Indicators of successful submissions to the law and social science program of the national science foundation

Law & Society Review, 1998 by Hosch, Harmon M, Oliveri, Matthew W

Because the LSS Program spans so many disciplines, it was impossible to use department prestige ratings as a predictor. Rankings across departments and across years could not be presumed to be equivalent. In order to explore differences among institutions that could be comparable across disciplines and meaningfully related to institutional zeitgeist with respect to extramural funding, the Carnegie classification system was used (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 1994). This system categorizes institutions by level and number of degrees offered. In addition, within the set of institutions offering the doctorate, those with high emphasis on research are divided from those with lower priority. The research institutions are also subdivided by the number of dollars in federal support they receive annually.

LSSP data revealed that most proposals come from Research I institutions4 (N= 800; 56% of the total). This is not surprising because these institutions have a culture of pursuing extramural funding and of rewarding those who seek and secure such support. The second highest proportion of proposals emanated from research centers (11.0%; N= 157). Interestingly, small liberal arts colleges are also represented to some extent (2.9%, N= 41). Despite the pressures of large teaching loads and a reward system that does not put great emphasis on extramurally funded research, some faculty still choose to pursue sponsored research.

Both Research I and II institutions are above average in their success rates (31.6% and 34.4%, respectively). Interestingly, Doctoral II (21.7%) and Masters II (25%) institutions were more successful than were Doctoral I and Masters I institutions (11.4% and 20.8%).

Finally, research centers are relatively successful in earning awards (38.2%). Indeed, PIs from these centers were more likely to receive funding than were faculty at research universities.

Department

The LSS Program is a broad-based, multidisciplinary program. It is not surprising, therefore, that proposals come from investigators from many theoretical and methodological backgrounds. The academic departments in which these investigators work serve as proxies for their disciplinary interests. Table 1 shows the frequency of proposal submission by academic department. The majority of proposals come from faculty members in political science, sociology, law schools, psychology, and criminal justice departments. Yet, as can be seen from the table, proposals come from a great number of disciplines such as history and statistics, and these investigators tend to be relatively successful in earning awards.

6. Multiple Predictor Analysis

To examine the simultaneous effects of several predictor variables on the probability of success, logistic regression analysis was employed. Predictors were PI gender, PI experience, PI academic department (dummy coded), and PI's institution type (dummy coded). In addition, whether the PI was a member of LSA at some time during the years spanned by this study was included. The dependent variable was the log odds of earning an award. Overall, the set of predictor variables was reliably predictive of success rate, (chi)^sup 2^ (13; N= 1,428) = 125.16, p