Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015 (ICPSR 36586)

Version Date: Nov 4, 2016

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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

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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.

Citation

Wolff, Christine, Rod, Alisa B., and Schonfeld, Roger C. Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2015. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-11-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36586.v1

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Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

None

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2015-10-12 -- 2015-12-04

Date of Collection

2015-10-12 -- 2015-12-04

Data Collection Notes

  1. Additional information about this collection may be found at the Ithaka S+R Web site.
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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

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

Cross-sectional

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

discipline (using variable DISCIPLINE), individual, academic field (using variable ACADEMIC_FIELD)

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Response Rates

6.3%

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Original Release Date

2016-11-04

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • 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.
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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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Notes