AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE DETERMINANTS OF RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AMONG MEDICAL LECTURERS IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES IN NORTH-WEST NIGERIA

Abstract

This study was carried out to empirically investigate the research productivity among medical lecturers in federal universities in North-West Nigeria with a view to find out how individual and institutional factors affect scholarly productivity. A quantitative methodology employing a descriptive correlational research design was used. The population of the study comprises 775 medical lecturers teaching in the five operational medical colleges in Federal Universities in North-West, Nigeria. A total of 264 respondents participated and 209 copies were retrieved and found usable yielding a 79.2% response rate. A questionnaire was used as the instrument for data collection and was validated and pilot-tested with a reliability coefficient of 0.86 using Cronbach’s Alpha. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation. Findings reveal that medical lecturers in the surveyed federal universities demonstrate a relatively high level of research productivity. This is shown by strong performance on important measures like book chapters, co-authored textbooks, postgraduate supervision, research grants, ongoing research initiatives, community service, citation visibility, and teaching duties. Together, these determinants show the importance of being actively involved in collaborative scholarship, keeping up with research, and having an impact on academia. The study recommends that medical lecturers should have more structured research assistance, better ways to get financing, ongoing training, and stronger ways to collaborate together to boost research output and make them more competitive on a worldwide scale.