Motivating University Students to Engage in Scientific Student Research

Abstract

In 2021, the Scientific Student Association (SSA/TDK in Hungarian) movement celebrated its 70th anniversary. Since its launch in 1951, the movement has grown to a nationwide scale and has become an important platform for student academic activity and talent management. By the 2010s, the movement's visibility and the number of students had increased significantly, driven by the growing support and recognition of the TDK movement, in addition to the involvement of secondary school students and - within the framework of the Scientific Student Circles without Borders (HTDK in Hungarian) programme launched in 2013 - Hungarian native-speaking students in higher education beyond the borders. It can now be said that the effectiveness of students' scientific activities is also an important indicator in the ranking of universities. At the Budapest Business School (BBS), the Faculty of International Management and Trade, too, the support of student academic work is becoming increasingly important. The processes related to TDK have also undergone and are undergoing a significant renewal in our faculty. During the period covered by the research (2018-2022), various incentives were introduced on both the faculty and the student side, which resulted in a steady increase in student interest in this activity (even during the COVID period) and in participation in scientific conferences. A research group was also set up in autumn 2022 to study and promote student scientific activity, with the aim of exploring the links between scientific activity and labour market challenges, in addition to the above. In the spring of 2022, the authors carried out a quantitative survey based on student motivation factors. In the present research, a qualitative questionnaire survey was used to investigate the external and internal motivational factors that encourage students to engage in scientific research and how to make scientific research attractive for them.