Research Methodology: Lecturers’ Competences in Relation to Students’ Academic Performance

Research Methodology

The research that I am proposing will be quantitative because in this research I have decided to collect information of lecturer competence in relation to student academic performance. There are 5 factors that contribute to the competences of the lecturers such as lecturer teaching method, lecturer experience, lecturer subject matter expertise, lecturer qualification and lecturer attitudes. I would like to carry out the quantitative research because I want to investigate the relationship between the competencies of the lecturers in relation to student academic performances.

 More than that, I am decided to use this research approach because it is more reliable and objective. The information to be collected is more objective which means it is more focussed to investigate the relationship between the lecturer’s competence and the student academic performances. Furthermore, I find it is easier for me to use the quantitative research because I can use statistics to generalise a finding. There is a lot of previous research that has been carried out by previous researcher regarding to this topic. So it is easier for me to retrieve a more reliable and valid information to conduct my research.

In order to have a solid research proposal I need to have a good research approach, so by choosing quantitative research it often reduces and restructures a complex problem to a limited number of variables. For example, with regard to my research I have listed out 2 types of variables which are lecturer competences and student academic performances. Throughout this research I will looks at relationships between variables and can establish cause and effect in highly controlled circumstances. There are five relationship that to be use in this research. There are:

·        To what degree does lecturer’s competence affect students’ academic performance?

·        Is there any significant relationship between the lecturers’ teaching skills and student academic performance?

·        Is there any relationship between the lecturers’ experience and students’ academic performance?

·        Is there any relationship between the lecturers’ subject matter expertise and students’ academic performance?

·        Is there any relationship between the lecturers’ qualification and students’ academic performance?

·        Is there any relationship between the lecturers’ attitude and students’ academic performance?

In addition, by conducting quantitative research it will give me a chance to tests .theories or hypotheses. With regard to my research, the hypotheses that I would like to test is “There is a significant effect between lecturers’ competences in relation to student academic performances”. Finally, by having quantitative research approach it assumes sample is representative of the population. The population to be used for this research survey was aimed at 150 final semester students of Faculty of Administrative and Policy Studies. Using simple random sampling technique, the questionnaires are to be distributing to 150 final semester students.

The research studies are to be conducted based on the descriptive survey and correlational design. A survey design is to be chosen to ensure collection of information which precisely describes the nature prevailing condition at specific point in time.

The population to be used for this research survey was aimed at 150 final semester students of Faculty of Administrative and Policy Studies. Using simple random sampling technique, the questionnaires are to be distributing to 150 final semester students.

Primary data were to be gathered through two instruments: namely the structure questionnaire and student’s statement of academic result of all completed respective semester modules. The research instrument  collect data on student’s perceptions regarding lecturer’s subject knowledge, lecturer attitudes, teaching skills, lecturer experience, lecturer subject matter expertise and lecturer’s qualification. The students will express their levels of agreement based on questionnaire anchored on the five Likert scale from strongly, disagree and strongly agree.

The results of the survey are to be analyse using descriptive statistics and correlational techniques. The data that gather processed and analyse using SPSS version 21 statistical package for windows. Before conducting the correlational analysis, exploratory factor analysis, the Cronbach’s alpha and KMO tests were computed to determine scale reliability and adequacy of the sampling size respectively.