreted in light of such limitations. For instance, given time and financial constraints, only five schools were selected for the study out of convenience. As a result, the extent to which the findings could be generalizable to other students elsewhere in Ghana may be limited. In furtherance, whereas longitudinal analysis may be desirable, this study employed a cross-sectional design as opposed to a longitudinal study. This may limit the determination of any causal and temporal relationships among the various outcomes and explanatory study variables. The findings should, therefore, be taken as associations rather than being causal. More so, in Ghana, age and certain health problems are often not openly reported owing to the associated stigma.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Committee on Human Research, Publication and Ethics of the School of Medical Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology/Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin. Written informed consent was obtained from the minor(s)' legal guardian/next of kin for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: senior high school, Kumasi Metropolis, malaria, cholera, information on health

Citation: Boateng S, Baah A, Boakye-Ansah D and Aboagye B (2022) Senior High School Students' Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Information on Their Health in the Kumasi Metropolis. Front. Public Health 9:752195. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.752195

Received: 03 August 2021; Accepted: 06 December 2021; Published: 13 January 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Boateng, Baah, Boakye-Ansah and Aboagye. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Simon Boateng, boateng.simon@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Analysis of the Writing Quality of Senior High School Students’ Research Introductions

Research introduction as a genre has been a fertile subject of inquiry in recent years. However, much of the research has focused primarily on the analysis of its generic structure, paying less attention to its other equally important elements . Hence, examining the quality of research introductions using multiple criteria, particularly among novice research writers, is pivotal in the field of second language (L2) academic writing in a secondary education context. This study was conducted to examine the writing quality of research introductions among senior high school (SHS) students and to further probe whether a significant difference existed in the students’ writing quality when grouped according to their chosen educational track. The data involved 60 research introductions collaboratively written and submitted as preliminary examination papers by SHS students in an online research writing course. Using a modified rubric from Tuyen et al. (2018), the research introductions were rated in terms of their content, organization, language use, mechanics, and citation, and were subjected to descriptive and inferential analyses. Triangulation using qualitative evidence was undertaken to illustrate the students’ actual writing quality. The results show that the overall writing quality of the students’ research introductions was poor, and there was a significant difference in their writing quality when they were grouped according to educational track. The results indicate a need for a more holistic theoretical framework on academic writing and a call for a genre-oriented approach to teaching academic writing in a secondary education context.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.23.5.12

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Explaining research performance: investigating the importance of motivation

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• Published: 23 May 2024
• Volume 4 , article number  105 , ( 2024 )

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• Silje Marie Svartefoss   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5072-1293 1   nAff4 ,
• Jens Jungblut 2 ,
• Dag W. Aksnes 1 ,
• Kristoffer Kolltveit 2 &
• Thed van Leeuwen 3  

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In this article, we study the motivation and performance of researchers. More specifically, we investigate what motivates researchers across different research fields and countries and how this motivation influences their research performance. The basis for our study is a large-N survey of economists, cardiologists, and physicists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. The analysis shows that researchers are primarily motivated by scientific curiosity and practical application and less so by career considerations. There are limited differences across fields and countries, suggesting that the mix of motivational aspects has a common academic core less influenced by disciplinary standards or different national environments. Linking motivational factors to research performance, through bibliometric data on publication productivity and citation impact, our data show that those driven by practical application aspects of motivation have a higher probability for high productivity. Being driven by career considerations also increases productivity but only to a certain extent before it starts having a detrimental effect.

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Introduction

Motivation and abilities are known to be as important factors in explaining employees’ job performance of employees (Van Iddekinge et al. 2018 ), and in the vast scientific literature on motivation, it is common to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors (Ryan and Deci 2000 ). In this context, path-breaking individuals are said to often be intrinsically motivated (Jindal-Snape and Snape 2006 ; Thomas and Nedeva 2012 ; Vallerand et al. 1992 ), and it has been found that the importance of these of types of motivations differs across occupations and career stages (Duarte and Lopes 2018 ).

In this article, we address the issue of motivation for one specific occupation, namely: researchers working at universities. Specifically, we investigate what motivates researchers across fields and countries (RQ1) and how this motivation is linked to their research performance (RQ2). The question of why people are motivated to do their jobs is interesting to address in an academic context, where work is usually harder to control, and individuals tend to have a lot of much freedom in structuring their work. Moreover, there have been indications that academics possess an especially high level of motivation for their tasks that is not driven by a search for external rewards but by an intrinsic satisfaction from academic work (Evans and Meyer 2003 ; Leslie 2002 ). At the same time, elements of researchers’ performance are measurable through indicators of their publication activity: their productivity through the number of outputs they produce and the impact of their research through the number of citations their publications receive (Aksnes and Sivertsen 2019 ; Wilsdon et al. 2015 ).

Elevating research performance is high on the agenda of many research organisations (Hazelkorn 2015 ). How such performance may be linked to individuals’ motivational aspects has received little attention. Thus, a better understanding of this interrelation may be relevant for developing institutional strategies to foster environments that promote high-quality research and research productivity.

