How to Cultivate Graduate Students’ Academic Interest and Aspiration? A Three-Level Meta-Analysis of 44 Empirical Studies from China and Abroad

This study aims to systematically synthesize empirical evidence on the factors influencing graduate students’ academic interest and aspiration. Academic interest and aspiration is regarded as a crucial intrinsic motivation that drives graduate students to engage in sustained academic research and pursue academic careers. However, previous empirical studies have reported inconsistent findings regarding the determinants of academic interest and aspiration among graduate students. To address these inconsistencies, this study conducts a comprehensive meta-analysis to quantitatively integrate existing research findings. Specifically, this research adopts a three-level meta-analytic model to synthesize empirical studies published between 2002 and 2025 that examine the relationship between various influencing factors and graduate students’ academic interest and aspiration. A total of 44 quantitative studies with an aggregated sample size of 203,446 participants are included in the analysis. The three-level meta-analysis approach is employed to appropriately handle the dependency among multiple effect sizes reported within individual studies. The study focuses on several major categories of predictors, including demographic characteristics and family background, individual comprehensive qualities, academic aspiration, academic environment, supervisor-related factors, and peer group influences. Effect sizes are extracted and transformed into correlation coefficients to estimate the overall relationships between these factors and graduate students’ academic interest. In addition, moderator analyses are conducted to examine whether the relationships between influencing factors and academic interest vary across different participant groups (e.g., master’s students versus doctoral students). The findings of this meta-analysis are expected to clarify the relative importance of different factors contributing to graduate students’ academic interest and provide empirical evidence for improving graduate education practices. Overall, this study aims to provide a systematic and quantitative synthesis of the existing literature and to offer evidence-based insights for fostering graduate students’ academic motivation, optimizing academic training environments, and supporting the cultivation of high-level innovative talents.