| Rachelle Brooks
Association of American Universities & Univ of Maryland
Analyzing faculty scholarly activity across disciplines: Individual and structural influences on research processes and products
FINAL REPORT:
This examination of faculty research work offers a detailed analysis of the circumstances under which research is conducted at a variety of institutions. By distinguishing between research processes and products this study aims to provide greater clarity about the predictors of faculty scholarly activity. By exploring three different data sets spanning more than a decade, it offers some insight about change or stability in the research enterprise in higher education. Finally, through an in-depth examination of the humanities, it also helps to identify the research processes and products in these fields, which do not traditionally receive large federal grants, to observe how this may have changed over the last decade, and to connect patterns in funding with patterns in research products. The analyses aimed to drill down to the greatest level of specification possible, by disaggregating institution type, faculty with professorial ranks (full, associate, or assistant), and discipline, so that more subtle indicators of research activity, such as faculty attitudes and opinions or type of research engaged in could emerge as relevant indicators.
Overall, this study finds that research activity is widespread across higher education, but there is little uniformity in its conduct. Perhaps the only pattern observed throughout the analyses is one that is commonly known: faculty who are tenured or tenurable are more likely to produce peer-reviewed journal articles at all types of institutions. A great deal of variation by rank and institution-type was found when other research products were examined. A second general finding is that faculty define applied and curricular scholarship as research, but it is not often disseminated in traditional scholarly outlets. Faculty engaging in program and curricular research are significantly less likely to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Similarly, those doing applied work were often more likely to be producing books, monographs or reports.
These findings provide an empirical basis from which to evaluate longstanding critiques about the limitations of research measures used in large-scale assessments. A better understanding of the implications by disciplinary grouping or scholarly research emphasis when assessment measures ignore certain types of research products can further efforts to develop improved indicators of research activity and discourage inappropriate generalizations or policy decisions that yield from assessments.
The importance of this work extends far beyond the microcosm of a university's internal processes. Increasing state and federal demands for institutional accountability with respect to the quality and cost of educational programs are placing pressures on institutions to demonstrate how and how well resources are being spent. Missing from the current debate is recognition that faculty research activities are integrally related to both university expenses and the educational programs universities offer. The ability to articulate patterns over time in research funding or scholarly output can serve to address questions about the extent to which institutions serve their constituents in ways consistent with their missions.
The analysis of changes in research activity and funding over time, as was conducted for humanities disciplines, offers yet another perspective on faculty research. This analytic approach can provide insight into the possibility that unexplained changes in research activity over time might be attributable to forces external to universities. However, this attempt to move beyond a single cross-sectional analysis expands the current body of knowledge about faculty research processes and products and thereby can inform future scholars or data collection efforts. More studies of the scholarly work conducted on campuses, especially when they are able to draw on data reported directly by faculty, are needed to serve these multiple purposes and to better flesh out the predictors of research processes and products.
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