Inspired by the RAAAP project and initial results, a follow on survey has been developed by some other research administrators from Research Services at the University of Kent. Dr Sarah Tetley and Dr Helen Leech have devised a questionnaire to “capture more data on peoples’ experiences of part time working in order to engage in an informed debate within the Profession about whether part time working is implicated in gender imbalances amongst the Profession’s leadership” – looking at North America and the UK. Members of ARMA, CARA, NCURA, and SRAI are being encouraged to complete the questionnaire. You can read more about the rationale for the research here, and if you will be attending the INORMS2018 congress in Edinburgh then you can hear more about it there on Wed 6th June 2018.
INORMS Endorses RAAAP
At the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) 2018 Conference in Edinburgh, the INORMS Council endorsed the RAAAP survey and is forming a task force as part of the INORMS Working Group to review the questionnaire and collect longitudinal data. It is hoped that by the end of 2018 a revised version will be distributed to members of even more RMA associations around the world. This will then be followed up every two years in order to create a picture of Research Management and Administration around the world over time.
RAAAP Datasets Available
The Research Administration as a Profession (RAAAP) datasets are publicly available on a CC-BY 4.0 licence. During 2016 a questionnaire survey of research managers and administrators from around the world resulted in 2,691 responses, from individuals in 64 countries– yielding up to 222 data points per individual.
The data have been checked and de-identified. As part of the data cleansing process the data were broken into a number of datasets. Overall there are 15 datasets (see table below), however, the RAAAP Main Dataset contains all of the closed (as opposed to open-ended) responses. For example, this dataset includes information about individual Research Manager and Administrators (RMAs) and their seniority, how long they have been in the field, the areas of research administration that they work in, the type of institution they work for and how many previous roles they have had, the skills they use in their role, their education, professional certification, and other demographic information.
Also of interest could be the Career Dataset, which includes open-ended responses from RMAs on why they joined the profession and why they stayed. All the datasets contain the AnalysisRegionOfEmployment variable to allow for possible regional analysis (Canada, Europe (excl UK), Oceania, Rest of World, UK, USA).
Associated with the datasets are descriptions of the data and how they were cleansed and de-identified. Note that the datasets are SPSS .sav files.
If you are interested in using the datasets but are having difficulty, then please do contact us and we will try to help if we can.
| RAAAP Dataset | Outline of contents |
| Main | The non-text (coded) questionnaire responses |
| Career | Mainly text responses on why people became and remained as RMAs |
| AnyComments | Free text comments about the questionnaire |
| AnyIssues | Free text issues / problems with the questionnaire |
| CurrentlEmployment | Free text about the current employment situation |
| CurrentRoleLevel | Free text about the seniority of the current employment |
| Employer | Free text about the current employer |
| EmploymentHistory | Free text about the employment history |
| HighestQualArea | Free text about the subject area of highest academic qualification |
| InstitutionCharacter | Free text about whether the employer is, eg public or private |
| InstitutionType | Free text about whether the employer is, eg research intensive |
| NumOtherDetails | Free text about other type of previous employment |
| OrgDeptDetails | Free text about the position within the organisational structure |
| ProfDevDetails | Free text about other sorts of professional development undertaken |
| ProfQualDetails | Free text about other sorts of professional qualifications undertaken |
Paper and Data
We are pleased to announce that the first academic paper based on the RAAAP data “Research Administration around the World” has been accepted for publication in the Research Management Review journal – it will appear later this year. On a related note, the underlying data sets have now been checked and are ready to be released – tomorrow! We will post the links to the data sets on 31st May 2018.
Research Management – book launched
Two members of the RAAAP Advisory Group, Jan Andersen and Susi Poli, together with Kristel Toom and Pamela Miller have written a book Research Management: Europe and Beyond – available now. It is sure to be of interest to those interested in RAAAP.
“Research Management: Europe and Beyond addresses the myriad responsibilities related to research management and administration. The book incorporates narratives from those working in the field to provide insight into the profession. The book also offers a unique perspective on the topic by incorporating global perspectives to address the growing interdisciplinary nature of research collaboration.”
RAAAP Mentioned on Fundermentals Blog
The RAAAP project gets a mention on the Fundermentals blog in the post on “The Highs of the Hybrid: Bridging the Researcher-Administrator Divide” by @frootle. As a disclaimer I should mention that Frootle works in the same office as one of the RAAAP Co-PIs (Simon). His post focuses on those who combine the role of research administrator and active researcher. Of the 2,691 RAAAP responders, 100 reported as having a joint research administrator and researchers (full time), and a further 10 holding that joint position on a part time basis. Overall it is not too common, just 4.1%; as compared to 78.7% reporting as solely research administrators, and a further 14.9% who combine research administration with another (non research) role.
RAAAP Scoops NCURA Award
The poster that we presented at the 59th Annual NCURA conference scooped the first prize! We are humbled and honored to be recognized by our peers. Our discussion group session was also well received and we received at lot of really useful feedback.
Data Cleansing Complete
After months of data cleansing and checking, we can finally announce that the data from the RAAAP survey is ready for analysis. We will be undertaking some analyses ourselves for presentations and papers before releasing the data later this year for others to use. There are a total of 2,691 responses which we have divided into 15 separate datasets (each with a subset of the variables for all 2,691 responses) in order to preserve respondent anonymity, they can only be linked by AnalysisRegionOfEmployment. The MainDataset has 268 variables (although some are computed from others so there are not that many independent variables). There is also a CareerDataset with 12 variables on why people joined and stayed in the profession. An EmployerDataset with 8 variables on the characteristics of respondents employers, and a further 12 datasets each with just two variables: AnalysisRegionOfEmployment and one of the free text responses.
Data Cleansing Complete
At the 31st May Advisory Group meeting, it was reported and agreed that (apart from textual analysis they may result in some additional back coding) the data analysis has been completed. Further work is still needed before the data sets can be shared with others, but it does mean that in the coming weeks we will be able to publish some basic frequency charts of some data, to give a flavour of what is to come.
Some draft data were also presented at the recent CARA (Winnipeg), SARIMA (Windhoek) and EARMA (Malta) conferences by various members of the Advisory Group, with an ARMA session scheduled at the UK conference next week (Liverpool). The first major event with the final stable data set will be the NCURA conference (Washington DC) in August.
There have also been recent articles in the NCURA Magazine (XLIX No.3 p44-45) and Research Professional (login required).
Project Extended
Due to the huge response rate and incumbent data cleansing and analysis, a 12 month no-cost extension to the project has been granted. We will now finish in January 2018. During 2017 there will be various dissemination events (see Project) and articles, and the final datasets will be made available for others to conduct their own analyses in 2018.
