To Resist, Acquiesce, or Internalize: Departmental Responsiveness to Demands for Outcomes Assessment

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, higher education has received the assessment movement with a substantial amount of skepticism. The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of political science's responsiveness to assessment reform pressures using neoinstitutional theory. The influence of public status, institutional type, and accreditation region on curricular planning and assessment responsiveness is tested. Using an index to measure the responsiveness of a stratified, random sample of program descriptions at 241 U.S. institutions, results show relatively low levels of curricular planning and assessment responsiveness by political science departments. Institutional type and accreditation region are correlated with level of responsiveness.

Keywords:

• assessment
• institutional responsiveness
• outcomes

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Ryan Kohler who provided essential assistance in the early stages of this research. We also wish to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Charles J. McClain who first intrigued us with this topic two decades ago when he commented in a reflective moment on assessment reforms, “I Don't Think Compliance Will Be Enough.”

Notes

*p < .05.

***p < .001.

***p < .001.

Notes. *MSCHE is the accrediting agency reference dummy variable is thus omitted in all the models.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

***p < .001.

Note

As suggested by a reviewer, we also tried another control variable, university ranking, to determine if reputation affected vulnerability to assessment pressures. We used the U.S. News and World Report rankings of universities from 2012. For purposes of robustness, we added this variable to the multivariate models using three different coding procedures and none of them yielded major changes to our analysis. In the first attempt, university rankings were simply included. The variable ranged from 1–238. The variable was insignificant and none of the other variables changed. In the second attempt, the sample was divided between national and regional universities. The rank variable was not significant in either sample. However, one change was present. The NWC accreditation group was no longer significant in the national universities sample but it did remain significant in the regional university sample. The final coding procedure for university ranking included both regional and national universities. The national universities maintained their original ranking and the regional universities had 100 points added to their score. This procedure was used because graduation rates and ACT scores of the best regional universities appear similar to those national universities ranked around 75–80. This procedure also yielded an insignificant ranking variable and no significant change in the other variables.