Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between and among factors that have been identified in the literature to explain the variance in faculty research performance--psychological individual factors, cumulative advantage, reinforcement, and disciplinary norms. No study had previously incorporated the four explanations for variance in faculty research productivity in a single study.
In order to investigate this problem, the researcher utilized self-report data from the 1989 Carnegie Survey of faculty. Individual research performance of 4380 full-time, tenured and non-tenured faculty employed in Research Universities, Doctorate Granting Universities, Comprehensive Colleges and Universities, and Liberal Arts Colleges was studied by eight correlates of faculty research productivity. These research correlates were institutional affiliation, academic rank, discipline, tenure status, gender, the number of hours per week spent on research and/or scholarly activities, current engagement in scholarly work, and receipt of internal research support in the past twelve months. Four types of publication counts and the receipt of external research support were used as measures of research performance. Data analysis relied on descriptive statistics and stepwise multiple regression techniques.
Results of this study indicated rank and institutional affiliation were significant predictors
(p ≤ .1) for each of the five measures of faculty research productivity. Current engagement in scholarly work, tenure status, and the hours per week spent on research and/or scholarly activities were significant predictors <p ≤ .1) for four of the five measures research productivity. overall, levels of faculty scholarly productivity increased from Liberal Arts II colleges through Research I Universities, the rank of instructor through the rank of professor. non-tenured to tenured faculty, females to males, nonreceipt of internal research support, no engagement in such activity, and spending ten or less hours per week on research/scholarly activities through spending forty hours per week on such activities. Engineering faculty were the most productive in four of the five measures of research performance. Faculty in Biological sciences ranked second on three of the five measures of scholarly performance and Fine Arts faculty ranked last on three of the five research measures.
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