Previous qualitative research has shown that scientists are mainly intrinsically motivated (Jindal-Snape and Snape 2006 ). Other survey-based contributions suggest that there can be differences in motivations across disciplines (Atta-Owusu and Fitjar 2021 ; Lam 2011 ). Furthermore, the performance of individual scientists has been shown to be highly skewed in terms of publication productivity and citation rates (Larivière et al. 2010 ; Ruiz-Castillo and Costas 2014 ). There is a large body of literature explaining these differences. Some focus on national and institutional funding schemes (Hammarfelt and de Rijcke 2015 ; Melguizo and Strober 2007 ) and others on the research environment, such as the presence of research groups and international collaboration (Jeong et al. 2014 ), while many studies address the role of academic rank, age, and gender (see e.g. Baccini et al. 2014 ; Rørstad and Aksnes 2015 ). Until recently, less emphasis has been placed on the impact of researchers’ motivation. Some studies have found that different types of motivations drive high levels of research performance (see e.g. Horodnic and Zaiţ 2015 ; Ryan and Berbegal-Mirabent 2016 ). However, researchers are only starting to understand how this internal drive relates to research performance.

While some of the prior research on the impact of motivation depends on self-reported research performance evaluations (Ryan 2014 ), the present article combines survey responses with actual bibliometric data. To investigate variation in research motivation across scientific fields and countries, we draw on a large-N survey of economists, cardiologists, and physicists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. To investigate how this motivation is linked to their research performance, we map the survey respondents’ publication and citation data from the Web of Science (WoS).

This article is organised as follows. First, we present relevant literature on research performance and motivation. Next, the scientific fields and countries are then presented before elaborating on our methodology. In the empirical analysis, we investigate variations in motivation across fields, gender, age, and academic position and then relate motivation to publications and citations as our two measures of research performance. In the concluding section, we discuss our findings and implications for national decision-makers and individual researchers.

Motivation and research performance

As noted above, the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation play an important role in the literature on motivation and performance. Here, intrinsic motivation refers to doing something for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. Extrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome (Ryan and Deci 2000 ).

Some studies have found that scientists are mainly intrinsically motivated (Jindal-Snape and Snape 2006 ; Lounsbury et al. 2012 ). Research interests, curiosity, and a desire to contribute to new knowledge are examples of such motivational factors. Intrinsic motives have also been shown to be crucial when people select research as a career choice (Roach and Sauermann 2010 ). Nevertheless, scientists are also motivated by extrinsic factors. Several European countries have adopted performance-based research funding systems (Zacharewicz et al. 2019 ). In these systems, researchers do not receive direct financial bonuses when they publish, although such practices may occur at local levels (Stephan et al. 2017 ). Therefore, extrinsic motivation for such researchers may include salary increases, peer recognitions, promotion, or expanded access to research resources (Lam 2011 ). According to Tien and Blackburn ( 1996 ), both types of motivations operate simultaneously, and their importance vary and may depend on the individual’s circumstances, personal situation, and values.

The extent to which different kinds of motivations play a role in scientists’ performance has been investigated in several studies. In these studies, bibliometric indicators based on the number of publications are typically used as outcome measures. Such indicators play a critical role in various contexts in the research system (Wilsdon et al. 2015 ), although it has also been pointed out that individuals can have different motivations to publish (Hangel and Schmidt-Pfister 2017 ).

Based on a survey of Romanian economics and business administration academics combined with bibliometric data, Horodnic and Zait ( 2015 ) found that intrinsic motivation was positively correlated with research productivity, while extrinsic motivation was negatively correlated. Their interpretations of the results are that researchers motivated by scientific interest are more productive, while researchers motivated by extrinsic forces will shift their focus to more financially profitable activities. Similarly, based on the observation that professors continue to publish even after they have been promoted to full professor, Finkelstein ( 1984 ) concluded that intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivational factors have a decisive role regarding the productivity of academics.

Drawing on a survey of 405 research scientists working in biological, chemical, and biomedical research departments in UK universities, Ryan ( 2014 ) found that (self-reported) variations in research performance can be explained by instrumental motivation based on financial incentives and internal motivation based on the individual’s view of themselves (traits, competencies, and values). In the study, instrumental motivation was found to have a negative impact on research performance: As the desire for financial rewards increase, the level of research performance decreases. In other words, researchers mainly motivated by money will be less productive and effective in their research. Contrarily, internal motivation was found to have a positive impact on research performance. This was explained by highlighting that researchers motivated by their self-concept set internal standards that become a reference point that reinforces perceptions of competency in their environments.

Nevertheless, it has also been argued that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for publishing are intertwined (Ma 2019 ). According to Tien and Blackburn ( 1996 ), research productivity is neither purely intrinsically nor purely extrinsically motivated. Publication activity is often a result of research, which may be intrinsically motivated or motivated by extrinsic factors such as a wish for promotion, where the number of publications is often a part of the assessment (Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menendez 2021 ; Tien 2000 , 2008 ).

