Designing a Framework for Performance Assessment in Student-Driven Research Centers Focusing on Exploratory Mixed Method

The present study was an attempt to provide a framework for performance assessment in student-driven research centers. To do this, an exploratory mixed method (tool design) was used in this study. The statistical population in this study included authorities of these centers who participated in two phases of this research (namely, qualitative and quantitative phases). In the first phase, five interviewees were selected through purposive sampling method. After analyzing the content of the interviews, six performance indicators and 47 indicators for these indicators were obtained in the first phase. In the second phase, the responses of all 21 managers of these centers were considered through a survey study focusing on census method. The quantitative tool used in the quantitative phase included a performance measurement questionnaire extracted from the findings of qualitative phase. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) of the latter tools was calculated to be 0.79. The analytic hierarchy process was used in the data analysis stage. The result showed that each of the indicators had a different weight in performance assessment. Then, each indicator was assigned a weight appropriate to its rank in the performance assessment. The results of this research led to the ranking of research centers in terms of performance. Furthermore, a framework has been proposed for performance assessment which was based on 6 main indicators.