Understanding factors that motivate research performance and career longevity of science, technology, engineering and mathematics postgraduates

Abstract

Given the high investments in training and mentoring graduates who have chosen the research career path, and considering a high attrition of these graduates moving on to non-research type of careers, it is important to understand the factors that motivate young scientists to stay on the job as they could make important contributions to a better world with their scientific endeavours. It is in this context that we conducted an exploratory study to understand the factors that may drive the scientists' performance as well as their expectations to remain in the research career paths. We found evidence for an indirect link (through research commitment) between need-for-cognition and career performance as well as evidence of an effect of research commitment on the anticipated research career length. There was also evidence that continuance commitment (but not other extrinsic factors) affects anticipated research career length, and that organisational support is linked to perceived research performance. Implications of our findings for student selection and graduate mentoring are discussed. Practice Highlights Research commitment and organisational support are predictors of perceived research performance.  Research commitment and continuance commitment are predictors of anticipated research career length.  Develop intellectually stimulating curriculum and work tasks to promote research motivation and innovations.  Develop holistic curriculum to include knowledge management and domain expertise in graduate education.  Encourage STEM employers to create more attractive careers and conducive workplace culture and conditions.

Research in Pesantren-based Higher Education: Exploring The Factors Improving Lecture's Research Performace

“…Numerous other studies also explored individual attributes related to research performance. For instance, several of them were found to specifically review attitudes and personality (Pouratashi & Zamani, 2017;Gunawan, 2020;Fukuzawa, 2014), academic age and level (Abramo, D'Angelo, & Murgia, 2016), motivational attributes (Tan et al, 2020;Ringelhan et al, 2013;Zhang, 2014), academic achievement (Ramesh et al, 2017), academic preferences (Zhao, 2017), and individual competence (Devi & Tjahjadi, 2020;Roman, 2021). In addition, several other studies attempted to investigate the resource factor in particular.…”

Scientist organizational identity orientations

“…Interestingly, the literature review also showed that research on the perspective of the scientific environment in the context of identity and motivational problems is conducted in medical science. Analyzes of the medical community concern, for example, research work and the possibility of creating research by scientists related to a favorable work environment and the need for results (Tan et al, 2020, Ommering et al, 2018. Research conducted among physician-scientists focuses on research success issues in the context of professional identification or shaping professional identity (Cianciolo et al 2020).…”