The negative relationship between external/instrumental motivation and performance and the positive relationship between internal/self-concept motivation and performance are underlined by Ryan and Berbegal-Mirabent ( 2016 ). Drawing on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of a random sampling of 300 of the original respondents from Ryan ( 2014 ), they find that scientists working towards the standards and values they identify with, combined with a lack of concern for instrumental rewards, contribute to higher levels of research performance.

Based on the above, this article will address two research questions concerning different forms of motivation and the relationship between motivation and research performance.

How does the motivation of researchers vary across fields and countries?

How do different types of motivations affect research performance?

In this study, the roles of three different motivational factors are analysed. These are scientific curiosity, practical and societal applications, and career progress. The study aims to assess the role of these specific motivational factors and not the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction more generally. Of the three factors, scientific curiosity most strongly relates to intrinsic motivation; practical and societal applications also entail strong intrinsic aspects. On the other hand, career progress is linked to extrinsic motivation.

In addition to variation in researchers’ motivations by field and country, we consider differences in relation to age, position and gender. Additionally, when investigating how motivation relates to scientific performance we control for the influence of age, gender, country and funding. These are dimensions where differences might be found in motivational factors given that scientific performance, particularly publication productivity, has been shown to differ along these dimensions (Rørstad and Aksnes 2015 ).

Research context: three fields, five countries

To address the research question about potential differences across fields and countries, the study is based on a sample consisting of researchers in three different fields (cardiology, economics, and physics) and five countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK). Below, we describe this research context in greater detail.

The fields represent three different domains of science: medicine, social sciences, and the natural sciences, where different motivational factors may be at play. This means that the fields cover three main areas of scientific investigations: the understanding of the world, the functioning of the human body, and societies and their functions. The societal role and mission of the fields also differ. While a primary aim of cardiology research and practice is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease, physics research may drive technology advancements, which impacts society. Economics research may contribute to more effective use of limited resources and the management of people, businesses, markets, and governments. In addition, the fields also differ in publication patterns (Piro et al. 2013 ). The average number of publications per researcher is generally higher in cardiology and physics than in economics (Piro et al. 2013 ). Moreover, cardiologists and physicists mainly publish in international scientific journals (Moed 2005 ; Van Leeuwen 2013 ). In economics, researchers also tend to publish books, chapters, and articles in national languages, in addition to international journal articles (Aksnes and Sivertsen 2019 ; van Leeuwen et al. 2016 ).

We sampled the countries with a twofold aim. On the one hand, we wanted to have countries that are comparable so that differences in the development of the science systems, working conditions, or funding availability would not be too large. On the other hand, we also wanted to assure variation among the countries regarding these relevant framework conditions to ensure that our findings are not driven by a specific contextual condition.

The five countries in the study are all located in the northwestern part of Europe, with science systems that are foremost funded by block grant funding from the national governments (unlike, for example, the US, where research grants by national funding agencies are the most important funding mechanism) (Lepori et al. 2023 ).

In all five countries, the missions of the universities are composed of a blend of education, research, and outreach. Furthermore, the science systems in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands have a relatively strong orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon world in the sense that publishing in the national language still exists, but publishing in English in internationally oriented journals in which English is the language of publications is the norm (Kulczycki et al. 2018 ). These framework conditions ensure that those working in the five countries have somewhat similar missions to fulfil in their professions while also belonging to a common mainly Anglophone science system.

However, in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, research findings in some social sciences, law, and the humanities are still oriented on publishing in various languages. Hence, we avoided selecting the humanities field for this study due to a potential issue with cross-country comparability (Sivertsen 2019 ; Sivertsen and Van Leeuwen 2014 ; Van Leeuwen 2013 ).

Finally, the chosen countries vary regarding their level of university autonomy. When combining the scores for organisational, financial, staffing, and academic autonomy presented in the latest University Autonomy in Europe Scorecard presented by the European University Association (EUA), the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark have higher levels of autonomy compared to Norway and Sweden, with Swedish universities having less autonomy than their Norwegian counterparts (Pruvot et al. 2023 ). This variation is relevant for our study, as it ensures that our findings are not driven by response from a higher education system with especially high or low autonomy, which can influence the motivation and satisfaction of academics working in it (Daumiller et al. 2020 ).

Data and methods

The data used in this article are a combination of survey data and bibliometric data retrieved from the WoS. The WoS database was chosen for this study due to its comprehensive coverage of research literature across all disciplines, encompassing the three specific research areas under analysis. Additionally, the WoS database is well-suited for bibliometric analyses, offering citation counts essential for this study.

Two approaches were used to identify the sample for the survey. Initially, a bibliometric analysis of the WoS using journal categories (‘Cardiac & cardiovascular systems’, ‘Economics’, and ‘Physics’) enabled the identification of key institutions with a minimum number of publications within these journal categories. Following this, relevant organisational units and researchers within these units were identified through available information on the units’ webpages. Included were employees in relevant academic positions (tenured academic personnel, post-docs, and researchers, but not PhD students, adjunct positions, guest researchers, or administrative and technical personnel).

