Anxiety and Attitude towards Research in Graduate Students in Times of COVID-19, Lima-Peru

Abstract

Objective: To know the level of anxiety and attitude towards scientific research in postgraduate students of a private university in Lima; also, to determine the association between the variables in a COVID-19 setting Method: Quantitative, non-experimental-descriptive-cross-sectional; population made up of 378 postgraduate students and a probabilistic sample of 206 doctoral students of a university, Lima-East Peru. The instruments used were the "State-trait Anxiety inventory STAI" to measure state anxiety and trait anxiety (Spielberger et al., 2015) and EACIN scale to measure the attitude towards scientific research. Results: the results evidenced that 85% of the participants presented a high level of state anxiety, while 44.2% presented above average trait anxiety; on the other hand, 42.7% evidenced a good level of attitude towards scientific research. The Chi-square test evidenced a significant association between the state anxiety variable and attitude towards scientific research at a confidence level of p=0.025 ˂ 0.05; on the other hand, the association between trait anxiety and attitude towards scientific research evidenced a confidence level of p=0.000 ˂ 0.05. Conclusions: There is evidence that the high average and high level of state anxiety and trait anxiety, propitiate a regular and good attitude towards scientific research of graduate students in Lima - Peru.