NAK DOCTORAL PROGRAM EVALUATION

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 General

 

Question:  What are the indices from the evaluation that are used to rank kinesiology doctoral programs?

There are two overall indices:

     1) Faculty data which contribute 66% to the overall score.

     2) Student data which contribute 34% to the overall score.

 

The breakdown of the weighting of these components are,

           Faculty Indices (66%)

                    Productivity 30%

                              Journal publications 15%

                              Books 7%

                              Chapters 5%

                              Nat/Intl invited/keynote Presentations 3%

                    Funding 22%

                              Federal research funds 12%

                              Non-federal research funds 8%

                              Internal grant funds 2%

                    Visibility 14%

                              Editor or section editor 5%

                              National Academy Kinesiology Fellow 3%

                              Other nat/intl fellowships 2%

                              Individualized and age-normalized GS h-index 4%

 

          Students Indices (34%)

                    Admissions Cumulative undergraduate GPA 5%

                    Graduate Assistant Support 13%

                    Doctoral publications 7%

                    Employment 9%

                              Postdoctoral positions 2%

                              Tenure-track employment in the field 5%

                              Other positions requiring doctoral degree 2%

 

 

Question:  How and when will the results be released?

 

The results will be released at the 2023 NAK Annual Meeting.  Subsequently the results will be posted to the NAK website (http://nationalacademyofkinesiology.org/).

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 Faculty Data

 

 

Question:  We had a faculty member join us for the first time during the fall 2022 semester.  How do I count this person in the system?

Count all scholarly work that the person has done for the variables listed for the years 2020-2022 even if they did not work in your department for all of that time period.

 

 

Question:  We have a person in a post-doctoral position.  How does this person count in the faculty listing?

The person does not count.  The evaluation is looking at full-time, tenured or tenure-earning faculty members in your program.

 

 

Question:  A faculty member joined us two years ago but held a faculty position at another institution prior to coming to our department.  How do we count that person?

Count all scholarly work that the person has accomplished during the period 2020-2022.

 

 

Question:  Our college Dean holds a faculty appointment in our unit.  Should I count the Dean as a member of the faculty?

Administrators may be counted as long as they meet the faculty inclusion criteria listed on Page 3 of the “Instructional Guide.”

 

 

Question:  Three of our faculty members co-authored a peer-reviewed paper.  Does this count as three publications or one publication?

This publication is counted only once.  The variable (Journal Articles) is unique publications from the program.

 

 

Question:  I have a faculty member who was a Fellow in NAK during the 2022 year but has let their membership lapse.  How do I count that?

You would not include this person for this item (NAK Fellow), as they were not an active NAK Fellow in 2022.

 

 

Question:  How do I include a faculty member who joined our faculty in Spring 2023?

Do not include this faculty member, only include faculty who were members of the faculty during calendar years of 2020, 2021, and 2022.

 

 

Question:  How do I include an emeritus faculty member?

Do not include this faculty member, only include faculty who were members of the faculty for Fall 2022.  At least 25% of the faculty member’s base salary must come from support that is provided by the academic unit sponsoring the doctoral program.

 

 

 

Question:  A faculty member had a paper accepted for publication in the fall of 2022, can this be included as a publication?

The crucial criteria here is the date of publication for the final archival version of the publication.  Consider, what in two years time will the year of publication be for this publication?  If that date is after 2022 it would not be counted in this review.  While accepted, has the paper been published?  Some journals make papers available on-line (often not formatted or with page numbers) prior to publication, in this case this publication would not count.

 

 

Question:  Do these questions/information need to be completed for the entire department or can we just submit information for one part of the department? For example, can information be sent for exercise science but not sports management?

Generally, the evaluation will cover the kinesiology-related doctoral program in the department.  Most departments offer a single doctoral degree program in kinesiology or sports science.  It is not our intent to evaluate sub-disciplines within the major (e.g., biomechanics, exercise physiology, motor behavior, sport psychology, etc.).

 

Within a university, however, more than one program may be evaluated separately. In such situations these programs would typically fall under separate administrative structures, have unique sets of faculty members, different criteria for admissions/programs, and faculty tend not to share student program teaching and advising.

 

 

Question:  How to count abstracts of presentations?

Abstracts of presentations (e.g., oral and poster) are not counted as publications. Only invited, keynote presentations at national or international meetings are now counted.

 

 

Question:  How should the bibliography be formatted?

