The feeling of positive emotions toward research work; investing personal resources, energy, and time in doing research as a meaningful activity; considering the research workload to be manageable while taking advantage of collaborative, faculty, and institutional support; and having hope that the research work will attract better opportunities in future.
Published in Chapter:
Enhancing Work-Life Balance and Research Engagement Among Students in Higher Education Institutions
Dennis Zami Atibuni (Busitema University, Uganda), David Kani Olema (Busitema University, Uganda), Joseph Ssenyonga (Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda), and Grace Milly Kibanja (Makerere University, Uganda)
Copyright: © 2019
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-6331-0.ch010
Abstract
Engagement in higher degree pursuit is a function of psychological constructs including core self-evaluations, academic motivation, work-life balance, and research skills proficiency. Core self-evaluations and academic motivation are precursors for student engagement in terms of effort expenditure, collaboration, institutional support-seeking, and relating with faculty. However, given that higher degree students are mainly working class, their work-life balance as well as research skills proficiency act as intervening variables to influence the relationship between the dispositional states and actual engagement of the students. Basing on empirical findings from various studies, the authors explicate in this critical review the (combined) mediation and moderation effects of the intervening variables on the links between academic motivation and core-self evaluations as predictors and the students' research engagement as a criterion variable. A conceptual model is theorized for the links between these concepts as a framework for research engagement and hence research completion among students.