Factors Affecting Behavior in Conducting Research: Public Administration Lecturers in the Rajabhat Universities

Abstract

In 2004, the number of public universities increased notably due to the transformation of the Rajabhat Universities from “Institutes” to “Universities.” Consequently, quality assurance standards were established which has had a large impact on many Thai lecturers who are now required to focus more on conducting research because the number of research publications produced is regarded as one of the main criteria of a quality university. However, many studies are now revealing the small publication numbers of these new public universities. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that affect the behavior of the lecturers in the Thai Rajabhat University system to conduct research. This study focuses on the lecturers in the public administration domain, including political science and local government.

Data were collected at the end of 2013 from a sample of 347 participants at 32 institutions via a questionnaire survey which used a 6-level Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The survey with the constructs of predictors was tested and confirmed to contain a good sufficiency of reliability and validity. The CR values were ranged between .81 - .88. The AVE values ranged between .58 - .79. Moreover, the Cronbach’s alpha values ranged between .80 - .88. Structural Equation Modeling was used for hypothesis testing.

In sum, the results of the hypothesis test showed that the factors that had statistically significant effects on the behavior of the public administration lecturers in the conducting of research were facilitating conditions, academic degree, usefulness and social influence, respectively.