How Does Your Department’s Garden Grow? With Chairs’ Help, You Can Know!

Five years ago, ASA published How Does Your Department Compare? A Peer Analysis from the AY 2000-2001 Survey of Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Sociology (a.k.a. 2003 Department Survey).

Sociology departments now want more recent comparative data, so if you are an academic chair, we will need your help to provide data on your department for the AY2007-2008 survey.

The 2003 Department Survey publication was the most comprehensive source of survey data on graduate and undergraduate sociology departments ever. The new survey will update the 2000-2001 survey and add new elements. We have talked with chairs, as well as relevant ASA task force and committee members, to identify the important issues for department chairs and ASA bodies.

The department survey is conducted by ASA’s Research and Development (R&D) Department, with field work by the Indiana University Center for Survey Research. Structured to permit peer institution comparison, its purpose is to provide the academic sociology community with information about, for example, the characteristics of departments and their parent institutions, faculty, and salaries. (At www.asanet.org, you can download the AY2000-2001 survey on the “Research and Stats” webpage; see “Free Downloads”.)

More than 1,000 academic department will soon receive an ASA email informing them how to participate in this important effort undertaken for the community. We urge your department to participate because you will want and need the resulting comparative data. With your cooperation, we expect to publish the results by this time next year.

We anticipate posting the survey online in March 2008. Watch for the notice on where to find it, if you represent a sociology department or a joint or interdisciplinary department that awards bachelor-level or higher sociology degrees. Chairs who participate early (in time to be included in the preliminary data release at the August Annual Meeting Chairs’ Breakfast) will receive a modest “thank you” from ASA (a 10 percent discount at the ASA Bookstore).

To make the survey maximally useful after the 2007-08 data are analyzed, the R&D Department will offer an individualized service to departments that request a comparison with their peer institutions.

Something Old . . . and Something New

The 2007-08 survey will retain signifi- cant portions of the earlier survey to permit comparisons across years. For example, we expect to include information about joint departments with criminology/criminal justice so that we can gauge the growth or decline of such departments. But the survey will also contain new questions (e.g., about disabilities of students and professors, challenges to academic freedom).

Comparability Across Time Departments want data across these ASA surveys to be as comparable as possible in order to identify trends. But in 2006, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education was revamped, so decisions need to be made about whether we use the old or new classifications. The new Carnegie classification also now includes subcategories for two-year colleges, a first in the classification’s history. While the 2007-08 ASA survey is limited to departments that offer a bachelor’s degree or higher, we hope to be able to include two-year colleges in future years. The complexity of doing so precludes this for the current survey. The survey results will be disseminated on CDs and online. Meanwhile, your colleagues are relying on you to participate, so be alert for the new survey. We have attempted to update the department contact list with the current chair, but we ask those who receive the email notification to pass it on the current head of the sociology program.