Juliana Peters is a third-year student in the School of liberal arts and is an aspiring Industrial Psychologist.
Can you tell me about your research question?
Ans: The research I am doing is on Work-life balance and motivation in university faculty members during the covid-19 era when they had to work from home. I wanted to see whether working from home is a lot more challenging for them because they have to take care of so many students when they do so. And there was a lot of research being done on general employees, for example, office employees or hospital employees. But there was not enough focus on teachers which I thought was pretty important.
2. What was the inspiration behind your research topic?
Ans: So the thing was I was looking for some inspiration on Google Scholar to look for topics that I could use for my research and for something that had not been done before. So I came across this study that was Investigating faculty motivation and its connection to faculty work work-life balance: Engaging public service motivation to explore faculty motivation. This was done in 2020 and it was not related to Covid, it was more generalized and it did not take into account a lot of the challenges that the teacher and professors faced during Covid. So I thought, why not do research on this. And as I researched more on the topic I found it very interesting and I also found a theory in industrial psychology that is kind of related to the research. The theory’s name is Herzberg's two-factor theory of motivation. It takes into account both the work environment as well as other factors like the salary and things like that. I thought it was very fitting in the covid period.
3. How are you conducting your research?
Ans: I have chosen to do both Qualitative And Quantitative. Quantitative in the sense that I will get a better understanding of what part was more motivating for the teachers. Was it the external factors like your work environment or the internal factors like the sense of ‘I am giving back to the community or ‘me teaching the students makes my student's life better’ things like that? So what is more important to them. For that case I used a survey method, I created my own survey based on another study done by Teck Hong. But this is a completely different study, it was done to prove Herzberg's theory. He had a pretty good questionnaire, I implemented some of the questions from there and added my own questions on work-life balance. And I created a survey which was then sent to around 130 faculty members from all around Pune. And I also took interviews because I feel you need a little bit more understanding which my survey can not allow. I wanted to keep it a little bit open kind of unstructured questions. So I used both interviews and surveys.
4. Have you faced any issues during your research process?
Ans: Yes. The biggest issue is getting professors to fill-up the form. So I sent out 130 surveys and I have received around 46 responses right now. So it is very difficult to get people to respond to your surveys. i had to go personally and like to give it to teachers but some of them gave me the wrong email IDs, which is a little bit frustrating. I think the toughest part about this is getting enough responses to make your study more concrete.
5. Are there any other researches that are related to the topic of your research and if there are, how similar or different is your research?
Ans: There is only one study that has been done in India, ‘Work-life balance among female school teachers delivering online curriculum in Noida [India] during COVID’ this again is based in Noida but is related only to female teachers. It is not according to university teachers which i feel is tougher because in schools it was compulsory to have your cameras on or you are marked absent which means you have no other option. We did not have that in colleges, this was a lot more different. Because the teachers in schools were able to see their students, they were able to understand their students. And the research was to explore challenges faced by female teachers and call into question their work-life balance. But it does not take into account the male teachers, as they also have responsibilities in their houses. it's not just the female teachers. So I feel like that was one thing missing. And also it doesn't see a connection between work-life balance and work motivation. It only focuses on generalized work-life balance.
And it is not seeing motivation from the theoretical perspective like my research is doing. As i said I m using your home environment as well as the internal factors.
As for the Indonesia one, it was a non-covid study. Although it was done in 2020 it was not covid related, so I do not see the relevance in covid times.
6. What is the one aspect which has helped you keep going during the process of research?
Ans: The thing is, I have a very good support system, in terms of my professor. So Prof. Eden Lobo who is my professor-in-charge. She has been so supportive, suppose I have completed my literature review at like 11:30 at night and I send it to her, she reviews it at 11:30. And she has given me all the support she can and she has been so motivating, “ You can do this It’s okay, you send it out”. “Let's send them again and again till they respond to your survey. “ I think that was very helpful. Otherwise, if you do not have the support you would not feel like continuing. But here because my professor was very supportive, that is really helping me see-through.
7. How is your research going to add to the field of research in current times?
Ans: I am at the analysis part of my research and based on what i have seen it is more of an internal motivating factor than an external motivating factor for teachers. It is not their pay or the work environment like I thought it would be. It is more of the appreciation that they received, not just from their superiors but also from the students. Just being appreciated has so much of a difference for the teachers. So I think they need to be appreciated more.
Most of the research done on motivation uses either the self-determination theory of Maslow's need hierarchy which focuses more on internal needs rather than other motivators such as good work environments or other benefits. They also focus on healthcare employee satisfaction or employee satisfaction in all sectors.
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