Supervisors Teaching Variables and Students’ Performance in Post Graduate Thesis and Dissertation in Public Universities in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study focus on investigating supervisors’ teaching variables and students’ performance in post graduate thesis and dissertation in Cross River State, Nigeria. The study adopted the ex-post facto research design. The stratified random sampling technique was used to select 406 theses and dissertations from a population of 3,912 using proportionality of 10.37% with Faculty as basis of stratification. Theses and Dissertations supervisor variables scale (TADSVS) was used to amass information from the respondents, while the Simple Linear Regression Analysis was used to analyse the date collected from the field. The first finding showed that there is no statistical significant influence of supervisors’ years of tertiary institution teaching experience on students’ performance in post graduate theses and dissertations. This means that students’ performance in their final year research work is the same (equal) for those supervised by the low, moderate and high experienced lecturers. The finding of the second hypothesis showed that Supervisors’ area of specialization significantly influences students’ performance in theses and dissertations in Cross River State, Nigeria. That is, thesis performance is not equal across supervisors’ specialization. Based on the foregoing findings, the study recommends the need to assign an experience supervisor to supervise post graduate students’ research theses and dissertation for excellent performance since supervisors’ years of tertiary teaching experience significantly influence students’ performance in post graduate research theses and dissertation among universities students in Cross River State, Nigeria.