2008 Faculty Work-Life Survey
In fall 2008, AdvanceVT conducted its second Faculty Work-Life Survey, a follow up to an initial survey in spring 2005. The purpose of both surveys was to assess faculty perceptions of their overall job satisfaction and of various attributes of the work environment at Virginia Tech. A link to the on-line survey was sent via email to all full-time instructional and research faculty at Virginia Tech, with several follow-up reminders sent over the course of a few weeks. A total of 700 tenured and tenure-track faculty responded to the survey, representing a response rate of 53%. In 2005, 810 faculty members responded to the survey for a response rate of 59%.
Within the Faculty Work-Life Survey, groups of questions are combined to form “scales” representing constructs of interest regarding faculty work-life. Scales are used in order to create more valid and reliable measures of topics of interest compared to using single question items. All scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s alpha (i.e., greater than 0.70), which measures the correspondence in responses across the question items in a scale. For analyzing and portraying the survey data, responses across all question items for a scale are aggregated to represent that scale.
Most questions in the survey were answered on a 4-point scale where 1=strongly disagree, 2=somewhat disagree, 3=somewhat agree, and 4=strongly agree. Some questions were “reverse written” such that lower ratings are desirable (as opposed to higher ratings); these questions were reverse-coded prior to analysis so that for all items and all scales, higher values are desirable. Mean responses higher than 3.0 reflect positive perceptions (“somewhat agree” and “strongly agree”).
Preliminary findings were presented at the January 12, 2009 conference co-sponsored by AdvanceVT. Initial findings indicate that faculty job satisfaction and perceptions of diversity and equity improved from 2005 to 2008, but women, blacks, and Hispanics still have less positive views than men and Caucasian faculty. A comparison of responses by gender and ethnicity was presented to the Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity on May 4, 2009.
Initial Findings: April 2009 Newsletter
Diversity Related Findings: August 2009 Newsletter
Contact information
For more information on the 2008 Faculty Work-Life Survey, please contact the AdvanceVT Assessment Director, Dr. Elizabeth Creamer, or email advancevt@vt.edu.