Scholarly Productivity and Impact of School Psychology Faculty in APA‐Accredited Programs

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to conduct a normative assessment of the research productivity and scholarly impact of tenured and tenure‐track faculty in school psychology programs accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). Using the PsycINFO database, productivity and impact were examined for the field as a whole and by faculty rank and gender between 2005 and 2009. Results of our study reflected considerable variability in scholarly impact and productivity. For example, on average, school psychology faculty published slightly more than one refereed journal article per year, with productivity rates ranging from zero to eight articles per year. Similar variability in results was observed for scholarly impact. Results of this study also revealed no significant differences in productivity and impact by scholarly rank. Significant differences were observed for gender, however, with higher productivity and impact for men than women. A secondary objective of this study was to rank the most productive and impactful faculty by total authorship credit, number of publications, and number of citations, and to examine the relationships among these different rankings. Implications and limitations are discussed.

The research impact of school psychology faculty

“…The most recent survey of publications found that the number of papers was positively skewed with many faculty publishing few papers and a few faculty publishing many papers (Grapin et al, 2013). A similar skewed distribution was found for the number of citations.…”

“…1 and 3). Grapin et al (2013) did not consider years of experience nor rank and found significant differences between male and female school psychology faculty members in favor of males, but the amount of variance explained by sex differences was small (≈2-4%). Other studies of academic psychologists have found that seniority or rank accounted for most of the difference in male-female research productivity (Duffy et al, 2011;Nosek et al, 2010).…”

“…Following this advice, the h index values found in Tables 2 and 3 should not be used in isolation to judge an individual school psychologist's research productivity. Although many quantitative measures of research productivity are highly correlated (Duffy et al, 2011;Grapin et al, 2013;Nosek et al, 2010), each accounts for unique variance and should be integrated with peer review and other diverse indicators when considering individual merit.…”

Research productivity and academics’ conceptions of research

“…Firstly, studies of factors that contribute to research productivity have intensified within academic disciplines and across countries with increasing emphasis on how it should be developed (e.g. Serenko and Bontis 2004;Grapin et al 2013). Secondly, and relatedly, there has been an emphasis on the contribution of doctoral students to research productivity (Boud and Lee 2009).…”

Content and impact of articles published by school psychology faculty

“…Scholarly productivity is one of the most critical considerations of success for faculty in many universities, with an increased focus not only on the quantity of peer‐reviewed publications but the quality of those publications (Joy, ; McCleary, Aspiranti, & Henze, ). Infrequent publication or a majority of publications located in low‐quality journals can lead to a denial of tenure and decreased professional opportunities (Grapin, Kranzler, & Daley, ; Shaw & Glaser, ). Prolific scholars are often among the most widely recognized and well‐respected in their field, thereby demonstrating the effect that scholarship has on academic status, reputation, or prestige.…”