COUNSELING CENTER
COLLEGE PARK MARYLAND
University of Maryland
Origins of Publications
in Student Personnel
Journals
Terence J. Tracey, Ralph D.
Raphael, Lydia Y. Minatoya,
Russell D . Miars , S . Ann
Peabody
Research Report #2‑82
COUNSELING CENTER
UNIVERSITY OR MARYLAND
COLLEGE PARK MARYLAND
Terence J. Tracey, Ralph D.
Raphael, Lydia Y. Minatoya,
Russell D. Miars, S. Ann
Peabody
Research Report #2‑82
The
existence of a formal body of literature is one of the defining characteristics
of a profession. Thus, publication of scholarly work in professional journals
is an important component of professional identity. As such, publication
deserves to be acknowledged and rewarded.
Kuh
and Bursky (1980) studied the Student Personnel literature and found that the
University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) ranked first in number of
Duplications. The present study modified and extended the methodology used by
Kuh and Bursky, to examine relative contributions within the faculty and staff
at UMCP. The findings suggest that the Counseling Center has been the most
productive agency on the U14CP campus for publication in the Student Personnel
literature; producing more than three times the publications of any other
department. The Counseling and Student Personnel Services Department (CAPS) has
been the second most productive department. The Counseling Center more often
contributed empirical studies while the CAPS Department more often contributed
articles of a theoretical nature. Limitations and implications are discussed.
2
A
necessary component of any profession is the dissemination of knowledge and
information among its practitioners. The existence of a formal body of
literature is also one of the defining characteristics of any profession. Thus,
publication of scholarly work in professional journals is an important part of
professional identity, and such efforts should be reinforced and recognized.
Kuh
and Bursky (1980) studied student personnel journals to see which institutions
contributed the most to the literature in the field of counseling plus student
personnel. They found that the University of Maryland (UMCP) was ‑ranked
first in terms of number of publications produced. The UMCP faculty and staff
in the field of student affairs have good reason to be proud of their
contributions to the field. The purpose of the present research project was to
recognize the publication records of the UMCP individual departments, both
academic and service‑oriented, that published in student affairs
journals. In addition, the specific type of publication, i.e., research or
theory, produced by each department was studied.
The
methodology used by Kuh and Bursky (1930) was adopted for this study. All
manuscripts (excluding hook reviews, letters‑to‑editors, and
editorials) published in the student personnel literature from 1970 to 1978,
inclusive, and having at least one author from UMCP were included in the
sample. The specific journals examined were* The Journal of College Student
Personnel (n=34), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators
Journal (n=4), and the Journal of the National Association of Women Deans,
Administrators, and Counselors (n=15). In addition, articles in the Personnel
and Guidance Journal that related to student personnel in post‑secondary
institutions were included (n=14). Each manuscript was coded for content type
and for the author's departmental affiliation. Unlike Kuh and Bursky (1980) who
gave equal weight
3
to all contributors or multiple author articles,
each article was given a value of one. If there were two authors to a given
article, each received h credit instead of a whole credit as Kuh and Bursky
did. Because individuals at UMCP can have affiliations with several different
departments, it was decided to allocate authorship to department by the
percentage of departmental funding. For example, if a person were a single
author of an article and half budgeted in the Counseling Center and half
budgeted in the Counseling and Personnel Services Department (CAPS), both the
Counseling Center and the CAPS Department would be given k credit each. If the
author was a student and the article was based on a thesis/ dissertation, the author's
credit was given to the academic department where he/she was affiliated. The
single credit per article weighting system was employed since the publications
themselves and not the number of authors per article were considered the
important variables. Consequently, each article had even weight instead of each
author. The latter change, funding classification, was used as the most
equitable way to distribute credit since there was so much overlap of
departmental affiliation by subjects in this study. The assignment of one
credit per article and classification according to funding were the only
deviations from the methodology used by Kuh and Bur sky (1.980)
The
present study determined which articles to consider as pertinent to student
affairs in accordance with the decision rules used by Kuh and Bursky (1980).
Each article was assigned to one of four manuscript .categories as follows (Kuh
& Bursky, 1980, 388)0
1. If the thrust of the article was a new conceptualization of student affairs, an identification of issues of problems of concern to the profession, or a statement of a position on a current issue, the article was assigned to the "philosophical/theoretical" category.
4
2.
If
the article reported the results of hypothesis‑related inquiry (research)
or used inquiry techniques to estimate the relative merit or efficacy of a
particular program (evaluation), the manuscript was classified under the
"research/evaluation" category. For the most part, these articles
were data‑based in the traditional sense.
3.
If
the article defined a substantive area of interest to student affairs
professionals and presented conclusions based on an extensive search and
consideration of previously disseminated information, the manuscript was
assigned to the "review of literature" category.
4.
If
the article was essentially a description of a student service or a student
affairs program on (a) given campus(es) and did not report a detailed
assessment of the efficacy of the respective service or program, the article
was classified under the "program description" category.
All articles used in this study fell into one of the
four above categories.
The
data obtained by the above coding, departmental source, and type of article
were charted and examined for differences.
