How Do Gen Z View Research? A Text Mining Analysis of Academic Essays

This study explores how Generation Z students perceive research by applying text mining techniques to their written reflections. A total of 111 tertiary students from a state-funded higher education institution in the Philippines submitted essays describing their views on research. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used to identify dominant themes, while a context-aware version of the Bing lexicon was applied for sentiment analysis. The LDA modeling revealed five key themes: Preparedness and Awareness, Support and Time Needs, Research Process and Effort, Researcher’s Role and Knowledge Development, and Information Synthesis and Output. Sentiment analysis showed that 93.7% of essays expressed positive sentiment, with positive words such as learn, help, and understand occurring more frequently than negative terms like stress or difficult. These findings indicated that Gen Z students hold generally affirmative attitudes toward research, recognizing its relevance, rigor, and developmental value. The results are consistent with existing studies that highlight Gen Z learners’ preference for real-world relevance, skill-building, and meaningful academic engagement. This study emphasized the importance of supportive and purpose-driven research instruction in sustaining student motivation and participation in academic inquiry.