Research, publication productivity, and applied social science

Abstract

The recent growth of applied research creates a new context for studying the correlates of publication productivity among academic social scientists. This paper reports a study of the individual and structural characteristics related to publication productivity among academics in one applied field: social work. In a national sample of social work educators, the primary predictors of publication are tenured status (vs. untenured), attainment of a doctoral degree (vs. masters), and primary interest in research (vs. teaching). The article emphasizes the similarities between social work academics and other academic social scientists, and highlights the links between research interest and training, applied research, and publication productivity.

Publication Productivity of African-American Social Work Faculty

“…However, the direction of the relationships between the structural factors and productivity found in the study is consistent with those found in other studies (Faver & Fox, 1986;Fox & Faver, 1985;Smith et al, 1985) that have examined the effects of similar structural factors using recent measures of productivity. Furthermore, when a recent measure of productivity was used, and structural and individual-level variables were controlled simultaneously, individual factors were found to exert stronger effects (Faver & Fox, 1986;Fox & Faver, 1985;Keskin, 1977). The use of a recent measure of productivity, therefore, may not be as paramount as selecting more relevant structural variables to be included in regression models.…”

“…Less attention has been given to the effects of career age, primary interest, and editorial board membership. Aside from the effects of career age, consistent findings exist: Faculty whose primary academic interest is research and who have been members of editorial boards tend to publish more than faculty whose primary academic interest is teaching and who have not been members of editorial boards (Faver & Fox, 1986;Fox & Faver, 1985;Green et al, 1990). Career age has been found to be both positively (Green et al, 1990) and negatively (Faver & Fox, 1986;Fox & Faver, 1985) related to productivity.…”

“…Whereas Smith et al (1985) and Jayaratne (1979) have found faculty size to be important in determining publication rates, Faver & Fox (1986) and Fox & Faver (1985) have found faculty size to be a nonsignificant and relatively weak correlate. Moreover, whereas some investigators (Jayaratne, 1979;McNeece, 1981;Thyer & Bentley, 1986) have found that the presence of a doctoral program contributes to higher publication rates, others (Faver & Fox, 1986;Fox & Faver, 1985) have found no significant effects. Furthermore, the presence of a graduate program (schools with master's or doctoral programs) has been shown to affect higher publication rates on some measures of productivity (Robbins et al, 1985).…”

“…The objective of this literature review was to highlight variables that have been examined in at least two or more studies. These variables can be bifurcated into two categories: (1) individual-level characteristics and (2) structural characteristics (Faver & Fox, 1986). Individual-level characteristics are attributes that are exclusively associated with the individual academician.…”

Chilly Environments, Stratification, and Productivity Differences

“…How productivity is best defined, among this sector of workers, is difficult to quantify and measure. Most measure academic productivity in terms of article productivity (see Valian 1998;Davis and Astin 1990;Wanner et al 1981;Rosenfeld 1987;Faver and Fox 1986). Further, among faculty, years of education and degree are not that variable as most tenured or tenure-eligible faculty at large research institutions have the PhD which is the terminal degree in their field.…”