Key Findings

• The quality of research produced by staff is closely aligned with their seniority in the tertiary education sector, with staff of higher academic rank achieving higher research quality.
• Changes made to the Performance-Based Research Fund Quality Evaluation assessment system to acknowledge the special circumstances of new and emerging researchers would appear to have had the desired effect – new and emerging researchers had an equal likelihood of attracting research funding for their tertiary education organisation compared with their more experienced colleagues.
• Some subject areas that require or engage in professional training and are relatively new research disciplines in the New Zealand tertiary education sector had research performance that was on average lower than other subject areas.
• Although a higher quantity of submitted research outputs was associated with higher research quality, it was not the key factor driving variation in research quality.