School of Education

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

School of Education

Overview of talk1. The survey – what does it look like and

how were respondents ‘recruited’?

2. Analysis – what methods we used?

3. The sample – who responded?

4. Select findings – what can we infer?

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1. The survey - outline Consists of ~40 items in four main sections:

Section Contents

Information about you Institution, gender, subject, career stage, HE experience

What is a professor? -- Your views

Nature of professorial role and which aspects are most important

Your experiences of professorial leadership

Numbers of staff and professors in dept., views on quality of professorial mentoring and advice

Phase 2 of our research Follow-up details for phase 2

https://www.survey.leeds.ac.uk/leading_professors

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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% (? )

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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?

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3. The sample of respondents Total number 1,223 (cut-off 12.01.12)

Characteristic Sample breakdown Interpretation

Type of institution

Pre-1992: 809 (66.1%)

Post-1992: 410 (33.5%)

Missing: 4 (0.3%)

Two-thirds from pre-1992 institutions

National figures ~ 51% ‘academics’ in post-1992s (HEFCE 2008/09) so pre-1992s over-represented in our sample

GenderMale : 587 (48.0%)

Female: 628 (51.3%)

Missing: 8 (0.7%)

Roughly balance male/female

Nationally ~ 44% female (HESA 2010/11) so females over-represented in our sample

Next: How does the sample look in more detail…

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Type of institution by genderNo association between gender and institution type

i.e. over-representation of pre-1992 institutions very similar by gender.

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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

101010121213141515151618191919192121212223232325303235

4248

6375

100220

0 50 100 150 200 250

Allied health professionals and studiesAnthropology

Theology, divinity and religious studiesApplied mathematics

LinguisticsSocial work and social policy & …

ChemistryArt and design

Communication, cultural and media …Electrical and electronic engineering

Mechanical, aeronautical and …Health services research

Earth systems and environmental …French

Geography and environmental studiesPhysics

Accounting and financeEconomics and econometrics

Nursing and widwiferyPolitics and international studies

ArchaeologyArchitecture and the built environment

SociologyEpidemiology and public healthEnglish language and literature

PsychologyComputer science and informatics

LawHistory

Biological sciencesOther

Business and management studiesEducation

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Current job

7

14

23

38

45

61

84

90

106

358

382

0 100 200 300 400 500

Principal research fellow

Research officer

Research assistant

Senior research fellow

Teaching fellow

Principal lecturer

Research fellow

Other

Reader

Lecturer/assistant professor

Senior lecturer/associate professor

• Dominated by lecturers/senior lecturers (over 60%)

• 69 ‘Other’ response categories including 8 heads of department

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Job – grouped• Dominated by

academics (74%)

• Researchers (14.8%)

• Teachers (3.7%)

• Other (7.4%): 69 categories 8 department heads 1 statistician(!)

45

90

181

907

0 200 400 600 800 1000

University teacher

Other

Researcher

Academic

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Job – by institution typeSignificant sub-group differences here:

• A higher percentage of academics in post-1992 intuitions

• A higher percentage of researchers in pre-1992

• National picture?

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Job – by gender

Significant differences here:

• A higher percentage of male academics

• A higher percentage of female researchers

• National picture?

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Years in university sectorMean 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…

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4. Select findingsThe 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

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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

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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

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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

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Some differences here:

• No gender difference

• Pre-1992s more likely to agree

• No Business studies ‘effect’

System of professorial mentoring ?

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No significant differences here:

• Gender, institution type, current job or Business studies.

Individual mentoring by a professor?

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Some significant differences here:

• No difference by gender

• Pre-1992 more often

• Teachers less often

• Business studies a little less often (p~0.10)

‘Excellent’ professorial leadership?

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‘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’

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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

• Lower scores correspond to more frequent such experiences

• Hence, more ‘Unsatisfactory’ experiences than ‘Excellent’.

3=‘occasionally’

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Aspiring to be a professorSignificant differences here:

• Males more likely to agree

• Pre-1992 more likely to agree

• Teachers less likely to agree

• No Business studies ‘effect’

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Professorial ‘professionalism?Some differences here:

• No gender differences

• Pre-1992 a little more favourable

• Researchers less favourable

• Business studies less favourable

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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

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Thank you…

Questions/comments?

m.s.homer@leeds.ac.uk