Second, based on the WoS data, people were added to this initial sample if they had a minimum number of publications within the field and belonged to any of the selected institutions, regardless of unit affiliation. For economics, the minimum was five publications within the selected period (2011–2016). For cardiology and physics, where the individual publication productivity is higher, the minimum was 10 publications within the same period. The selection of the minimum publication criteria was based on an analysis of publication outputs in these fields between 2011 and 2016. The thresholds were applied to include individuals who are more actively engaged in research while excluding those with more peripheral involvement. The higher thresholds for cardiology and physics reflect the greater frequency of publications (and co-authorship) observed in these fields.

The benefit of this dual-approach strategy to sampling is that we obtain a more comprehensive sample: the full scope of researchers within a unit and the full scope of researchers that publish within the relevant fields. Overall, 59% of the sample were identified through staff lists and 41% through the second step involving WoS data.

The survey data were collected through an online questionnaire first sent out in October 2017 and closed in December 2018. In this period, several reminders were sent to increase the response rate. Overall, the survey had a response rate of 26.1% ( N  = 2,587 replies). There were only minor variations in response rates between scientific fields; the variations were larger between countries. Tables  1 and 2 provide an overview of the response rate by country and field.

Operationalisation of motivation

Motivation was measured by a question in the survey asking respondents what motivates or inspires them to conduct research, of which three dimensions are analysed in the present paper. The two first answer categories were related to intrinsic motivation (‘Curiosity/scientific discovery/understanding the world’ and ‘Application/practical aims/creating a better society’). The third answer category was more related to extrinsic motivation (‘Progress in my career [e.g. tenure/permanent position, higher salary, more interesting/independent work]’). Appendix Table A1 displays the distribution of respondents and the mean value and standard deviation for each item.

These three different aspects of motivation do not measure the same phenomenon but seem to capture different aspects of motivation (see Pearson’s correlation coefficients in Appendix Table A2 ). There is no correlation between curiosity/scientific discovery, career progress, and practical application. However, there is a weak but significant positive correlation between career progress and practical application. These findings indicate that those motivated by career considerations to some degrees also are motivated by practical application.

In addition to investigating how researchers’ motivation varies by field and country, we consider the differences in relation to age, position and gender as well. Field of science differentiates between economics, cardiology, physics, and other fields. The country variables differentiate between the five countries. Age is a nine-category variable. The position variable differentiates between full professors, associate professors, and assistant professors. The gender variable has two categories (male or female). For descriptive statistics on these additional variables, see Appendix Table A3 .

Publication productivity and citation impact

To analyse the respondents’ bibliometric performance, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in-house WoS database was used. We identified the publication output of each respondent during 2011–2017 (limited to regular articles, reviews, and letters). For 16% of the respondents, no publications were identified in the database. These individuals had apparently not published in international journals covered by the database. However, in some cases, the lack of publications may be due to identification problems (e.g. change of names). Therefore, we decided not to include the latter respondents in the analysis.

Two main performance measures were calculated: publication productivity and citation impact. As an indicator of productivity, we counted the number of publications for each individual (as author or co-author) during the period. To analyse the citation impact, a composite measure using three different indicators was used: total number of citations (total citations counts for all articles they have contributed to during the period, counting citations up to and including 2017), normalised citation score (MNCS), and proportion of publications among the 10% most cited articles in their fields (Waltman and Schreiber 2013 ). Here, the MNCS is an indicator for which the citation count of each article is normalised by subject, article type, and year, where 1.00 corresponds to the world average (Waltman et al. 2011 ). Based on these data, averages for the total publication output of each respondent were calculated. By using three different indicators, we can avoid biases or limitations attached to each of them. For example, using the MNCS, a respondent with only one publication would appear as a high impact researcher if this article was highly cited. However, when considering the additional indicator, total citation counts, this individual would usually perform less well.

The bibliometric scores were skewedly distributed among the respondents. Rather than using the absolute numbers, in this paper, we have classified the respondents into three groups according to their scores on the indicators. Here, we have used percentile rank classes (tertiles). Percentile statistics are increasingly applied in bibliometrics (Bornmann et al. 2013 ; Waltman and Schreiber 2013 ) due to the presence of outliers and long tails, which characterise both productivity and citation distributions.

As the fields analysed have different publication patterns, the respondents within each field were ranked according to their scores on the indicators, and their percentile rank was determined. For the productivity measure, this means that there are three groups that are equal in terms of number of individuals included: 1: Low productivity (the group with the lowest publication numbers, 0–33 percentile), 2: Medium productivity (33–67 percentile), and 3: High productivity (67–100 percentile). For the citation impact measure, we conducted a similar percentile analysis for each of the three composite indicators. Then everyone was assigned to one of the three percentile groups based on their average score: 1: Low citation impact (the group with lowest citation impact, 0–33 percentile), 2: Medium citation impact (33–67 percentile), and 3: High citation impact (67–100 percentile), cf. Table  3 . Although it might be argued that the application of tertile groups rather than absolute numbers leads to a loss of information, the advantage is that the results are not influenced by extreme values and may be easier to interpret.

