FUND UTILISATION, LEADERSHIP STYLE AND RESEARCH TRAINING AS CORRELATES OF QUALITY RESEARCH OUTPUT IN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH-WEST, NIGERIA

This study investigated fund utilization, leadership style and research training as correlates of quality research output in Colleges of Education in South-west, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research of the ex-post facto type. The population of the study comprised of all 2,189 academic staff in the nine Colleges of Education in South-west, Nigeria.Proportionate-to-size sampling technique was used to select 30% of academic staff from the six purposively selected State and Federal Colleges of Education in Southwestern Nigeria. The Data collected through researcher’s self designed questionnaire titled ‘Fund Utilisation, Leadership Style, Research Training and Quality Research Output Questionnaire’ (FULSRTQROQ)’ were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple regressions. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The result from the analysis revealed that fund utilisation (r = 0.304, p<0.05) and research training (r = 0.093, p<0.05) had significant correlation with quality research output in College of Education in South-west, Nigeria but leadership style (r = 0.070, p>0.05) had no significant correlation with quality research output. The study concluded that fund utilisation, leadership style and research training could jointly influence the quality research output to some extent. It was therefore recommended that government should ensure that the institutional based research grants are judiciously used by lecturers to carry out quality research and College management should always organise job orientation training for academic staff to increase their research skills.