DOI: 10.3886/icpsr22700
title: Ithaka 2006 Survey of US Higher Education Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors
title: Archival Version

description: This study was conducted in order to contribute to community understanding of the attitudes and behaviors of higher education faculty members regarding online resources, the library, and related topics. This study, from 2006, builds upon similar studies performed in 2000 (by JSTOR) and 2003 (by Ithaka), and may be compared with data on many of the same topics gathered from librarians in 2006. This survey covers a wide range of topics, including the relationship between faculty and their campus library, faculty dependence on electronic scholarly resources for research and teaching, the transition from print to electronic for scholarly journals, faculty publishing preferences, e-books, digital institutional repositories, and the preservation of scholarly journals. Respondents were asked questions such as "How dependent would you say you are on your college or university library for research you conduct?" and "how many separate occasions have you used computer-based electronic resources, such as databases of academic journals, for your research or teaching?". This study also offers a descriptive overview of faculty attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and preferences. Demographic variables for faculty include age, gender, institution size, discipline affiliation, and number of books published.
description: The data was balanced on three characteristics using data supplied by Ithaka and the list sample purchased by Ithaka. The three characteristics are: size, discipline, and JSTOR customer status. The values of the weights follow: JSTOR customer -- Current/Non-Current: Current 92.1 percent, Non-Current 7.9 percent, Size: Very Small 10.5 percent, Small 34.4 percent, Medium 14.5 percent, Large 28.5 percent, Very Large 12.1 percent, Discipline: African Studies 0.58 percent, African-American Studies 1.08 percent, American Studies 0.18 percent, Anthropology/Archaeology 1.29 percent, Asian Studies 1.15 percent, Biology/Botany/Ecology/Zoology 6.80 percent, Business/Finance 10.91 percent, Chemistry 3.03 percent, Classical Studies 0.73 percent, Economics 2.75 percent, Education 6.41 percent, Engineering 7.13 percent, Geography 1.34 percent, Geology 1.07 percent, History/History of Science 2.78 percent, History of Art 1.56 percent, India Studies 0.12 percent, Latin American Studies 0.79 percent, Law 2.28 percent, Literature 3.95 percent, Mathematics/Statistics 8.33 percent, Middle East Studies 0.58 percent, Music 3.37 percent, Philosophy 2.35 percent, Physical Sciences 0.68 percent, Physics 1.64 percent, Political Science 1.99 percent, Psychology 6.43 percent, Public Health 0.75 percent, Public Policy/Health Policy 1.47 percent, Religion 2.07 percent, Slavic Studies/Russia 0.35 percent, Sociology 3.84 percent, Theater and Drama 2.82 percent, Women's Studies 1.36 percent, Other/No Answer 6.00 percent.
description: Response Rates: 9.4 percent
description: A total of 44,218 participants were selected via an "every nth" selection from a list of faculty members across the United States. Certain disciplines were over-sampled in order to allow analysis of subgroups of particular importance, with care taken to ensure that the over-sampling did not disproportionately effect overall results.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Ithaka 2006 Survey of US Higher Education Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors
description: Faculty members at United States colleges and universities.
description: mail questionnaireFor more information about the major findings, please see the Ithaka Web site.