EFL students´ conceptions of research: a quantitative analisys.

Abstract

Conceptions of research have been hardly ever a subject for exploration; therefore, it is not easy to find empirical work on it (Brew, 2001). Conceptions of research might be one of the newest topics for exploration; for this reason, the lack of empirical work in some fields such as English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and specifically with undergraduate students as participants is still a fact. Questions and possible hypotheses that have been raised about conceptions, beliefs or attitudes of research, followed by investigations, come from different fields such as psychology (Love, Bahner, Jones & Nilsson, 2007), nursing and science (Halabi and Hamdan-Mansour, 2010), and education (Beycioglu, Ozer & Teyyar, 2010). In addition, it is worth noting that several terms are used to explore “conceptions of research”; however, the term will be used in this present study to refer to what undergraduate students think of research and understand by it (see Kiley & Mullins, 2007; Pitcher, 2011).