Summary

This report used data from the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) Quality Evaluations to analyse the factors associated with the likelihood of university academics being promoted between 2003 and 2006. The study found that:

• Staff with higher levels of research quality had a greater likelihood of being promoted.
• Staff with higher levels of submitted research outputs had a greater likelihood of being promoted.
• While research quantity decreased in importance as a factor at higher academic ranks, research quality had an increasingly important relationship to the likelihood of promotion at more senior academic ranks.

This report uses data from the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) Quality Evaluations to analyse whether there is a relationship between higher research quality and the likelihood of being promoted to a higher academic rank in a university. The analysis applies logistic regression to the PBRF unit record data to isolate the effects on promotion of research quality from the effects of other factors, such as age.

This analysis is important as a recent study by Gibson et al. (2008) found that the association between the research quality and the academic rank of academic economists was lower in 2007 compared with 1999. In addition, they found that the quantity of research had a greater degree of association in 2007. Gibson et al. suggest that, if this is also the case in other academic disciplines, it would imply that there are low private benefits from improving research quality. Over time, that could undermine the main objective of the PBRF – which was to raise the average quality of research.

This analysis set out to test Gibson et al.'s findings using PBRF data. It shows that there is a statistically significant association between higher research quality and a higher likelihood of academic staff in universities being promoted. Also, higher research productivity appears to be associated with a higher likelihood of being promoted, particularly at lower academic ranks (ie at lecturer level, more than at senior lecturer and associate professor levels).

Although the results of this study cannot determine whether the association between the quality of research and academic rank has lessened over the last decade, as was suggested by Gibson et al., the findings in this study at least suggest that research quality remains an important contributing factor to whether or not academic staff were promoted following the introduction of the PBRF.