QualRep: Qualität von sozialwissenschaftlíchen Studiengängen und Reputation von Studienstandorten aus Sicht von Professsorinnen und Professoren

01/10/2013 to 30/09/2016

The central point of the study is the question, to what extent universities with different traditions and focus areas succeed by building up an image as an extraordinary educational establishment. Another question to be answered is among which conditions study programmes are recognized as excellent. The process of these questions can only be achieved with a combination of three methodological approaches (analyses of data bases and documents, online survey and workshops with experts

Traditionally, universities define themselves as the conjunction between research and teaching, which they call their main assignments. They can be seen as two complementary duties, otherwise they can compete with each other, because of bounded seasonal, human and physical resources (see Jacob & Teichler,2011). The research study tries to answer the question, to which extent individual social scientific faculties at different academic locations are able to get top-class performances in research and teaching, or how far a concentration on one of these main assignments of universities are preconditions to get top-class performances.
So the project shows reference points to three research areas: importance of reputation in teaching on an individual level and the renown of courses of studies on an institutional level, compatibility of research and teaching and a comparison between academic locations, university departments, and types of universities, regarding their specific research and teaching culture, based on the characterizations and typologies. The focus is on social scientific courses (sociology, political science, educational science, psychology, economic sciences).With a multilevel methodical access we pursue the goal to get a typologisation of institutions and institutes in regard to their particular research and teaching intensity for each subject. The typification is accompanied with a critical analysis of performance and capacity of evaluations based on indicators of research and teaching by expert interviews. There will be a quantitative online evaluation with the professors of each particular institution and subjects grounded on the indicator based classification of the institutions and the expert interviews. In analogy with the acquisition of the research reputation of scientific institutions, we picture additionally the teaching reputation of locations and university courses. Following to this, it has to be clarified with (i.a.) a multilevel analysis to what extent the institutional membership of individual professors can be an explanation for the accruement of variance in external ratings and the consulted criterions. Furthermore it has to be clarified how far systematic connections between teaching reputation and research and teaching profiles (based on quantified indicators) become visible.
The results and interpretative approaches will be validate communicative in workshops with the representatives of the individual subjects.