Asian/Pacific Librarians Career Choices: A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

This is a mixed method study of Asian/Pacificlibrarians career choices related to leadershippositions. The statistical analyses are based ondata from 91 librarians in survey Q1 distributedto 600+ CALA and APALA members. Thecorrelation, prediction of association, cross-tabbing,and ANOVA tests were applied to the survey.The result shows that the leadership position iscorrelated with number of years worked in thelibrary profession, number of publications,number of voluntary job changes, and nationalprofessional association’s involvement. Therewas a suggested correlation between leadershippositions and additional advanced degrees andover half of librarians with a doctoral degree arein chief librarian positions. The study also nullifiesthe hypothesis that achieving leadership position is less likely for first generation immigrants orimmigrants who did not receive k-12 orundergraduate education in the North America.In addition, the differences in professional,community, and political involvement areexamined among professional librarians,supervising librarians and chief librarians.The comments from the quantitative surveyQ1 contain rich data which can’t be interpretedby existing statistical methods. The Q1 commentsbecame the first section of a follow-up qualitativestudy using situation coding and subjectperspective coding method. A separate qualitativesurvey Q2 was sent to 12 Asian/Pacific chieflibrarians only. Eight chief librarians completedQ2 covering biographical information andin-depth questions on perceptions of leadershipachievement gap among Asian/Pacific Americanlibrarians. Comparison of comments of Q1for professional librarians and Q2 for chieflibrarians suggested many similar themesemerged. The triangulation from differentAsian/Pacific librarian population validatedthe finding.