Via this approach, we can analyse the two important dimensions of the respondents’ performance. However, it should be noted that the WoS database does not cover the publication output of the fields equally. Generally, physics and cardiology are very well covered, while the coverage of economics is somewhat lower due to different publication practices (Aksnes and Sivertsen 2019 ). This problem is accounted for in our study by ranking the respondents in each field separately, as described above. In addition, not all respondents may have been active researchers during the entire 2011–2017 period, which we have not adjusted for. Despite these limitations, the analysis provides interesting information on the bibliometric performance of the respondents at an aggregated level.

Regression analysis

To analyse the relationship between motivation and performance, we apply multinomial logistic regression rather then ordered logistic regression because we assume that the odds for respondents belonging in each category of the dependent variables are not equal (Hilbe 2017 ). The implication of this choice of model is that the model tests the probability of respondents being in one category compared to another (Hilbe 2017 ). This means that a reference or baseline category must be selected for each of the dependent variables (productivity and citation impact). Furthermore, the coefficient estimates show how the probability of being in one of the other categories decreases or increases compared to being in the reference category.

For this analysis, we selected the medium performers as the reference or baseline category for both our dependent variables. This enables us to evaluate how the independent variables affect the probability of being in the low performers group compared to the medium performers and the high performers compared to the medium performers.

To evaluate model fit, we started with a baseline model where only types of motivations were included as independent variables. Subsequently, the additional variables were introduced into the model, and based on measures for model fit (Pseudo R 2 , -2LL, and Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)), we concluded that the model with all additional variables included provides the best fit to the data for both the dependent variables (see Appendix Tables A5 and A6 ). Additional control variables include age, gender, country, and funding. We include these variables as controls to obtain robust effects of motivation and not effects driven by other underlying factors. The type of funding was measured by variables where the respondent answered the following question: ‘How has your research been funded the last five years?’ The funding variable initially consisted of four categories: ‘No source’, ‘Minor source’, ‘Moderate source’, and ‘Major source’. In this analysis, we have combined ‘No source’ and ‘Minor source’ into one category (0) and ‘Moderate source’ and ‘Major source’ into another category (1). Descriptive statistics for the funding variables are available in Appendix Table A4 . We do not control for the influence of field due to how the scientific performance variables are operationalised, the field normalisation implies that there are no variations across fields. We also do not control for position, as this variable is highly correlated with age, and we are therefore unable to include these two variables in the same model.

The motivation of researchers

In the empirical analysis, we first investigate variation in motivation and then relate it to publications and citations as our two measures of research performance.

As Fig.  1 shows, the respondents are mainly driven by curiosity and the wish to make scientific discoveries. This is by far the most important motivation. Practical application is also an important source of motivation, while making career progress is not identified as being very important.

Motivation of researchers– percentage

As Table  4 shows, at the level of fields, there are no large differences, and the motivational profiles are relatively similar. However, physicists tend to view practical application as somewhat less important than cardiologists and economists. Moreover, career progress is emphasised most by economists. Furthermore, as table 5 shows, there are some differences in motivation between countries. For curiosity/scientific discovery and practical application, the variations across countries are minor, but researchers in Denmark tend to view career progress as somewhat more important than researchers in the other countries.

Furthermore, as table 6 shows, women seem to view practical application and career progress as a more important motivation than men; these differences are also significant. Similar gender disparities have also been reported in a previous study (Zhang et al. 2021 ).

There are also some differences in motivation across the additional variables worth mentioning, as Table  7 shows. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there is a significant moderate negative correlation between age, position, and career progress. This means that the importance of career progress as a motivation seems to decrease with increased age or a move up the position hierarchy.

In the second part of the analysis, we relate motivation to research performance. We first investigate publications and productivity using the percentile groups. Here, we present the results we use using predicted probabilities because they are more easily interpretable than coefficient estimates. For the model with productivity percentile groups as the dependent variable, the estimates for career progress were negative when comparing the medium productivity group to the high productivity group and the medium productivity group to the low productivity group. This result indicates that the probability of being in the high and low productivity groups decreases compared to the medium productivity group as the value of career progress increases, which may point towards a curvilinear relationship between the variables. A similar pattern was also found in the model with the citation impact group as the dependent variable, although it was not as apparent.

As a result of this apparent curvilinear relationship, we included quadric terms for career progress in both models, and these were significant. Likelihood ratio tests also show that the models with quadric terms included have a significant better fit to the data. Furthermore, the AIC was also lower for these models compared to the initial models where quadric terms were not included (see Appendix Tables A5 – A7 ). Consequently, we base our results on these models, which can be found in Appendix Table A7 . Due to a low number of respondents in the low categories of the scientific curiosity/discovery variable, we also combined the first three values into one to include it as a variable in the regression analysis, which results in a reduced three-value variable for scientific curiosity/discovery.

Results– productivity percentile group

Using the productivity percentile group as the dependent variable, we find that the motivational aspects of practical application and career progress have a significant effect on the probability of being in the low, medium, or high productivity group but not curiosity/scientific discovery. In Figs.  2 and 3 , each line represents the probability of being in each group across the scale of each motivational aspect.

