Construction And Standardization Of The Research Aptitude Test (Rat) For Postgraduate Students

Abstract

Post graduate students’ research aptitudes influence how they mentally approach research including all the work related to research. Research aptitude is an acquired or natural ability for learning and proficiency in research activities. Research aptitude refers to an individual’s competence in his or her future research potentialities. The goal of the present study is to develop and standardize an instrument to assess the research aptitude test of postgraduate students. The researcher conducted a pilot study with a sample of 100 postgraduate students to validate the instrument and undertake item analysis. The sample was selected from the postgraduate departments of St. Anthony’s College, Shillong and Synod College, Shillong.

Spearman Brown’s Split Half Method, Cronbach’s Alpha Method and Kuder-Richardson

(KR20) Method were used in the second sample of 200 post graduate students of NorthEastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong to test the reliability of the instrument. The reliability value computed in the Spearman Brown’s Split Half Method was 0.86, the reliability value computed in the Cronbach’s Alpha Method was 0.92 and the reliability value computed in the Kuder-Richardson (KR20) method was 0.91. Face validity and content validity have been established for the instrument. The researcher generated percentile scores for the tool to explain the results. The final version of the research aptitude test has forty-one items.