Posted by As you can read in the previous post, we studied the impact of team diversity on the competence of this research team. Let’s start with the main diversity parameters we measured.
The parameters describing the diversity of the team were as follows:
- university position – the team included 4 people employed as assistant professors, 5 as university professors and 4 as professors,
- there were 4 women and 9 men in the team,
- the average length of service was 22 years, however, the standard deviation of length of service was as high as 11 years, the minimum length of service was 6 years, and the maximum was 45 years; the above figures give a picture of a team very diverse in terms of the age of its members; at the same time, the following ranges of length of service were adopted for further analysis – up to 10 years (2 people), 11 to 20 years (4 people), 21 to 30 years (4 people), over 30 years (3 people),
- self-assessment in terms of preferred research process – 1 person preferred acquiring resources (process 1), 5 people preferred conducting research (process 2), 5 people preferred publishing (process 3), and 2 people preferred commercialization of research results (process 4),
- self-assessment in terms of how they compare to other academics in the discipline – 1 person perceived their competence to be below average in the scientific discipline, 6 people considered their competence to be average, 5 people perceived themselves to be better than average, and 1 person perceived themselves to be much better than average in the scientific discipline.
Below are the answers to the first two research questions.
The first research question, how the average competency gaps of team members were shaped according to their positions, can be answered as follows. The average competency gap for employees in the position of assistant professor was as high as -0.49, which means that these employees were on average 12.25% less competent than their competency benchmark assumed. Employees in the position of professor fared slightly better, but also badly in this regard. Their average competency gap was -0.40, meaning they were worse than their assumed competency level by an average of 10%. In contrast, surprisingly high competencies in the surveyed team were held by employees in the position of university professor. They were higher on average by 0.52 points (13%) than the assumed optimal competence profile.
The answer to the second research question, how the average competency gaps of team members for each competency were shaped by gender, can be formulated as follows. Generalizing, men in the research team showed a negative competency gap of -0.50 on average, which was 12.5% worse than the competency benchmarks. It can be said that, on average, they met the competency benchmarks 87.5% of the time. Women, on the other hand, conversely, exceeded the benchmark by 0.12 points, which means that they were on average better than the benchmark by 3%. Comparing the competency levels of men and women, it can be concluded that the women in the surveyed research team were on average 15.5% more competent than the men. Of course, these are average results, showing the only certain trends in the survey team.
In the next post you will find the answers to the last 3 research questions.