Presentinga Comprehensive Model of Factors Affecting Research Anxiety with Meta-synthesis Approach

Research is one of the most important factors for the advancement of society. Given the necessity of researching scientific communities and associated mental pressures, researchers experience research anxiety. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the factors affecting research anxiety.

This is a qualitative research performed with a meta-synthesis method. The statistical population includes all data related to research anxiety published during 2005-2020. In total, we find 463 references, 214 of which are chosen based on their abstracts. Afterwards, 82 references are selected based on content, and a total of 24 references are evaluated by the theme analysis approach as the related resources. Notably, the articles are found from databases of libraries, schools, and websites such as Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Noormags, Magiran, scientific articles of national conferences, national journals database, Iran Doc, Civilica, elmnet and valid foreign databases including Science Direct, Google Scholar, Scopus, Springer, and IEEE using the keywords of anxiety, research anxiety, and research barriers. The selected articles are analyzed in MAXQDA 2020 software.

In this study, 103 codes and 13 concepts are extracted into two general components. According to the results, the two general components of internal and external factors affect research anxiety. In this regard, internal factors include methodological skills, research skills, information literacy, emotional, emotional, and management factors. On the other hand, external factors are rules and policies in the field of research, factors related to research centers, organizational attitudes and culture, organizational support, organizational decisions and planning, the research community, and research guide features and characteristics of research demographics.

In order to control research anxiety, researchers can consider appropriate programs and solutions to reduce anxiety by identifying the mentioned factors. In addition, our findings could contribute to the recognition and reduction of research anxiety in researchers.