Internal Evaluation of Young Researchers Club of Islamic Azad University

Young Researchers Club of Islamic Azad University plays a major role in Iran’s education system with the purpose of helping young Iranian talents to thrive and prosper, identifying young researchers, and supporting, fostering and guiding them in order to promote their knowledge and reveal their creativity. Considering the key role of this institution, the present research aims to carry out an internal evaluation of the Club so that a documentary and scientific investigation of the current status of the Club and the distance it has with its predetermined goals could be conducted. Therefore, after the inputting, processing, and outputting goals were identified, 10 factors consisting of 30 criteria and 83 indicators were provided at three levels of ‘undesirable, relatively desirable, and desirable’ with respect to the Organizational Elements Model and the viewpoints of the internal evaluation committee. At the next stage, 2 questionnaires were used to survey 1093 people including heads and members of the Club by employing codified factors and indicators. After sampling the collected data which involved a complete census (for heads) and random sampling (for the Club members), the data collection process was carried out. Using descriptive statistical method for the status quo, input, process, and output factors were evaluated as ‘relatively desirable’. It can be concluded that, in general, the Young Researchers Club is in a ‘relatively desirable’ status.Discussion and In addition to determining the Club’s status and the distance it has with its goals, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the Young Researchers Club of the Islamic Azad University can be a starting point for the qualitative improvement of the status quo. This research is the best document to be used by the Club in order to plan the necessary changes. This can be possible only when all units across the country make contributions, since applying changes and efforts to make promotions and transformations are collaborative processes, just the same as evaluation.