Faculty at work: Focus on research, scholarship, and service

Abstract

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in eight liberal arts and science departments from community colleges, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to research, scholarship, and service. The data came from a 1988 national survey of faculty. Gender, (sociodemographic), quality of graduate school attended, career age , and rank (career); self-competence and self-efficacy regarding research, scholarship, and service and percent time prefer to give to research, scholarship, and service ( self-valuations ); and institutional preference, consensus and support , and colleague commitment to research, scholarship, and service ( perception of the environment ) were entered into regressions. R 2 s were generally strong (.64 for liberal arts-I institutions) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation ( self-competence and -efficacy ) motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance. Sociodemographic and career variables did not explain appreciable amounts of variance.