How the Scientists Think about Their Reinforcement: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The goal of this study: getting more comprehensive picture about the background of the academic career and about the attitude toward scientific reinforcement. Besides, as another aim is getting insight about: what features of academic career may have cultural aspect and what are universal. With this actually collected sample, consisting of German faculty members/scientist (N=40), we can see the similarities and the differences between each other (Hungarian) sample (N=170).The data were collected with questionnaire method (open-ended questions; multiple choices questions; yes/no questions). The earlier Hungarian version consisted of 23 questions, the actual German version contained 28. The questions focused on two main topics: (1) own career of faculty members and (2) identifying of talented students and cooperation with talented students (talented – as a potential scientist). The results have been analyzed with descriptive statistics, correlation-examination, and the open-ended questions had been content-analyzed. They show that the academic career may have cultural differences, but some aspects are universal (independent from country). Of course, the results must be handled as restricted, because other more countries must be investigated.