Mahdi Fatehrad; Mohammad Reza Jalilvand; Monireh Mohammadzade
Abstract
Purpose, although literature has focused on explaining theoretical background in the area of interdisciplinary studies, a few empirical studies has paid attention to the main reasons of performing interdisciplinary projects. To fill the research gap, current study tries to identify challenges and motivations ...
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Purpose, although literature has focused on explaining theoretical background in the area of interdisciplinary studies, a few empirical studies has paid attention to the main reasons of performing interdisciplinary projects. To fill the research gap, current study tries to identify challenges and motivations of interdisciplinary studies for researchers to participate in interdisciplinary projects. The main purposes of the research are: 1) identifying the challenges and motivations of interdisciplinary studies implying on interdisciplinary methodology, 2) determining the degree of importance of the above elements regarding interdisciplinary studies. Methodology, current study is an exploratory in terms of methodology, descriptive in terms of research design, and development in terms of purpose. This study employing an interdisciplinary team firstly investigated theoretical background and prior research on interdisciplinary studies, identified challenges and motivations of the studies. Secondly, a structured interview performed with five interdisciplinary researchers. To investigate the identified elements empirically, a self-administrated questionnaire was used based on the literature and interviews. The questionnaire was distributed among 64 researchers from different disciplines who had experienced interdisciplinary activities. Data was analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis, composite reliability, one-sample t-test, Friedman test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) using LISREL and SPSS. Results indicated that recognized motivations except for public learning and satisfying psychological needs, and identified challenges have considerable effect on performing interdisciplinary studies.
