Graduate Students’ Perspectives and Challenges in Academic Research Writing at a Philippine State University

Abstract

The attainment of advanced degrees elevates higher education standards, enhances individual competencies, and contributes to national development. However, universities face challenges in ensuring quality of students’ theses and dissertations. Graduate programs must align academic practices with current standards to produce relevant research outputs. In the Philippines, only about three percent of students in Batangas State University graduate annually, revealing systemic issues in writing, advising, and evaluation which call for improved research mentoring and institutional reforms. This research empirically examined the graduate students’ perspectives on thesis and dissertation writing, advising, and critiquing practices as well as challenges they faced regarding research knowledge, instruction, resources, finances, and scheduling. A researcher-made survey instrument, validated by members of the Research Council, was employed to collect data from the respondents (n=17). The data were subjected to appropriate statistical analyses, including correlation tests that examined relationships between demographic variables and respondents’ research writing experiences and challenges, during the 2023 academic year. The Research Development Manuals (2008 and 2017) of the university were reviewed to provide contextual grounding for the findings. The findings reveal that only gender had a significant relationship (p = 0.038 < 0.05) with writing experiences, indicating that male and female respondents differ in certain aspects of their research writing experiences, while other variables showed no significant correlation. This suggests that gender may influence approaches or engagement levels in research-related tasks. The results show that most students had generally good experiences throughout the different stages of the research writing process. Although they encountered some difficulties in a few areas, these challenges occurred only occasionally and did not greatly affect their ability to complete their research work. This suggests that while difficulties in research writing were present, they were generally infrequent and did not pose major obstacles to the students’ progress. Based on these findings, the study provided inputs for the development of an Academic Research Writing Manual (ARWM) for the university, aimed at improving graduate student completion rates, attract more enrollees, and enhance faculty research productivity. The study further recommends institutionalizing the ARWM, strengthening research mentoring and advising systems, and fostering a sustained culture of research productivity among students and faculty members.