The division of publications across the different departments/offices involved in student affairs are presented in Table 1. The Counseling Center accounted for the majority of publications from UMCP (60%) with the Counseling and Personnel Services Department (CAPS) being second (18I). In the majority of the journals surveyed, the staff of the Counseling Center published more articles than the other offices/departments. The number of articles of each
5
type for each department is presented in Table 2. The predominant article was research‑based
(67%) while 30% tended to be of a theoretical nature. The faculty members of
the CAPS department published more of the theoretical articles, while most of
the Counseling Center articles had an‑ empirical research/evaluation
orientation as defined by Kuh and Bursky (1980).
Insert Table 2 About Here
Discussion
The Counseling Center is the most productive department at the UMCP campus with regard to publication in student personnel literature. Without the publication record of the Counseling Center staff, it appears that the number one national ranking attributed to UMCP by Kuh and Bursky (1980) would not emerge. Much of the Counseling Center's publications are empirical. Given that many counseling centers do riot stress research activities, the Counseling Center and its staff deserve to be lauded for their productivity and contribution to the student personnel profession.
Based
on the examination of the breakdown of type‑of publication by department,
it is apparent that different departments can contribute to the professional
literature in different ways. The CAPS Department and the Counseling Center of
UMCP appear to publish different types of scholarly work. A much higher
proportion of the CAPS Department's publications tended to be of a
philosophical or theoretical orientation: This type of publication is very
valuable to the profession; theory‑based articles can spark many
different
6
research projects. Perhaps the CAPS Department's
academic orientation and the Counseling Center"s service orientation
contribute to their different emphases in scholarly activity.
There
are several limitations to this study. The intent of the project was to
recognize and reward departments for publications in the professional journal
literature of student personnel. In order to quantify the data, the
publications were divided up by department according to the funding of the
author. At UMCP though, a number of faculty and staff have affiliations in
several departments; many of these affiliations are non‑budgeted. One
example of this non‑budgeted affiliation is those Counseling Center staff
who were completely funded by the Counseling Center and also had department
affiliation as non‑funded faculty. Another example is those faculty who
were fully funded by their academic departments and also held non‑funded
Counseling Center Associate appointments. These non‑budgeted affiliations
were not counted in the study. Since the non‑budgeted affiliations were
difficult to assess quantitatively, their effects on the statistics can not be
stated with any confidence. Due to the criterion
used in assigning credit for publications, some departments may not have
evidenced the strength of publications or. contributions of staff that they may
feel is accurate. Also, quantity of research publications is only a rough
measure of contributions to the field. The different types of publications
described require different resources and efforts, and they do not lend
themselves readily to comparisons on the basis of quantity. Perhaps other more
qualitative measures of comparisons, e.g., differential weighting for number of
times an article is subsequently cited, should be analyzed, too. Another
limitation, also evident in prior research in this area, is that this study did
not account for inequities in staff size. Differential staff size either among
institutions or departments within an institution bears some relationship to
the potential amount of publication.
7
Yet attempting to establish percentage rates, for this study particularly, was not feasible due to the substantial frequency of non‑budgeted departmental affiliations and our inability to quantify such affiliations.
8
Kuh
D. G., & Bursky, M. Knowledge dissemination by publication in student
affairs: Who publishes what where? Journal of College Student Personnel, 1980,
5, 387‑393
9
|
Table 1:
Departments of Origin of University of Maryland Student Affairs Publications |
||||||
|
JOURNALS |
|
|||||
|
|
JCSP |
NASPA |
P & Gja |
NAWDAC |
Total % |
|
|
Counseling Center |
20.67 |
1 |
6.78 |
8.43 |
36.88 |
60 |
|
CAPS |
3.93 |
0 |
4.09 |
3 |
11.02 |
18 |
|
Student Affairs |
2.5 |
1 |
0.5 |
1.67 |
5.67 |
9 |
|
Psychology Department |
0 |
0 |
1.4 |
0 |
1.4 |
2 |
|
Other |
4.5 |
2 |
0.2 |
0 |
6.7 |
11 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
31.6 |
4 |
12.97 |
13.1 |
61.67 |
|
|
% |
51 |
7 |
21 |
21 |
|
|
|
# of Articles Included |
34 |
4 |
14 |
15 |
67 |
|
|
Non UM Authors |
2.4 |
0 |
1.03 |
1.9 |
|
|
a
includes only articles dealing with student personnel in post secondary institutions
b
exclusive of Counseling Center staff
10
|
Table 2: Types of
Student Affairs Publications From Different Departments of Origin at the
University of Maryland |
|||||||
|
|
Publications |
||||||
|
|
Counseling Center |
CAPS |
Student Affairs |
Psychology Dept. |
Other UM Dept. |
Total |
% |
|
Research |
32.27 |
2.93 |
1.67 |
0 |
4.5 |
41.4 |
67 |
|
Philisophical/Theoretical |
4.19 |
8.09 |
3.5 |
0.4 |
2.2 |
18.3 |
30 |
|
Program Description |
0.5 |
0 |
0.5 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
|
Literature Review |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
|
Total |
36.88 |
11 |
5.67 |
1.4 |
6.7 |
|
2 |