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Leading Professors: professorial academic leadership as it is perceived by ‘the led’ Quantitative survey findings Matt Homer Society for Research into Higher Education , February 3 rd , 20 12. Overview of talk The survey – what does it look like and how were respondents ‘recruited’?
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Leading Professors: professorial academic leadership as it is perceived by ‘the led’ Quantitative survey findings Matt Homer Society for Research into Higher Education, February 3rd, 2012
Overview of talk The survey – what does it look like and how were respondents ‘recruited’? Analysis – what methods we used? The sample – who responded? Select findings – what can we infer?
1. The survey - outline Consists of ~40 items in four main sections: https://www.survey.leeds.ac.uk/leading_professors
1. The survey – securing a sample University internal email distribution lists not generally available Publicising the survey link – learned societies etc (e.g. SRHE, BELMAS, Leeds) But this isn’t ‘representative’ at all Hence, ‘targeted’ emails Unsolicited individual messages using publicly available email sources (e.g. staff webpages) Random in the non-technical sense Laborious Estimated response rate ~30% (? )
2. Analysis Mostly descriptive (since non-random sample) Tables, graphs Keep hypothesis testing (‘does this differ by that?’) to a minimum. However, have done limited testing: Chi-square (differences in proportions), T-tests, ANOVA (differences in mean response across groups), More (?): regression – what influences this response?
3. The sample of respondents Total number 1,223 (cut-off 12.01.12) Next: How does the sample look in more detail…
Type of institution by gender No association between gender and institution type i.e. over-representationof pre-1992 institutions very similar by gender.
Subject or discipline • Graph shows subjects with at least 10 respondents: • Education heavily represented! • Business studies well represented – specifically targeted to create a large ‘lead/manage’ sub-sample – see later analysis • 68 fixed categories in all, plus 71 ‘other’ categories
Current job • Dominated by lecturers/senior lecturers (over 60%) • 69 ‘Other’ response categories including 8 heads of department
Job – grouped • Dominated by academics (74%) • Researchers (14.8%) • Teachers (3.7%) • Other (7.4%): • 69 categories • 8 department heads • 1 statistician(!)
Job – by institution type • Significant sub-group differences here: • A higher percentage of academics in post-1992 intuitions • A higher percentage of researchers in pre-1992 • National picture?
Job – by gender • Significant differences here: • A higher percentage of male academics • A higher percentage of female researchers • National picture?
Years in university sector • Mean 13.3, median 12, SD 8.3 • A good spread with positive skew: • there are a small number of respondents reporting high numbers of years in the sector – long tail – thereby pushing up the mean. • Problematic in terms of further analysis • Needs more work…
4. Select findings The professorial role 7. Please indicate your views on each of the following statements about the professorial role and its requirements. Do you think that a professor should: • Very strong agreement
Professorial role: Do you think that a professor should: • Significant differences here: • Females a little more likely to agree • Pre-1992s more likely to agree
Professorial role: Do you think that a professor should: • Some differences here: • Females a little more likely to agree • No difference between pre- and post-1992
Professorial role: Do you think that a professor should: • Significant differences here: • Females a little more likely to agree • Pre-1992s more likely to agree
System of professorial mentoring ? • Some differences here: • No gender difference • Pre-1992s more likely to agree • No Business studies ‘effect’
Individual mentoring by a professor? • No significant differences here: • Gender, institution type, current job or Business studies.
‘Excellent’ professorial leadership? • Some significant differences here: • No difference by gender • Pre-1992 more often • Teachers less often • Business studies a little less often (p~0.10)
‘Unsatisfactory’ professorial leadership? • Significant differences here: • Males more often • Pre-1992 more often – so more variation across pre-1992 institutions – previous slide • Teachers a little less often • No Business studies ‘effect’
Comparing views on ‘Excellent’ and ‘Unsatisfactory’ professorial leadership • Some significant differences here: • A bigger ‘gap’ in ratings for males – i.e. males more likely to report more varied experiences • Gaps in ratings consistent across pre- and post-1992 institutions 3=‘occasionally’ • Lower scores correspond to more frequent such experiences • Hence, more ‘Unsatisfactory’ experiences than ‘Excellent’.
Aspiring to be a professor • Significant differences here: • Males more likely to agree • Pre-1992 more likely to agree • Teachers less likely to agree • No Business studies ‘effect’
Professorial ‘professionalism? • Some differences here: • No gender differences • Pre-1992 a little more favourable • Researchers less favourable • Business studies less favourable
Summary • A weird but wonderful data collection methodology • Resulting sample large, but not particularly ‘representative’ • Hence need to take care with inferences • Could weight but probably wouldn’t make much difference • Some interesting overall findings e.g. not a lot of professorial mentoring going on, more ‘unsatisfactory’ leadership than ‘excellent’. • Some interesting sub-group differences e.g. staff in pre-1992 institutions have more varied experiences of leadership
Thank you… Questions/comments? m.s.homer@leeds.ac.uk