We're All Number One: Academic Productivity among Schools of Social Work

Examining the Ethical Utility of Social Work Program Rankings in the US: Are We Measuring One Thing and Selling Another?

“…In recent years researchers have found that reputation among social work faculty, and rankings of their respective programs, are positively related to research productivity (Green & Baskind, 2007;Green et al, 2006;Rothman, Kirk, & Knapp, 2003). These findings support more historical studies by pioneer researcher Jayaratne (1979) and others, all of which examined the positive relationship between scholarly productivity and reputation (Corcoran & Kirk, 1990;Thyer & Bentley, 1986).…”

“…If rankings are related to reputation and reputation to productivity (Corcoran & Kirk, 1990, Green & Baskind, 2007Green et al, 2006;Jayaratne, 1979;Rothman et al, 2003;Thyer & Bentley, 1986), and if productivity is related to infrastructure (Green & Bentley, 1994;Travis & Anthony, 2011), then what could be said about the direct relationship between infrastructure and ranking?…”

An Evaluation of the Scholarly Productivity of Doctoral Graduates

“…The data from the Corcoran and Kirk ( 1990), Thyer and Bentley ( 1986), and J ayaratne ( 1979) studies suggested a strong association between school productivity as measured by faculty publishing and doctoral education. In addition, they indicated that publication affects the 1 knowledge development effort of the profession as well as the career of the faculty member.…”

“…Thyer and Bentley also found that a large percentage (74%) of the most productive schools provided doctoral education. Corcoran and Kirk ( 1990) counted author affiliation in published articles appearing in 16 social work journals categorized into academic, agency, and mixed types. They examined the academic journals from 1977 through 1987 and the agency and mixed journals from 1977 through 1982.…”

“…Thyer and Bentley ( 1986), using a variation on Jayaratne's methodology, accumulated counts of faculty publications from 1980through 1985. Baker (1989 Corcoran and Kirk ( 1990) counted publications in a sample of seven academic social work journals from 1977 through 1987. These four measures offered sufficient variations in methodology, particularly the time periods covered, to provide multiple replications of the relationship between faculty and graduate productivity.…”