Predicted probability for being in each of the productivity groups according to the value on the ‘practical application’ variable

Predicted probability of being in the low and high productivity groups according to the value on the ‘progress in my career’ variable

Figure  2 shows that at low values of application, there are no significant differences between the probability of being in either of the groups. However, from around value 3 of application, the differences between the probability of being in each group increases, and these are also significant. As a result, we concluded that high scores on practical application is related to increased probability of being in the high productivity group.

In Fig.  3 , we excluded the medium productivity group from the figure because there are no significant differences between this group and the high and low productivity group. Nevertheless, we found significant differences between the low productivity and the high productivity group. Since we added a quadric term for career progress, the two lines in Fig.  3 have a curvilinear shape. Figure  3 shows that there are only significant differences between the probability of being in the low or high productivity group at mid and high values of career progress. In addition, the probability of being in the high productivity group is at its highest value at mid values of career progress. This indicates that being motivated by career progress increases the probability of being in the high productivity group but only up to a certain point before it begins to have a negative effect on the probability of being in this group.

We also included age and gender as variables in the model, and Figs.  4 and 5 show the results. Figure  4 shows that age especially impacts the probability of being in the high productivity and low productivity groups. The lowest age category (< 30–34 years) has the highest probability for being in the low productivity group, while from the mid age category (50 years and above), the probability is highest for being in the high productivity group. This means that increased age is related to an increased probability of high productivity. The variable controlling for the effect of funding also showed some significant results (see Appendix Table A7 ). The most relevant finding is that receiving competitive grants from external public sources had a very strong and significant positive effect on being in the high productivity group and a medium-sized significant negative effect on being in the low productivity group. This shows that receiving external funding in the form of competitive grants has a strong effect on productivity.

Predicted probability of being in each of the productivity groups according to age

Figure  5 shows that there is a difference between male and female respondents. For females, there are no differences in the probability of being in either of the groups, while males have a higher probability of being in the high productivity group compared to the medium and low productivity groups.

Results– citation impact group

For the citation impact group as the dependent variable, we found that career progress has a significant effect on the probability of being in the low citation impact group or the high citation group but not curiosity/scientific discovery or practical application. Figure  6 shows how the probability of being in the high citation impact group increases as the value on career progress increases and is higher than that of being in the low citation impact group, but only up to a certain point. This indicates that career progress increases the probability of being in the high citation impact group to some degree but that too high values are not beneficial for high citation impact. However, it should also be noted that the effect of career progress is weak and that it is difficult to conclude on how very low or very high values of career progress affect the probability of being in the two groups.

Predicted probability for being in each of the citation impact groups according to the value on the ‘progress in my career’ variable

We also included age and gender as variables in the model, and we found a similar pattern as in the model with productivity percentile group as the dependent variable. However, the relationship between the variables is weaker in this model with the citation impact group as the dependent variable. Figure  7 shows that the probability of being in the high citation impact group increases with age, but there is no significant difference between the probability of being in the high citation impact group and the medium citation impact group. We only see significant differences when each of these groups is compared to the low citation impact group. In addition, the increase in probability is more moderate in this model.

Predicted probability of being in each of the citation impact groups according to age

Figure  8 shows that there are differences between male and female respondents. Male respondents have a significant higher probability of being in the medium or high citation impact group compared to the low citation impact group, but there is no significant difference in the probability between the high and medium citation impact groups. For female respondents, there are no significant differences. Similarly, for age, the effect also seems to be more moderate in this model compared to the model with productivity percentile groups as the dependent variable. In addition, the effect of funding sources is more moderate on citation impact compared to productivity (see Appendix Table A7 ). Competitive grants from external public sources still have the most relevant effect, but the effect size and level of significance is lower than for the model where productivity groups are the dependent variable. Respondents who received a large amount of external funding through competitive grants are more likely to be highly cited, but the effect size is much smaller, and the result is only significant at p  < 0.1. Those who do not receive much funding from this source are more likely to be in the low impact group. Here, the effect size is large, and the coefficient is highly significant.

Predicted probability for being in each of the citation impact groups according to gender

Concluding discussion

This article aimed to explore researchers’ motivations and investigate the impact of motivation on research performance. By addressing these issues across several fields and countries, we provided new evidence on the motivation and performance of researchers.

Most researchers in our large-N survey found curiosity/scientific discovery to be a crucial motivational factor, with practical application being the second most supported aspect. Only a smaller number of respondents saw career progress as an important inspiration to conduct their research. This supports the notion that researchers are mainly motivated by core aspects of academic work such as curiosity, discoveries, and practical application of their knowledge and less so by personal gains (see Evans and Meyer 2003 ). Therefore, our results align with earlier research on motivation. In their interview study of scientists working at a government research institute in the UK, Jindal-Snape and Snape ( 2006 ) found that the scientists were typically motivated by the ability to conduct high quality, curiosity-driven research and de-motivated by the lack of feedback from management, difficulty in collaborating with colleagues, and constant review and change. Salaries, incentive schemes, and prospects for promotion were not considered a motivator for most scientists. Kivistö and colleagues ( 2017 ) also observed similar patterns in more recent survey data from Finnish academics.

