engleski

Students background, age and time to thesis proposal in and PhD program in Kinesiology

The new PhD program at the Faculty of Kinesiology in Zagreb started in 2015. Since then, two new generations were enrolled. We investigated the background of the enrolled students, gender, age, as well as differences in time to PhD proposal defense. The background data, as well as age and the grades at their graduate study were analyzed for 114 students enrolled in 2015 and 2017. Mean age at the enrollment was 32±7.8y, (24- 55y), 53%M, 47%F ; mean grade at graduate study 4.01±0.41. 68% of the students graduated in kinesiology master. The second group were medical doctors (18%), physiotherapy master (4%), economy/business (4%) and others (5%) (one technical field, one arts etc., but employed in sport). ANOVA showed differences in age at enrollment according to the background (F(4.109)=8.323 ; p<0.001), with kinesiology majors being the youngest (30.46y ; 0.79SE), MDs (37.71y ; 1.52SE), and economy background the oldest (42.25y ; 3.50SE). In two largest groups, the MDs needed the shorter time to PhD topic defense than kinesiology majors (17.1mth/19.5mth ; Mann-W:p<0.05) and no gender differences. Surprisingly the mean age of the PhD students was high, but explainable with the fact that Croatian students have to pay the study themselves while working elsewhere. The new program is much more flexible and enables the student to specialize early into the scientific field (sport science, kinesitherapy, motor control, leisure, biomedicine of sport, biomechanics or psychology/sociology of sport) which increased the interest from the graduates in fields other than kinesiology. The medical doctors performed a bit better in the beginning of the program, but in future it would be interesting to follow the completion rates.

PhD students, thesis proposal

nije evidentirano