Category | Definition | Subcategories | Definitions | Sample participant statements |
---|---|---|---|---|
Perceived cost | Participants indicated sacrifices involved in engaging in undergraduate research | Effort cost | Participants indicated costs associated with the effort needed to engage in research | Participant 8: I do not think I would be able to do a Ph.D. program and do research day after day on the same project and everything because it is just so microscopic that sometimes I have a hard time connecting it to the real world and seeing that impact on the real world. I want to do things that will have an impact on the real world, but I think the projects that I would do in a research lab are going to take years to do that. |
Psychological/emotional cost | Participants indicated their concerns and/or emotional consequences of failure | Participant 15: Everything that is done is interesting to me. But doing it myself, I find it very boring and not something that I would like. I guess I do not have the brain capacity to do because I feel kind of dumb in my lab. And I feel like I would not know what to look for and what things to research in that kind of context. | ||
Opportunity cost | Participants indicated a loss of valued alternatives | Participant 11: I think it was valuable for my personal growth and valuable for my academic growth. It definitely came at a cost and I did not have a lot of time to do other things that I may have wanted to do on campus, other things that require a time commitment because I had to commit a certain amount of time. |