What’s New

Revised June 2, 2008

Jim Voytuk gave a presentation at the Association of Institutional Research meeting in Seattle on May 28^th, 2008 about the current status of the report.

Charlotte Kuh gave a presentation at the December 2007 CGS Annual Meeting about the methodology of ratings and the rollout of the report.

Report Release. Report release is scheduled for September 2008.

Survey of Program Quality. A prototype version of the Survey of Program Quality has been posted. It and its protocol have received approval from The National Academies Institutional Review Board. An expanded description of the rating questionnaire is available in the Rating and Rankings section. Rollout of the survey will begin on April 2. The deadline for return is May 11, 2007.

Faculty questionnaire pre-population specifications and deadlines. The file specifications for pre-population of the faculty questionnaire are now included on the questionnaires page. Please note that the batch data file sent to MPR must include the MPR ID numbers assigned to the faculty. Institutional Coordinators should contact their MPR Liaisons to receive IDs as well as the format requirements for their submissions. This file is provided only for the convenience of those who wish to prepare for this submission. To be eligible to be raters, faculty must have submitted their questionnaire by February 22, 2007. Faculty who do not want to be raters have until April 1, 2007.

All questionnaires are now finalized.

Please also see the questionnaires page for all other material related to IRB approval.

A comprehensive FAQ has been posted with general clarifications about faculty classification, dissertation service and the allocation formula, as well as specific questions sorted by category. The questions on the previous FAQ page are also included in this document.

Decisions regarding issues raised during the various IC Meetings have been posted and are arranged by questionnaire and topic.

There is a new section on procedures; it provides revised deadlines and a more detailed explanation of procedures than had been previously posted. These have been revised as of 1/31/07.

The fields and subfields in the taxonomy have been finalized.

The Faculty and Student Questionnaires for the study have been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the National Research Council (NRC). Copies of the introductory material describing the procedures for maintaining confidentiality for each questionnaire are available at the introduction to faculty and student questionnaires. The faculty and student questionnaires will be finalized shortly and will be posted with the appropriate introductions. The NRC has also received IRB approval for the wording that will be used to ensure confidentiality when collecting faculty gender, citizenship, and race/ethnicity information from the institutions. Please click here to view the NRC IRB Approval and the IRB Review Form

The list of participating institutions has been posted. As of December 31, 2006 there are 226 institutions participating in the Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs. The study will include program data for over 5000 programs.

A tentative timetable for the study has been revised as of 1/31/07.

Many have asked whether the study will include ratings and rankings. A simple answer is: yes, it is required by our charge. We understand, however, that the overall quality of a doctoral program is multi-dimensional and that a strictly ordered ranking misrepresents the varieties of ways that programs achieve quality as well as the varieties of attributes that potential students seek in a doctoral program. Thus, we propose to approach the rating task in a variety of ways. Read more about rating and ranking.

For further information, please contact the study director, Dr. Charlotte Kuh (ckuh@nas.edu) or 202-334-2700.