The Viewpoint of Faculty Members on Research Obstacles at Tabriz University

OOne of themain duties of faculty membersof universities is the applied and basic research for developing boundaries of knowledge and technologies. Unfortunately, in spite of the importance of research the number of approved research projectsat theTabriz Universityis lower than the number of the expected research projects at the universities in the country. The purpose of this article is to identify obstacles to research from the viewpoint of faculty members of the Tabriz University. We used opinion surveymethod in this study.The population studied consisted of 690 full time faculty members of Tabriz university. We randomly selected 134 respondents for the survey. We developed a questionnaire, which included five parts: social – cultural, economical, organizational, educational & obstacles. Face validity of questionnaire was accepted by the faculty members. And instrument reliability was obtained 93 percent by Cronbach's alpha. These data were analysised by Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), T-test, Tokay, and Kruskal –Wallis statistics. Results have shown that according to the viewpoint of faculty members, all five categories are considered the obstacles to researche activities. They have identified economical and personal obstacles are the least important obstacles.Furthermore, this study has revealed significant relationships between viewpoints of faculty members and gender, ranking, courses, faculty and performance responsibility; however, there is no significant relationship between viewpoints of faculty members and their service records. Finally, suggestions are given for decreasing their researches activities obstacles.