Supervision response differential by cadre of supervisors among agricultural postgraduate students in southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated supervision response differential by cadre of supervisors among agricultural postgraduate students in southwestern Nigeria. Using structured questionnaire, data was collected from 120 agricultural graduate students across federal universities in southwestern Nigeria through a multi stage sampling procedure. Data was collected on respondents’ personal characteristics, extent of satisfaction with supervision, quality of supervision exposed to, constraints faced in the course of supervision and behavioural response to supervision. Data collected were summarized using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and means while independent sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses. Mean age of respondents was 32.5+ 6.99years. Half or more of the respondents’ (61.7%) were male, Christians (79.2%), single (50.0%), graduated with second class upper division in their first degrees (59.2%) and were supervised by professors (45.8%). More than half (56.7%) of the respondents indicated high level of satisfaction with their supervision. Students supervised by lecturer cadre supervisors however indicated better extent of satisfaction (66.7%) than others supervised by professors (55.4%) and senior lecturers (54.1%). Quality of supervision received was high among only 56.7% of the respondents. Also, more respondents supervised by supervisors of lecturer cadre (61.1%) indicated high quality of supervision received than supervisees of professors (56.9%) and senior lecturers (54.1%). Furthermore, behavioural change was high among a fair proportion (58.3%) of the respondents. While behavioural change was high among most supervisees of professors (64.6%) and senior lecturers (56.8%), it was however, low among majority (61.1%) of supervisees of lecturer cadre supervisors. Most severe of the constraints faced by supervisees include autocratic supervisors (x̄ =1.55), imposition of research topic (x̄ =1.53) and poor contact with supervisors (x̄ =1.43). Immoral demands from supervisors ranked least among the constraints faced (x̄ =1.09). There was no significant difference in behavioural change observed between students supervised by different cadre of supervisors (F= 1.542 p≤0.05). Thus, while lower cadre supervisors were more responsive to supervisory responsibilities, the higher cadre supervisors impacted more, though marginal behavioural change impart on their supervisees.

Keywords: Supervision response, postgraduate students, supervisor, quality of supervision, supervision constraints