An Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States Biological Sciences (1982) / Chapter Skim
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II. Methodology
II. Methodology
Pages 15-34
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From page 15... ...
Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Both the planning committee and our own study committee have given careful consideration to the types of measures to be employed in the assessment of research-doctorate programs. The committees recognized that any of the measures that might be used is open to criticism and that no single measure could be expected to provide an entirely satisfactory index of the quality of graduate education.
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From page 16... ...
For nine of the measures data are available describing most, if not all, of the biological science programs included in the assessment. For seven measures the coverage is less complete but encompasses a large fraction of the programs in 2C.
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From page 17... ...
Reputational Survey Results4 08 Mean rating of the scholarly quality of program faculty. 09 Mean rating of the effectiveness of the program in educating research scholars/scientists.
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From page 18... ...
Other measures, such as those relating to university library size and support for research and training, describe some of the resources generally recognized as being important in maintaining a vibrant program in graduate education. Measures derived from surveys of faculty peers or from the publication records of faculty members, on the other hand, have traditionally been regarded as indices of the overall quality of graduate programs.
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From page 19... ...
Unfortunately, reliable information on the subsequent employment and career achievements of the graduates of individual programs is not available. In the absence of this directly relevant information, the committee has relied on four indirect measures derived from data compiled in the NRC's Survey of Earned Doctorates.6 Although each measure has serious limitations (described below)
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From page 20... ...
It is estimated that this matching process provided information on the graduate training and employment plans of more than 80 percent of the FY1975-79 graduates from the biological science programs. In the calculation of each of the four measures derived from the NRC survey, program data are reported only if the survey information is available on at least 10 graduates.
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From page 21... ...
It also should be noted parenthetically that unemployment rates for doctoral recipients are quite low and that nearly all of the graduates seeking jobs find positions soon after completing their doctoral programs.9 Furthermore, first employment after graduation is by no means a measure of career achievement, which is what one would like to have if reliable data were available. Measure-07, a variant of measure 06, constitutes the fraction of FY1975-79 program graduates who indicated that they had made firm commitments for employment in Ph.D.-granting universities and who provided the names of their prospective employers.
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From page 22... ...
The evaluators were selected from the faculty lists furnished by the study coordinators at the 228 universities covered in the assessment. These evaluators constituted approximately IS percent of the total faculty population -- 12,167 faculty members -- in the biological science programs being evaluated (see Table 2.3~.
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From page 23... ...
A total of 1,026 faculty members in the biological sciences -- 56 percent of those asked to participate -- completed and returned survey forms (see Table 2.3~. Two factors probably have contributed to this response rate being approximately 15 percentage points below the rates reported in the Cartter and Roose-Andersen studies.
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From page 24... ...
As can be seen in Table 2~3, there is some variation in the response rates in the six biological science disciplines. Of particular interest
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From page 25... ...
Each program was considered by an average of approximately 85 survey respondents from other programs in the same discipline. The evaluators were asked to judge programs in terms of scholarly quality of program faculty, effectiveness of the program in educating research scholars/scientists, and change in program quality in the last five years.is The mean ratings of a program on these three survey items constitute measures 08, 09, and 10.
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From page 26... ...
For all four survey measures, standard errors of the mean ratings are reported; they tend to be larder for the lesser known nr^mr~mc she f'=~..~`, ~F I_ sponse to each of the survey items is discussed in Chapter IX. Two additional comments should be made regarding the survey activity.
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From page 27... ...
Data from another NRC survey suggest that the actual fraction employed outside academia may be significantly higher. The committee recognized that the inclusion of nonacademic evaluators would furnish information valuable for assessing nontraditional dimensions of doctoral education and would provide an important new measure not assessed in earlier studies.
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From page 28... ...
Since these awards have been made on the basis of peer judgment, this measure is considered to reflect the perceived research competence of program faculty. However, it should be noted that significant amounts of support for research in the biological sciences come from other federal agencies as well, but it was not feasible to compile data from these other sources.
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From page 29... ...
PUBLICATION RECORDS Data from the 1978 and the 1979 Science Citation Index have been compiled22 on published articles associated with research-doctorate programs in the biological sciences. Publication counts were associated with programs on the basis of the discipline of the journal in which an article appeared and the institution with which the author was affiliated.
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From page 30... ...
Moreover, these measures do not take into account the differing sizes of programs, and the measures clearly do depend on faculty size. Although consideration was given to reporting the number of published articles per faculty member, the committee concluded that since the measure included articles by other individuals besides program faculty members, the aggregate number of articles would be a more reliable measure of overaI1 program quality.
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From page 31... ...
Emus, a standardized value of 30 corresponds with a raw value that is two standard deviations below the mean for that measure, and a standardized value of 70 represents a raw value two standard deviations above the mean. While the reporting of values in standardized form is convenient for comparing a particular program's standing on different measures, it may be misleading in interpreting actual differences in the values reported for two or more programs -- especially when the distribution of the measure being examined is highly skewed.
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From page 32... ...
Thus, the reader is urged to take note of the raw values before attempting to interpret differences in the standardized values given for two or more programs. The initial table in each chapter also presents estimated standard errors of mean ratings derived from the four survey items (measures 08-111.
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From page 33... ...
-- i.e., the observed difference in mean ratings is too large to be plausibly attributable to sampling error.3~ The final chapter of this report gives an overview of the evaluation process in the six biological science disciplines and includes a summary of general findings. Particular attention is given to some of the extraneous factors that may influence program ratings of individual evaluators and thereby distort the survey results.
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