Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015 (ICPSR 36586)
Version Date: Nov 4, 2016 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Christine Wolff, Ithaka S+R;
Alisa B. Rod, Ithaka S+R;
Roger C. Schonfeld, Ithaka S+R
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36586.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
The sixth cycle of the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey queried a random sample of higher education faculty members in the United States to learn about their attitudes and practices related to research, teaching, and communicating. This survey cycle is the first to include medical faculty. Respondents were asked about resource discovery and access; research topics and practices; research dissemination, including data management and preservation; instruction and perceptions of student research skills; and the role and value of the academic library. Demographic variables include the respondent's age, gender, primary academic field, how many years the respondent has worked at his or her current college or university, how many years the respondent has worked in his or her field, and whether the respondent primarily identifies as a researcher, teacher, or somewhere in between.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
None
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- Additional information about this collection may be found at the Ithaka S+R Web site.
Study Design View help for Study Design
The updated version of the 2015 questionnaire was designed to condense items and remove items that are no longer valuable for tracking purposes, and shorten unnecessarily long instructions for response scales. Qualitative feedback from a pre-test of faculty strongly indicated that the length might be a major deterrent in previous iterations of the survey. This update was implemented in order to reduce the length of the survey and eliminate unnecessary respondent burden. Removing the long instructions and appending the scale with labels does not affect responses in general. In a pilot test of the new design, respondents were less likely to drop-off and more likely to complete the questionnaire. For additional information regarding study design and methodology, please refer to the Ithaka S+R Web site.
Sample View help for Sample
The population for this survey includes faculty members from all of the arts and science fields and most professions at colleges and universities in the United States that grant a bachelor's degree or higher. The investigators selected a sample of faculty members at four-year colleges and universities from MDR's list affiliated with any of the following types of institutions: Baccalaureate Colleges - Arts and Sciences; Baccalaureate Colleges - Diverse Fields; Master's Colleges and Universities (small programs); Master's Colleges and Universities (medium programs); Master's Colleges and Universities (large programs); Doctoral/Research Universities; Research Universities (high research activity); and Research Universities (very high research activity). Within these Carnegie Classes, investigators sampled from the same range of fields and disciplines as the 2012 sample. For this cycle, the investigators added medical faculty members to the survey population for the first time. The medical faculty members were sampled from a separate population. Medical respondents are included in the disciplinary analysis but are excluded from all measures of aggregate response, so that appropriate aggregate comparisons can be drawn against previous survey cycles. The survey was fielded in fall 2015 to a sample of 145,550 faculty members, and investigators received a total of 9,203 responses, for an aggregate response rate of 6.3%. For additional information regarding sampling, please refer to the Ithaka S+R Web site.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Faculty members at 4-year colleges and universities in the United States covering the major arts and sciences fields, and several additional major professional fields.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
6.3%
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2016-11-04
Version History View help for Version History
- Wolff, Christine, Alisa B. Rod, and Roger C. Schonfeld. Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015. ICPSR36586-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-11-04. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36586.v1
2016-11-04 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Weight View help for Weight
Response patterns varied to some degree by discipline, and to adjust for this the Principal Investigator has weighted the aggregate results from the sample proportionally to match population parameters. Data are weighted by the "ACADEMIC_FIELD" variable; weights are contained in the variable "WTS".
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These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?