APSA Survey of Departments

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Departments

We know how much you value having access to current data on the profession—including key issues such as the labor market, teaching loads, enrollments, and departmental policies—and the ability to compare your institution with peer groups. This information is crucial whether you are a faculty member, department officer, or graduate student.

APSA is collecting this data from departments now. You can help in this process by encouraging your department chair and/or officers to participate and help us to better understand trends in the discipline today.

Each department chair received an email containing instructions on how to access and complete the survey. They can access the survey by logging in (using login boxes above). For questions regarding about the survey, please contact Bahram Rajaee at surveys@apsanet.org or call (202) 483-2512.

The Survey of Departments is part of APSA’s broader data-gathering initiatives regarding the discipline. The following table illustrates how all these pieces will fit together and be rolled out over the next calendar year:

SURVEY COMPONENT	ROLL-OUT DATE
Faculty Roster	Ongoing (via DSPonline)
Departmental Characteristics & Enrollments	Spring 2009; Fall 2009; annually in the fall thereafter
Salaries	Spring 2010; annually in the fall thereafter
Graduate Placement	Summer 2009; annually in the summer thereafter

Covering the 2007-2008 academic year, this online survey uses cutting-edge technology to provide respondents with advanced benchmarking and analysis capabilities. Responses will be carried forward into future surveys, requiring less effort down the road to update departmental information. All respondent departments will have free access to the results, which can help you to answer inquiries by colleagues, peers, and administrators like:

How does your academic department stack up in terms of faculty workloads?
What trends are occurring in the discipline in faculty hiring, turnover, and policies?
How does undergraduate and graduate education vary across institutions?

The survey has been designed to answer these and other questions about the current state of the discipline of political science—questions department heads and officers respond to frequently. Click here for a factsheet on the survey program.