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A Guide to the Methodology of the National Research Council Assessment of Doctorate Programs (2009) / Chapter Skim
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3 Ratings in Specific Dimensions: The Dimensional Measures
Pages 11-13

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From page 11...
... diversity of the academic environment. Each of the dimensional measures begins with the measures relating to one dimension of doctoral program performance, applies the weights from the faculty survey about what program characteristics contribute to quality, and then constructs a range17 of rankings for each program based on this dimension of the data, taking into account variability in the data and in the choice of raters.
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From page 12...
... Research activity is the dimensional measure that most closely tracks the overall measure of program quality, because in all fields, both the direct measure -- based on abstract faculty preferences -- and the regression-based measure put high weight on these measures. • Student support and outcomes -- This measure combines data on the percent of students fully funded in the first year, the percent of students completing their degrees in a given time period, time to degree, placement in academic positions (including academic postdoctoral positions)
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From page 13...
... These weights, by broad field, are shown in Appendix F What is interesting about the dimensional ratings is that, with the exception of the research activity measure, they produce program rankings that are quite different from the overall ratings.
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  • research activity
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  • doctoral programs

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  • individual doctoral

  • average citations
  • faculty survey
  • measure relates
  • activity dimensional
  • error associated

  • variable values
  • nrc faculty
  • values due
  • assigning category
  • average weights

  • program performance
  • program rankings
  • produce program
  • variable value
  • holding grants

  • program variables
  • overall measure
  • usual measures
  • error term
  • average publications


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