A Survey of Students’ Attitudes to Big Data Analysis in Iranian Universities

Abstract

Today, with the emergence of new technologies and massive data, big data analysis has attracted the attention of researchers, industries and universities on a global scale. The present research aims to explore students’ attitude to big data analysis in different fields of study. The present cross-sectional study was conducted with students at different universities and fields of study in Iran. A questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire explored students’ attitude toward big data analysis. To this aim, 359 university students participated in the research. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The age of the students ranged between 25 and 34 years. 55.2% were female and 54% were economically active. 40.9% had a work experience of less than a year. The academic degree of the majority of participants was master’s degree. 93.9% of the participants believed that big data analysis was essential for the country. 43.2% maintained that big data mostly belonged to the communication industry. 28.1% perceived MATLAB useful software for analysis. 40.9% were familiar with the benefits of analysis. Engage in economic activities, less than 1 year of experience and studies for a Master’s degree showed to be significantly correlated with familiarity with the benefits of big data (p≤0.01). Such issues as high costs, managers’ unfamiliarity and lack of expertise and complexity were raised by the respondents. Considering the undeniable benefits of big data analysis, it seems essential to familiarize university students with these analyses through particular training courses, conferences and so on.