Survey on Promoting Success among UNL Faculty
Below you will find additional information about the Survey on Promoting Success among UNL Faculty pertaining to:
The Principal Investigators
Network Mapping and Analysis (Why are faculty names in the survey?)
Confidentiality
Data Security
The NSF Advance-IT connection
If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed within the content on this page, then please contact the Principal Investigators Christina Falci (2-3792; cfalci2@unl.edu) or Julia McQuillan (2-6616; jmcquillan2@unl.edu).
The Principal Investigators
Christina Falci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2006. Her broad research objective is to understand the social determinants of mental health and health risk behaviors. She is also developing an expertise in the methodology of Network Analysis. This methodological focus has expanded her substantive research interest into the sociology of organizations. The purpose of the Survey on Promoting Success among UNL Faculty is to explore the link between network structure and worker productivity and satisfaction. Research in non-academic settings shows that network structure is associated with worker productivity and perceptions of work environments, but to date there is no information if similar dynamics occur within an academic setting. For more information about network analysis please see the section below on Network Mapping and Analysis.
Julia McQuillan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Bureau of Sociological Research. She has been at UNL in the Department of Sociology since 1998. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. She is primarily a methodologist, therefore she collaborates with researchers on a variety of topics (e.g. juvenile delinquency, labor markets and wages, work stress and health outcomes). Her substantive research focus in the last few years has been on the social and behavioral consequences of infertility. She has long had an interest in the sociology of gender, and has collaborated with faculty in other disciplines (e.g. marketing, children’s literature, geography) to bring gender theory to shed light on unanswered questions.
Network Mapping and Analysis (Why are faculty names in the survey?)
A network mapping survey entails identifying the connections among people within a network, such as faculty within a department, college, discipline or university. A network connection can measure any form of interpersonal interaction occurring between two people in the network, such as communication, exchange, friendship, etc. Generally, network connections are measured by providing a list of names of all individuals within the network to participants in the study. Then, study participants are asked to indicate who they are connected to, to what degree and in what way. It is also possible to identify network connection by asking study participants to provide the names of individuals within the network with whom they are connected. When participants select or identify another person in the survey, they create a “tie” with that person. It would be impossible to create a network tie between two individuals within a network without using the names of the individuals in the network. We recognize that providing names and identifying interpersonal connections is personal and sensitive information. Please see the confidentiality section below where we describe in detail how your confidentiality and the confidentiality of the people you name will be maintained.
Upon measuring the ties among individuals within a network, network analysis is the statistical analytic technique used to describe patterns of ties among people in the network. Individuals are often connected to one another in numerous ways. Network analysis allows us to identify and describe the connections among individuals, as these connection patterns likely influence the perceptions and behaviors of individuals within the network. One purpose of this project is to determine whether the pattern of ties among faculty within, and across, departments relates to faculty job satisfaction and productivity.
Confidentiality
To make it easier for faculty to participate in the study, we have provided you with the names of the people in your department. We have also provided ways to add names of other faculty members for people who hold joint appointments and/or engage in activities with UNL faculty outside of their primary department. THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS ON CAMPUS WILL NOT HAVE ACCESS TO ANY FACULTY NAMES. The staff in the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) will convert this data so that each faculty member and each department will have a unique numeric code used for analyses and reporting (for example, fac001 and depart01). Only BOSR staff will have the link between codes and names, and this information will be secure. Using these alpha-numeric codes will keep all of the data confidential. SPECIFICALLY, FACULTY NAMES AND DEPARTMENTS WILL NOT BE PART OF THE DATA PROVIDED TO THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS. The investigators will only have access to coded data that allows us to see how many connections (ties) there are within and across departments among faculty, but we will not know who the faculty member is or in what department he/she resides. Furthermore, the principal investigators will take all necessary precautions to avoid deductive disclosure. In other words, if it is possible to identify individuals from a combination of their responses, then this information will not be made available in any reports. Finally, administrators on campus will not have access to the data.
