Life Cycle Productivity in Academic Research: Growth Curve of the Early Promising Scholars

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Division J Poster Session: Policy, Finance, and Economics

Abstract

We examine the personal factors, mostly age-related, affecting the research productivity of tenure track faculty in a Taiwanese research-oriented university. Covering a time series of 20 years, our dataset includes the individual research performance and other relevant covariates over their life cycle. The growth curve model designed for multilevel modeling of repeated measures is applied to capture the age effect. Our contribution to the thread of this literature is threefold. First, the faculty productivity following the quadratic function of age is confirmed. Second, the faculty's early academic achievement is associated with their later performance. Third, the research productivity of the early promising faculty is less affected by the schedule of reinforcement compared to their counterparts.

Authors

• Yuan Chih Fu, National Taipei University of Technology

• Sheng Ju Chen, National Cheng Chung University

• Shi Ming Huang, National Cheng Chung University