Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2011 - Higher ...

PRES 2011 Results – September 2011
3.2.2.3 Age
Figure 3.20 below shows a breakdown of the percentages agreeing with the skills items by age group.
Figure 3.20: Skills Development items by % agree by age, Q2
In general, younger students were more likely to be positive about their skills development, except in
response to Q2a (‘as a result of my experience so far I feel confident about managing a research
project’), for which those 25 years old or younger were markedly less positive than other groups (the
difference ranging from 3% to 7%).
As Figure 3.21 below shows, the perceived importance of research skills training (Q9b) was roughly
similar across all ages. However, there were clear age differences for transferable skills training (Q9c),
with those in the middle age ranges feeling more strongly that such training is important. This is
consistent with the motivation item (Q19, see Section 3.2.1.3), in which the middle age ranges were
more motivated by improving academic/research career prospects (although no more motivated by
improving non-academic/research career prospects).
The relatively low results for the younger age groups for Q9c perhaps help to explain the positive
responses from younger students to Q2f. As the wording of Q2f (‘there are adequate opportunities
available for me to further develop my transferable skills’) most directly addresses frequency rather
than perceived quality of the opportunities, perhaps those for whom the development of transferable
skills is less important are more likely to be satisfied with a lower number of opportunities available to
them.
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