Data Security
Our web server runs Debian Linux 4.0 64-bit. It has a static private IP address, which means it isn't accessible outside of the router connecting Bessey, Oldfather, and Burnett halls. Another Debian Linux server acts as a firewall, routing HTTP from the outside world to the web server. Both firewall and web server use gShield which creates a list of firewall rules using iptables to block all unnecessary ports. The firewall server runs Snort, an intrusion detection system. Both firewall and webserver also run portsentry, fail2ban, logcheck, tiger, and chkrootkit, which are security utilities for detecting problems. Logs from all servers are emailed to a private email address and checked daily. The webserver software is Apache2.2, the survey software is Limesurvey 1.70+, and data is stored in a MySQL 5.032 database, listening on the localhost only. Limesurvey has its own username and password. Two administrators only have the root usernames and passwords to both the firewall and web server. There are only two regular user accounts on the server, belonging to the system administrators. Usual precautions are taken regarding changing and length of passwords. All servers have automatic updates.
BOSR staff export data from the web server and store it on a Windows 2003 32-bit SP2 file server in private folders protected by NTFS security user permissions. Staff computers are connected to an active directory server, and thus all user accounts centrally controller. Access to private folders containing data is rigorously monitored and controlled. All workstations connecting to the file server as well as the file server itself have private static IP addresses. Workstations all run Windows XP SP2 and have firewall permissions set by group policy from the active directory server, and dropped connections to the firewall are logged.
All file servers are stored in a locked, dedicated server room in Oldfather Hall. The room is temperature controlled and has a motion-detector alarm directly connected to the UNL police. Two staff have a key to this room, as well as the police and building maintenance. All servers are kept logged off, and again, only two system administrators have the admin passwords to the file server.
Backups are performed hourly to hard drives on another Windows 2003 server, 64-bit, SP2 in a locked room in Oldfather Hall, protected with another alarm system. Two staff secretaries and two system administrators have physical access to this machine.
A monthly offline backup is also kept, stored on NTFS-encrypted USB drives. No over writing of old data is done, however when the drives are removed from service, which is generally done in a 3-year cycle before the drives can suffer failures, we use Eraser to delete all data from the disks. Should any drives fail before we can erase them, we store them permanently in a locked file cabinet in the secure server room. No off-site backups are currently kept.
Connection to the NSF Advance-IT Grant Application
The primary purpose of this project is to conduct original research that will be disseminated through scientific conference presentations and peer-reviewed journal publications. Because network analysis has not been done on academic departments that differ substantially from those of commercial business interests, there are innovative, substantive research questions that will be addressed by this project. In business organizations, several studies (Ibarra 1992; Ibarra 1997 2000; McGuire 2000; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne and Kraimer 2001; Bass 1985; Burt 1998) show that there are individual differences in network structure among male and female managers (independent of job title) and that these differences in connectedness within a network structure are related to job experiences. Professors differ substantially from business managers, and the structure of universities is substantially more decentralized than in business. Therefore, one purpose of this project is to determine whether network structures differ among individuals, and whether these differences are related to job satisfaction and productivity.
The results of the study also may be useful for another purpose. One of the principal investigators for the Survey on Promoting Success among UNL Faculty project is also a co-investigator for an NSF ADVANCE-IT (Institutional Transformation) proposal. The purpose of ADVANCE grants is "Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers (ADVANCE)" (Program Solicitation NSF 07-downloaded April 4, 2008: 582; http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07582/nsf07582.txt).
The UNL NSF ADVANCE –IT proposal is designed to support efforts to help UNL faculty better represent the full range of talent available, by reducing barriers to participation of underrepresented faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The proposed ADVANCE programs build on existing programs at UNL designed to foster success for all faculty and to grow the pool of talented applicants for UNL positions. Most of the planned ADVANCE program activities are open to all STEM faculty at UNL (men and women) and several are open to all faculty regardless of discipline.
If the UNL NSF ADVANCE grant application is funded, the current survey will provide useful baseline data to compare to subsequent surveys that are a part of the ADVANCE-IT project. For the ADVANCE project, faculty will be surveyed two additional times, in 2010 and 2012. All data collection will follow the confidentiality and data security guidelines described above. The ADVANCE surveys, compared to the current survey, will provide measures of changes in faculty connections as the program unfolds. If changes in network structures are associated with ADVANCE program elements, then important potential mechanisms of institutional change will been elucidated.
References on Network Analyses [Click here for PDF]
