A Survey Of Kurdistan University Postgraguate Students’ Attitudes To Research And Its Relationship With Their Research Self-Effecacy

The main purpose of this study was to determine students' attitudes towards re-search and its relation to their beliefs on the self-efficiency of research. A descriptive research method was applied using a survey of 260 Kurdistan university graduate students who were selected by stratified sampling technique. Two questionnaires on their attitude towards research and self-efficacy were administered as the research tools. By conducting a pilot study the validity and reliability of the questionnaires was confirmed. Results showed that female students are less concerned about the difficulties of research than their male counterparts. Moreover, the most positive attitudes towards research belonged to the faculty of technical and engineering’s students. In contrast, faculty of Humanities’ students had higher degree of anxiety concerning doing researches. Generally, students believed in high levels of usefulness and benefits of research activities in their future occupations and indicated low degree of anxiety concerning conducting researches. Male students were more convinced than female students that they possess self-efficacy skills. According to analysis students in the Faculty of Humanities appeared at the lowest category of confi-dence regarding their research self-efficacy skills compared with other faculties’ students while faculty of technical and engineering’s students had the highest level of that. The most important skills from the student’s point of view were respectively: "research computer and analyzing skill" and "writing and presenting skills". In contrast, "application of ethical issues and research procedure" and "research designing skills" had the lowest level of self-confidence and self-efficacy from their viewpoint.