Knowledge and Skills needs for post graduate students to be personally involved in statistical data analysis.

Abstract

Knowledge is a key aspect of society development in all spheres. Knowledge has been determined to be created from research and innovations. Universities worldwide have been serving society for a long period of time by educating an ever greater proportion of the population and broadening its perspectives; by performing research that creates new understanding, new technologies and the potential for action; and by providing a store of knowledge and capabilities that society as a whole has been able to draw upon, In Kenya, however, University students have been accused of doing low quality research and in some cases hiring people to do their research and write theses, This implies that universities in Kenya may not be providing a store of knowledge and capabilities that society as a whole can draw upon, but rather they are relying on the society for research knowledge. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to establish the knowledge and skills needs for post graduate students to be personally involved in statistical data analysis: a case of selected universities in Western Kenya. The study adopted survey and case study design. The target population for the study was masters’ students who had submitted theses for examination and research lecturers. Purposive, stratified and simple random sampling procedures were be used to sample 97 respondents who participated in the study. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to collect data for the study. The study found out that; majority of the students found it difficult when involved in data analysis and that statistics and computer knowledge are key needs to be involved in data analysis. The study recommended that universities should put more emphasize on key knowledge and skills needs when training researchers.