University Incidence on Attitudes towards Research: Adaptation of a Brief Instrument

Abstract

The study's objective is to adapt a brief instrument that measures university incidence in the attitudes of graduate students towards research. This project is the initial phase of other investigation that aims to examine self-efficacy to investigate and its relationship with other academic variables in a sample of graduate students from Puerto Rico. As a basis for the short version, two factors from the Attitude towards Research Index were used. Three hundred eight university students in graduate school (master's and doctorate) participated. The exploratory factor analysis reflected a solution of two factors that explained 66.38% of the variance. The factors were Professor Incidence (5 items) and Institutional Incidence (5 items). For factor 1, Professor Incidence, the discrimination indices of the items fluctuated between .52 to .76, obtaining a Cronbach's alpha of .84. For Factor 2, Institutional Incidence, the item discrimination ranged from .62 to .80, achieving a Cronbach's alpha of .88. These results suggest that the scale can measure this construct in Puerto Rico, and its use is recommended in future research.