As noted in the introduction, the issue of motivation has often been analysed in the literature using the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction. In our study, we have not applied these concepts directly. However, it is clear that the curiosity/scientific discovery item should be considered a type of intrinsic motivation, as it involves performing the activity for its inherent satisfaction. Moreover, the practical application item should probably be considered mainly intrinsic, as it involves creating a better society (for others) without primarily focusing on gains for oneself. The career progress item explicitly mentions personal gains such as position and higher salary and is, therefore, a type of extrinsic motivation. This means that our results support the notion that there are very strong elements of intrinsic motivation among researchers (Jindal-Snape and Snape 2006 ).

When analysing the three aspects of motivation, we found some differences. Physicists tend to view practical application as less important than researchers in the two other fields, while career progress was most emphasised by economists. Regarding country differences, our data suggest that career progress is most important for researchers in Denmark. Nevertheless, given the limited effect sizes, the overall picture is that motivational factors seem to be relatively similar regarding disciplinary and country dimensions.

Regarding gender aspects of motivation, our data show that women seem to view practical application and career progress as more important than men. One explanation for this could be the continued gender differences in academic careers, which tend to disadvantage women, thus creating a greater incentive for female scholars to focus on and be motivated by career progress aspects (Huang et al. 2020 ; Lerchenmueller and Sorenson 2018 ). Unsurprisingly, respondents’ age and academic position influenced the importance of different aspects of motivation, especially regarding career progress. Here, increased age and moving up the positional hierarchy are linked to a decrease in importance. This highlights that older academics and those in more senior positions drew more motivation from other sources that are not directly linked to their personal career gains. This can probably be explained by the academic career ladder plateauing at a certain point in time, as there are often no additional titles and very limited recognition beyond becoming a full professor. Finally, the type of funding that scholars received also had an influence on their productivity and, to a certain extent, citation impact.

Overall, there is little support that researchers across various fields and countries are very different when it comes to their motivation for conducting research. Rather, there seems to be a strong common core of academic motivation that varies mainly by gender and age/position. Rather than talking about researchers’ motivation per se, our study, therefore, suggests that one should talk about motivation across gender, at different stages of the career, and, to a certain degree, in different fields. Thus, motivation seems to be a multi-faceted construct, and the importance of different aspects of motivation vary between different groups.

In the second step of our analysis, we linked motivation to performance. Here, we focused on both scientific productivity and citation impact. Regarding the former, our data show that both practical application and career progress have a significant effect on productivity. The relationship between practical application aspects and productivity is linear, meaning that those who indicate that this aspect of motivation is very important to them have a higher probability of being in the high productivity group. The relationship between career aspects of motivation and productivity is curve linear, and we found only significant differences between the high and low productivity groups at mid and high values of the motivation scale. This indicates that being more motivated by career progress increases productivity but only to a certain extent before it starts having a detrimental effect. A common assumption has been that intrinsic motivation has a positive and instrumental effect and extrinsic motivation has a negative effect on the performance of scientists (Peng and Gao 2019 ; Ryan and Berbegal-Mirabent 2016 ). Our results do not generally support this, as motives related to career progress are positively linked with productivity only to a certain point. Possibly, this can be explained by the fact that the number of publications is often especially important in the context of recruitment and promotion (Langfeldt et al. 2021 ; Reymert et al. 2021 ). Thus, it will be beneficial from a scientific career perspective to have many publications when trying to get hired or promoted.

Regarding citation impact, our analysis highlights that only the career aspects of motivation have a significant effect. Similar to the results regarding productivity, being more motivated by career progress increases the probability of being in the high citation impact group, but only to a certain value when the difference stops being significant. It needs to be pointed out that the effect strength is weaker than in the analysis that focused on productivity. Thus, these results should be treated with greater caution.

Overall, our results shed light on some important aspects regarding the motivation of academics and how this translates into research performance. Regarding our first research question, it seems to be the case that there is not one type of motivation but rather different contextual mixes of motivational aspects that are strongly driven by gender and the academic position/age. We found only limited effects of research fields and even less pronounced country effects, suggesting that while situational, the mix of motivational aspects also has a common academic core that is less influenced by different national environments or disciplinary standards. Regarding our second research question, our results challenge the common assumption that intrinsic motivation has a positive effect and extrinsic motivation has a negative effect on the performance of scientists. Instead, we show that motives related to career are positively linked to productivity at least to a certain point. Our analysis regarding citation patterns achieved similar results. Combined with the finding regarding the importance of current academic position and age for specific patterns of motivation, it could be argued that the fact that the number of publications is often used as a measurement in recruitment and promotion makes academics that are more driven by career aspects publish more, as this is perceived as a necessary condition for success.

