ECPR-IPSA World of Political Science survey 2019

The baseline ECPR-IPSA World of Political Science survey (WPS-2019) was first launched by Pippa Norris in spring 2019. The study, conducted in conjunction with the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) and the International Political Science Association (IPSA), seeks to provide a representative profile of the political science profession across the globe. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The survey of the profession was designed to address several issues: • Firstly, what are the background characteristics, qualifications, and career profiles of political scientists employed in higher education in different cohorts, regions and countries around the world, such as terms of gender, work status, institutional affiliations, and academic rank? How has this changed in recent years? • Secondly, do political scientists living and working worldwide share common or divergent perceptions about their work roles, and thus the relative importance of teaching and mentoring, research and publication, university and professional service, and real-world policy impact? • Fourthly, how does the social diversity of political science vary and how do study and employment opportunities vary for groups in the profession? • Finally, how do colleagues evaluate developments in the profession, and what is thought to have been lost -- and what gained in recent years? Subsequent surveys are planned to build on this baseline in order to replicate and monitor developments, as well as adding new questions on key thematic issues. METHODS AND DATA The World of Political Science (WPS) surveys of the profession have been designed to gather information about the discipline, including the social background and work experiences of political scientists, their professional training, technical skills, and formal qualifications, as well as their role perceptions, methodological approaches, sub-fields of research, and perceptions of changes to academic life. The surveys provide the broadest geographic scope for any previous equivalent study in the discipline. The WPS-2019 questionnaire can be downloaded here in PDF format. Invitations asking political scientists to participate are widely distributed through social media notifications (Facebook, emails, and Twitter), the ECPR Newsletter list and IPSA lists, and through newsletters among several national associations (CPSA, PSA UK, Australian PSA, and the Russian PSA). All individual responses in the study are treated as anonymous and no identifiable personal data is collected in the survey. Data collected by the ECPR is treated in the strictest confidence, under the terms of the UK Data Protection Act and in accordance with the ECPR’s Privacy Policy. Technical queries should be sent to the Survey Administrator, ECPR’s Communications Manager, Rebecca Gethen [e-mail]. SAMPLE AND RESPONSE RATE For the WPS-2019 survey, 2,446 responses were collected overall, including from respondents who were studying or working in 102 countries and eight global regions, including North America (the US and Canada), Western, Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia-Pacific and continental Africa. (Unfortunately, too few data points limit reliable analysis of the profession in the Middle East and North Africa, where political science departments are also least likely to be well developed.) The dataset also allows analysis of national samples in several countries with many participants, such as in Italy (79), Australia (70), Russia (73), Canada (78), the Netherlands (87), Nigeria (116), the UK (238), Germany (246), and the United States (281). One important qualification to the survey should be noted, however; by tapping into ECPR and IPSA networks and email membership lists, the survey may potentially systematically over-represent political scientists who are already actively involved in these organizations, and thus most likely to be globalized, while under-representing colleagues who have not joined these international organizations. This potential bias was checked by examining the survey data which monitored how actively respondents said that they attended meetings of the ECPR, IPSA and their national association. The results suggest that the overwhelming majority of survey participants reported that they ‘Never’ or ‘Not very often’ attended the ECPR (70%) or IPSA (84%) meetings, while the majority (62%) said that they were ‘Fairly’ or ‘Very’ active in their national association meetings. Thus, the survey may overestimate the most internationally engaged scholars, but respondents are likely to provide a reasonably representative cross-section of the profession as a whole.