Reflection on the Research Methodological Skills of Master Students in Human Sciences disciplines: mixed method study

Current study has been implemented with the aim of quality evaluation of research methodological skills of master students in human science disciplines in Tehran's public Universities. In qualitative section, by using purposeful and snow-ball sampling, experts in field of teaching methodology were interviewed. By using content analysis and coding procedure and also the syllabuses of the research methods and statistic courses, 35 important skills were indentified. In quantitative section, based on identified skills a valid and reliable questionnaire was developed and completed by 270 students. First, by implementing exploratory factor analysis, all skills were decreased into 27 skills and 4 factors (designing, practical, analytical and writing skills) were indentified. In the second stage, confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the measurement model of latent variable has good fit with observed data. In the next stage the results of Chi-squared test indicated that students have meaningful evaluation from skills. They evaluated their skills lower than average. Also the results of Friedman test have meaningfully ranked skills in each dimension. The results of ranked skills indicate that "selecting an appropriate title for doing research", "using electronic resource and scientific database", "interpreting the outputs of analyzed data", and "writing an article from the results of conducted research" have the lowest rank in each dimension. Generally, result of this study indicates weakness in needed research skills among human sciences master students of Tehran's public Universities.