Kevin T. Mahoney

Research Productivity in Select Psychology Journals, 1986–2008

ABSTRACT Examination of research productivity has a long history in psychology. Journals across psychology have periodically published research-productivity studies. An analysis of institutional research productivity was conducted for 17 journals published by the American Psychological Association for the years 1986–2008. This analysis implemented two methodologies: one a replication and extension of G. S. Howard, D. A. Cole, and S. E. Maxwells (1987) method, the other a new method designed to give credit to psychology departments rather than only overall institutions. A system of proportional credit assured all articles with multiple institutions received credit. Results show that for the 23-year period, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was ranked 1st, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Overall, results showed both consistency and change across all journals examined. The authors explore the implications of these findings in the context of the current academic environment.

Research Motives of Faculty in Academic STEM Measurement Invariance of the Research Motivation Scale

The authors examined the psychometric properties of the Research Motivation Scale (RMS) in a sample of faculty members (N = 337) in university science departments. It was hypothesized that the RMS would evidence partial measurement invariance across tenure status and noninvariance across gender, given the different sociocultural factors (e.g., gender role bias) that regulate the research behavior of men and women. Gender was thus predicted to moderate the relations between the latent RMS factors and their defining items. Results of confirmatory factor analytic testing yielded support for the hypotheses, while post hoc probing of sources of noninvariance indicated that men and women differed mostly on measures of extrinsic reward and failure avoidance. Implications for motivation measurement and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career development are discussed.