Open AccessWhat Are University Professors’ Motivations? A Realistic Approach to Self-Perception of a Group of Spanish University Professors Belonging to the G-9 Group of Universities
Author(s) -
Luís Espejo-Antúnez,
Mario Corrales Serrano,
Francisco Zamora-Polo,
Miguel González,
María de los Ángeles Cardero-Durán
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of environmental research and public health/international journal of environmental research and public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.747
H-Index - 113
eISSN - 1661-7827
pISSN - 1660-4601
DOI - 10.3390/ijerph18157976
Subject(s) - cronbach's alpha , psychology , exploratory factor analysis , public university , internal consistency , social psychology , face validity , variance (accounting) , clinical psychology , psychometrics , accounting , public administration , political science , business
Universities face challenges on a number of levels. In this scenario, university professors play an important role as facilitators of knowledge. The main objective of this study was to analyse the motivations that influence the professional performance in a sample of 102 university professors from nine Spanish public universities (Male: 54 (52.9%); Female: 48 (47.1%)). For this purpose, a questionnaire of 22 closed-ended Likert-type questions was designed, in which scores ranged from 0 to 10 (do not agree at all, strongly agree). Following analysis, the final questionnaire was composed of 17 items, and showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.858). The validity analysis showed a value of 0.822 (>0.5) in the sample adequacy measure of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's sphericity test ( p < 0.0001). The exploratory factor analysis showed a clustering in four factors (two for intrinsic motivations and two for extrinsic motivations), explaining 64.33% of the total variance. Comparisons between each factor score by gender (male and female) showed statistically significant differences for factor F1 (higher for females) and F2 (higher for males). Finally, Q1 and Q13 showed a statistically significant correlation ( p ≤ 0.05) with years of teaching experience. The motivations of Spanish university professors appear to be associated with the age and gender of the teacher.