Research Productivity in Kinesiology Across Institutions with Different Carnegie Classifications

Background/Purpose: Research productivity is important currency for those in academia, with expectations for research productivity increasing –perhaps across a range of institutional types – in recent years. Concurrently, calls for more interdisciplinary research have been advanced in the academy. Kinesiology is not exempt from these trends. For five decades kinesiologists have been encouraged to engage in more research, especially interdisciplinary research. Yet, it is unclear how well this call has been answered. In an attempt to capture the growth of interdisciplinary research in kinesiology, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between interdisciplinary research (i.e., disciplinary to discipline-less) and kinesiology units on the basis of their Carnegie Classification of Institutions in Higher Education^™.

Method: For the years 2008-20012, a stratified-random sample of journal articles (n = 116) were selected from 10 different interdisciplinary-oriented (based on their mission statements) kinesiology-focused journals. The sample was limited to articles with a corresponding author located in the United States.  Articles were coded on the basis of their degree of interdisciplinarity using Lattuca’s (2001) interdisciplinary typology. Each corresponding authors’ institution was then coded using the Basic Carnegie Classification system. Using a subset of the data, acceptable inter-rater reliability (κ = 0.79) and intra-rater reliability (κ = 0.85) were obtained for the coding procedures. Chi-square test of independence, with effect sizes (Cohen’s ω) and Bonferroni correction, were used to assess the strength of the observed relationships.

Analysis/Results: The majority of research for all institution types was disciplinary-focused versus interdisciplinary (χ² = 82.98, p <0.001, ω = 0.85). Research universities classified as “very high” in research production had the most research (χ² = 284.8103, p < 0.001, ω = 1.57). However, there was no difference between “large” master’s universities and research universities with “high” research productivity in of overall research productivity (χ² = 0.7143) or interdisciplinary research (χ² = 0.2762).

Conclusions: Despite increased research expectations and resources across all levels of higher education, “very high” research universities are still the largest producers of research. In addition, the majority of research is disciplinary-based, despite the increased calls for more interdisciplinary research.  The lack of a significant difference between “large” research universities and “large” master’s universities could reflect increasing research expectations at different types of institutions. However, faculty at research universities may also be publishing in more specialized journals. These results provide faculty and administrators a contemporary glimpse into the dynamic environment of research productivity in kinesiology.