Adbhut Singh, Vivek Nath Tripathi
The Junior Research Fellowship scheme has been running since
1984 in the country and is providing opportunities to research scholars to
pursue their career as researchers. In the present paper, the researchers aimed
to understand why the scheme was implemented, what were the objectives of the
scheme, how are the goals and objectives of the scheme are perceived by the
stakeholders, and what are the changes in the context of the scheme which calls
for amelioration of the objectives. Sequential explanatory transformative mixed
method research design was employed and a survey with 240 participants and
interview of 13 participants were used to identify the related themes. These
themes were then interpreted using realist evaluation technique of
context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOCs). On the basis of these CMOCs,
it was found that the JRF scheme has been implemented so as to enhance the
efficiency of research community and in enhancing research output. However, it
was also found that the scheme is not able to impose standardization and
comparability of the research output produced. Facilitation of the services for
research fellows, quality assurance of research output, providing opportunity to pursue PhD, capacity
building for national research strength, and providing financial freedom to
research fellows are the major perceived goals and objectives of the scheme.
The scheme led to higher enrolments under the research programmes. However, the
retention of such fellows and the dropout rates or change in the mode of PhD
from regular to part-time still remains to be the unresolved issues.
Junior Research Fellowship, Programme Evaluation, Humanities
and Social Sciences, Realist Evaluation, Fellowship Evaluation, Context
Evaluation
VOL.13, ISSUE No.3, September 2021