Academic ideologies and styles of research among academic researchers

Abstract

This article focuses on the extent to which styles of research could account for academic ideologies, concerning both faculty and student affairs, among academic researchers in sociology, psychology, political science, and education. The hypothesis maintains that researchers in all four fields who favor styles of research which compete successfully are likely to take a conservative attitude toward student and faculty affairs. In contrast, researchers who favor styles of research which compete less successfully are likely to take an attitude favoring changes. The results confirm the hypothesis mainly among faculty in psychology and very little among faculty in other fields. The data are based on a secondary analysis of data collected by Ladd and Lipset in their 1975 “Survey of the American Professoriate.”