Ethics and management competencies in graduate students: instruments for their measurement

Abstract

Introduction. One of the most important elements with respect to competitiveness and development is the formation of human capital, since the country’s progress depends on it. Therefore, it is essential that graduate programs oriented to the training of scientists have information on the competencies that are developed within their programs. The objective of this study is to construct and determine the metric properties of two scales to measure ethical and management competencies in graduate students. Method. A mixed method was used in two phases; in the first phase, participed 51 researchers belonging to the National System of Researchers and are part of the core professors of the four most important institutions of higher education in State Sonora, México. They were interviewed to determine the indicators that make up each competency. In the second phase, scales were created with the indicators that emerged from the previous phase and were applied to 323 students from different graduate programs of the same universities of the researchers in the state of Sonora. Results. The results indicate that the scales empirically support the measurement of the construct, making them valid and reliable instruments; they are an important instrumental contribution to the current literature on the development of these competencies in postgraduate programs, since the scales developed are a tool that serves to evaluate them Discussion. The measurement of ethics and management competencies guide the decision making of teachers, coordinators and accreditors of postgraduate programs for the improvement of educational programs focused on research since they allows identifying strengths and weaknesses in their student cohort and in their academic programs.