The bibliography should be in three sections:  Journal Articles, Chapters, and Books.  The publications should be listed in alphabetical order, in the APA 7th edition format.  It is anticipated that most programs will exploit bibliographic software for collating and formatting these references.  The final submitted file should be a Microsoft Word© file.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Unit Funding 

  

Question:  For the "funded" categories, should I record a dollar amount expended, or the number of funded grants/contracts/training programs/etc.?

The total dollar amount processed through the unit/department budget each year should be listed.

 

 

Question:  Do the "funded" categories include research contracts as well as grants?

Yes.  Contracts should also be listed if they are expenditures processed through the unit/department budget. Federal and other external sources should be separated into the respective categories.

 

 

Question:  How do I report grants that are not just for research (i.e., they are combination grants - combined research and research/training) as well as straight research training grants.  The grants are from large foundations.  Would they count?

Grants are grants, not necessarily research grants, as long as they are expenditures processed through the departmental budget.  Training grants, research, contracts, etc. would count.  The key differentiations are between federal, non-federal, and internal.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Student Data

 

 

Question:  We have a student who enrolled in the program during the fall 2020 semester but dropped out without completing any coursework.  Do I include him/her as a student?

Yes.

 

Question:  Student support is to be reported.  You are asked to report the number of full-time doctoral students who received institutional support that included a tuition waiver and stipend in the fall of 2022. FTE’s are no longer to be reported.

 

Question: Some of our students are on 12 month contracts but others on 9 month contracts.

All doctoral students enrolled full-time in fall 2022 should be counted as one regardless whether they are on a 9 month or 12 month contract.

 

Question: What do I do with doctoral students with partial support (e.g., DTA with only 10 hours of instruction)?

 

NAK is interested in the number of doctoral students receiving full tuition support and a stipend to complete degrees and advance the field.  Programs may combine several doctoral students with partial support (e.g., two TAs with 10 hour teaching or research appointments) if BOTH also receive the equivalent of prorated full support (half tuition waiver and stipend for work).  This example would allow the program to report having the equivalent of 1 doctoral student with full institutional support. Programs cannot report doctoral student support that does not include both tuition waiver and compensation and should not report support for masters students.

 

 

Question:  A student graduated and accepted a post-doctoral position for two years.  The student then accepted a tenure-track faculty line.  How many times do I count this person under employment?

Count the person only once.  In this case, count the person as accepting a Post-doctoral position.  These data relate to the first position acquired by the doctoral student once graduated.

 

Question:  Does GA support include both masters and doctoral level or only those supported at the doctoral level?

No, only include  support of doctoral students.

 

Question:  Under the Student support section, do we include all sources when we report full time doctoral support  (e.g., grants, etc.) as well as those funded by our own department?

Yes, include all Graduate Assistants/Research Assistant/Teaching Fellows/Teaching Assistants/etc. that are funded at the doctoral level in the program from all sources of funding. 

 

 

Question:  Student X was enrolled as a doctoral student in our program from 2020-2022 and she had a first-authored research paper published in a refereed journal in 2022 based on data that were collected during her enrollment period.  Does this publication count under “Number of Publications”?

Yes, because,

(a) she was first author of the research paper published in a refereed journal;

(b) her enrollment period puts her in the eligible group (i.e., doctoral students who were enrolled full-time during at least one year of the evaluation period, in this case 2020, 2021, or 2022);

(c) the paper was published during the evaluation period (i.e., 2020-2022); and

(d) the publication was during her eligible time period (i.e., up to two years after graduation).

 

 

Question:  Student Y first enrolled as a doctoral student in our program in 2020 (and is currently in the program) and she has a first-authored research paper published in a refereed journal from 2020 based on data that were collected during her enrollment period.  Does this publication count under “Number of Publications”?

Yes, because,

(a) she was first author of the research paper in a refereed journal;

(b) her enrollment period puts her in the eligible group (i.e., doctoral students who were enrolled during at least one year of the evaluation period);

(c) the paper was published during the evaluation period (i.e., 2020-2022) and,

(d) given that she has not yet graduated the publication was during her eligible time period (i.e., up to two years after graduation).

 

 

Question:  Two students are enrolled in our program; Student A is completing a master’s program and has been accepted into the doctoral program (and has completed some doctoral courses during the master’s enrollment period), and student B is in the doctoral program.  They are the sole authors on a research paper published in 2020.  Student A is the first author and Student B is the second author. Does this paper count under “Number of Publications”?

No, because the first author is not currently enrolled in the doctoral program.