The impact of student research anxiety on undergraduate biology students’ intentions to pursue a scientific research career

Abstract

Participating in undergraduate research has been shown to lead to numerous benefits including increased persistence in science. However, there are still many undergraduate researchers who choose not to pursue a science‐related research career. While studies have shown that the increased length of a student’s research experience and a student’s positive relationship with their mentor are predictors of a student’s persistence in science, it is unclear what other elements of a student’s research experience influence their choice to pursue a science‐related research career.In this study, we explored to what extent student research anxiety influences undergraduate biology students’ intentions to pursue a science‐related research career. Specifically, our research questions were whether students’ demographics predicted their research anxiety and whether student/mentor rapport moderated the relationship between research anxiety and student intention to pursue scientific research. We used Yerkes‐Dodson Law which suggests that student performance in undergraduate research should increase with mental arousal, but only up to a certain level; high levels of anxiety negatively impact students. We designed a survey with closed and open‐ended questions. Questions were vetted using think aloud interviews and piloted with 126 biology students at a single R1 institution in Fall 2017. We revised the survey and sampled from 26 public R1 universities in Fall 2018. We measured student research anxiety using an adapted version of the Revised Attitudes Toward Research Scale and we measured student‐mentor rapport using the Advisory Working Alliance Inventory mentorship scale. Students also answered open‐ended questions about what elements of their research experience increased and decreased their anxiety.Our final dataset included 750 biology majors from 26 R1 institutions who had participated in an academic year research experience. Using structural equation modeling, we explored relationships between student demographics, student research anxiety, student/mentor rapport, research productivity, student‐perceived difficulty of the research project, and students’ current intentions to pursue a science‐related research career. We found that, compared to students with low research anxiety, students with high research anxiety were less likely to publish or expect to publish a paper from their undergraduate research experience and were less likely to report intentions to pursue a science‐related research career. We also identified that student/mentor rapport moderated the relationship between research anxiety and student intention to persist in a science‐related research career. Finally, using open‐coding methods, we coded students’ responses about what increased and decreased their research‐anxiety. We found that student confidence, perceived ability, mentorship, and relationships with others in the lab impacted their anxiety. Overall, this work identified research anxiety as important for biology students’ intentions to pursue a science‐related research career and identified ways in which research mentors can decrease research anxiety to create a more inclusive scientific community.Support or Funding InformationNSF LEAP Scholars Program