Our study has a clear focus on the research side of academic work. However, most academics do both teaching and research, which raises the question of how far our results can also inform our knowledge regarding the motivation for teaching. On the one hand, previous studies have highlighted that intrinsic motivation is also of high importance for the quality of teaching (see e.g. Wilkesmann and Lauer 2020 ), which fits well with our findings. At the same time, the literature also highlights persistent goal conflicts of academics (see e.g. Daumiller et al. 2020 ), given that extra time devoted to teaching often comes at the costs of publications and research. Given that other findings in the literature show that research performance continues to be of higher importance than teaching in academic hiring processes (Reymert et al. 2021 ), the interplay between research performance, teaching performance, and different types of motivation is most likely more complicated and demands further investigation.

While offering several relevant insights, our study still comes with certain limitations that must be considered. First, motivation is a complex construct. Thus, there are many ways one could operationalise it, and not one specific understanding so far seems to have emerged as best practice. Therefore, our approach to operationalisation and measurement should be seen as an addition to this broader field of measurement approaches, and we do not claim that this is the only sensible way of doing it. Second, we rely on self-reported survey data to measure the different aspects of motivation in our study. This means that aspects such as social desirability could influence how far academics claim to be motivated by certain aspects. For example, claiming to be mainly motivated by personal career gains may be considered a dubious motive among academics.

With respect to the bibliometric analyses, it is important to realise that we have lumped researchers into categories, thereby ‘smoothening’ the individual performances into group performances under the various variables. This has an effect that some extraordinary scores might have become invisible in our study, which might have been interesting to analyse separately, throwing light on the relationships we studied. However, breaking the material down to the lower level of analysis of individual researchers also comes with a limitation, namely that at the level of the individual academic, bibliometrics tend to become quite sensitive for the underlying numbers, which in itself is then hampered by the coverage of the database used, the publishing cultures in various countries and fields, and the age and position of the individuals. Therefore, the level of the individual academic has not been analysed in our study, how interesting and promising outcomes might have been. even though we acknowledge that such a study could yield interesting results.

Finally, our sample is drawn from northwestern European countries and a limited set of disciplines. We would argue that we have sufficient variation in countries and disciplines to make the results relevant for a broader audience context. While our results show rather small country or discipline differences, we are aware that there might be country- or discipline-specific effects that we cannot capture due to the sampling approach we used. Moreover, as we had to balance sufficient variation in framework conditions with the comparability of cases, the geographical generalisation of our results has limitations.

This article investigated what motivates researchers across different research fields and countries and how this motivation influences their research performance. The analysis showed that the researchers are mainly motivated by scientific curiosity and practical application and less so by career considerations. Furthermore, the analysis shows that researchers driven by practical application aspects of motivation have a higher probability of high productivity. Being driven by career considerations also increases productivity but only to a certain extent before it starts having a detrimental effect.

The article is based on a large-N survey of economists, cardiologists, and physicists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. Building on this study, future research should expand the scope and study the relationship between motivation and productivity as well as citation impact in a broader disciplinary and geographical context. In addition, we encourage studies that develop and validate our measurement and operationalisation of aspects of researchers’ motivation.

Finally, a long-term panel study design that follows respondents throughout their academic careers and investigates how far their motivational patterns shift over time would allow for more fine-grained analysis and thereby a richer understanding of the important relationship between motivation and performance in academia.

Data availability

The data set for this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the R-QUEST team for input and comments to the paper.

The authors disclosed the receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Research Council Norway (RCN) [grant number 256223] (R-QUEST).

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Silje Marie Svartefoss

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Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU), Økernveien 9, 0608, Oslo, Norway

Silje Marie Svartefoss & Dag W. Aksnes

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, 0315, Oslo, Norway

Jens Jungblut & Kristoffer Kolltveit

Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, 2311, Leiden, The Netherlands

Thed van Leeuwen

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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Silje Marie Svartefoss, Jens Jungblut, Dag W. Aksnes, Kristoffer Kolltveit, and Thed van Leeuwen. The first draft of the manuscript was written by all authors in collaboration, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Svartefoss, S.M., Jungblut, J., Aksnes, D.W. et al. Explaining research performance: investigating the importance of motivation. SN Soc Sci 4 , 105 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-024-00895-9

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ʻIolani student wins top science prize for Kāneʻohe Bay turtle research

ʻIolani School senior Maddux Springer graduates Saturday with $10,000 in his pocket. He won an award for his study of the relationship between high wastewater levels and fatal tumors in green sea turtles in Kāneʻohe Bay.

"So essentially, I was finding an association between wastewater and fibropapillomatosis through the pathway of wastewater to algae, algae to invasive algae, invasive algae to higher levels of arginine stored in their tissue, and higher levels of arginine consumed by the green sea turtles that eat these higher levels of invasive algae," he said.

His research was awarded the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles. Springer also won first place in the animal science category after competing alongside nearly 2,000 global entries.

"I was really excited because I knew that at that moment that the turtles, they're going to get the awareness that they really need in order to improve as a species, in order for their mortality rate to decrease, in order for them to be able to perpetuate into the future," Springer told HPR.

He said he wants to spread awareness of this issue and plans to share his findings with Gov. Josh Green.

Springer plans to attend the University of Oregon.

This interview aired on  The Conversation  on May 29, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.