The effect of research support capability on researchers’ satisfaction based on the characteristics of institutes

Abstract

To increase the satisfaction of administrative support for researchers' research immersion, the South Korea (hereafter Korea) has supported research support capacity evaluation (hereafter support capacity evaluation) since 2020. The purpose of this study is to suggest efficiency improvement by empirically analyzing how research support capacity affect researcher satisfaction. To this end, the hypothesis was verified for a total of 196 research support organizations (158 universities and 38 government-funded research institutes). As a result of the analysis, it was found that the capacity to support research activities had a significant effect on the satisfaction of researchers. The analysis results for each sub-variable of independent variables showed that, first, the research support organization operation had a positive (+) effect on the researcher satisfaction. Degree of improvement in researcher treatment and transparency in research fund execution also showed the same results, and R&D rule conformity had a significant effect, but showed a negative (-) relationship. On the other hand, it was found that there was no moderating effect of research support budget size between research support capacity and researcher satisfaction. Based on the above analysis results, improvement for each evaluation index were sought through expert interviews utilizing AHP analysis and semi-structured questionnaires. Finally, the limitations of the study and future research directions were discussed.