Running head: Research Proposal Project

Perceptions of Adjunct Faculty Integrative Practices

Research Proposal Project
Jon Mandrell
IDSL 845
Ferris State University

Research Proposal Project

Introduction
As the use of adjunct faculty within higher education increases, there is a great need to
assure that such instructors are being integrated to campus through meaningful and effective
practices. These integrative practices include orientations, mentoring programs, attendance in
departmental meetings, having access to offices and resources, as well as being active on campus
committees. Campuses across the nation are currently implementing a variety of these
processes, as well as creating new innovations to facilitate growth among the adjunct instructors.
Campuses, such as Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, offer an
adjunct certification program to integrate their adjunct faculty. We try to be seamless. Most
students dont know if their instructors are adjuncts or full-time faculty, states Helen Burnstad,
Johnson Countys director emeritus of staff and professional development (as cited in Kelly,
2008).
Retention of adjunct faculty can hinge upon their satisfaction and inclusion to the
institution. A commitment to such a philosophy can equate to increased quality of instruction
being provided to students, as well as reducing the need to continually retrain new instructors.
Evans (2009) states that an overreliance on adjuncts, which is happening today due to budget
constraints, can be damaging to the quality of education that students receive. Increased
engagement with adjunct faculty, similar to the level of full-time instructors, can assist in
preventing this. The need to ensure that adjuncts are prepared, return semester-to-semester, and
have the confidence to provide the highest quality of education to todays students prompts the
research question, Which integrative practices lead to higher satisfaction rates among adjunct
faculty?

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Several hypotheses have been identified that relate to such a research question, which focus
on adjunct satisfaction and their involvement on campus. Through this research, it is expected
that level of participation and interaction with various programs, meetings, mentors, and
committees will reflect their level of satisfaction with the institution. The following hypotheses
have been identified:

Adjunct faculty that have a mentor within their department rate their level of satisfaction

higher with the institution.

Adjunct faculty that attended new hire orientation upon hire rate their level of satisfaction

higher with the institution.

Adjunct faculty that have attended a minimum of three in-services or workshops over the

past two years rate their level of satisfaction higher with the institution.
Adjunct faculty that have served on at least one campus committee over the past two

years rate their level of satisfaction higher with the institution.

On-campus adjunct faculty that teach only after 4:00 p.m. rate their level of satisfaction

lower than those that teach only between 8:00 a.m and 3:59 p.m.
Adjunct faculty that have attended at least 50% of departmental meetings over the past
year rate their level of satisfaction higher within the institution.

Methodology
Research Design
In developing the research design, level of satisfaction among adjunct faculty will serve
as the dependent variable. Only adjunct faculty members that have instructed a minimum of four
semesters will be sampled as they would have had the opportunity to participate in such
integrative activities and programs. The participation or involvement in such activities will serve
as the independent variables. This includes having a mentor, attending departmental meetings,
workshop attendance, orientation attendance, and in-service attendance. Adjuncts that only teach

Research Proposal Project

after 4:00 p.m. are less likely to have access to such programs and activities, so their level of
satisfaction with the institution is presumed to be lower.
As part of the research design, piloting the methodology could prove beneficial. By
administering surveys to adjunct faculty at a neighboring college with similar demographics,
such as Highland Community College in Freeport, IL, this could aid the researcher in improving
their methodology and instruments, as well as improve validity of the study. An appropriate
quantitative research design for this study would be a correlational design as it will seek to
determine the strength of relationships between variables. For example, the study will seek to
establish the level of satisfaction for adjunct faculty that attend monthly departmental meetings.
The correlational design provides a rationale to study the research topic as the researcher is
seeking to learn about what variables determine satisfaction or dissatisfaction within in an
institution. A combination of independent variables could prove what leads to adjunct faculty
satisfaction, which could ultimately impact policy and the implementation of a continuous
improvement model. Demographics of adjunct faculty will also be considered in these
correlations, particularly those groups, such as age, that tend to participate more than others.
Such relationships through a correlational analysis, be it positive or weak, could allow the
researcher to determine if any further exploration or investigation should be pursued.
There are several different variables in this study and the level of measurement will vary.
The dependent variable, adjunct faculty satisfaction, will be measured on an ordinal scale, such
as highly satisfied, satisfied, no opinion, dissatisfied, and highly dissatisfied. The independent
variables that are based simply upon attendance, such as mentoring or attending new hire
orientation (yes/no), will be measured as nominal. The remaining independent variables, such as

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the number of times adjunct faculty have attended workshops or in-services will be measured at
an interval level.
In this study, there will be efforts to reduce any threats to reliability and validity. The
researcher serves as the Dean of Instruction and supervises the adjunct faculty. As a result, the
respondents will be surveyed anonymously. The Hawthorne Effect could impact the responses of
the subjects if they felt their supervisor was able to identify their views. Ensuring that all
respondents are comfortable in expressing their views will contribute to the validity and
reliability of the collected data. As previously mentioned, another effort to increase validity will
be to conduct the pilot study at Highland Community College. Another approach would be to
ensure that sampling is equal and effective. Due to Sauk Valley Community College being a
fairly small institution and having just 75 adjunct instructors with two or more years of
experience, all of these instructors will be a part of the sample. Reducing the size of the
participants any smaller through sampling could impact the researchers ability to get an
appropriate amount of data that is meaningful or effective.

Sampling
Sauk Valley Community College employs 44 full-time instructors and 100 adjunct faculty
members. Due to the small size of the college, sampling the entire adjunct faculty that have two
years of experience greatly reduces the number further. As a result, the researcher will sample
and survey all 75 of the adjunct faculty that have at least two years of experience. The adjunct
faculty will serve as the units of analysis. A list of these instructors is made available from the
Sauk Valley Community College BANNER system through the Dean of Institutional Research.
If the college were to grow, the researcher should consider a random sample of the population of

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adjunct faculty members, such as selecting every 3rd name from the populated list. Such a
sample would then allow the researcher to provide a generalization. Since the entire population
is being sampled, generalizations are not possible. The researcher is seeking the sampling of the
entire population not only because of the small size of the adjunct faculty members and the
potential for a small return on the surveys, but also to ensure that all voices are heard as the study
will seek to implement change and continuous improvement.

Instrumentation
In collecting the data for this research, a survey will be created and distributed to
participants that meet the criteria, based upon the list generated by the BANNER data system.
The criteria for respondents will be the instructors that have four semesters (2 years) of teaching
experience. This will ensure that all participants have been given ample time to have
participated in such activities and programs and to also be able to make sound judgment on their
level of satisfaction.
To mitigate threats to validity and reliability, the survey will require a series of reviews
for approval before being submitted. These reviews will include the Sauk Valley Community
College Institutional Research Board (IRB), as well as the IRB of Ferris State University.
Participants from the pilot study will also provide adequate feedback on the survey to ensure it is
asking the questions that ultimately answer the research question. Selected participants will not
be required to provide their names, thus protecting from answering questions without any
possible repercussions.
Data Analysis

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In analyzing data, using SPSS will be beneficial. This will allow the researcher to code
responses and run various analyses on the variables. Variables such as attendance at orientation,
workshops, having a mentor, time of day an instructor teaches their courses, departmental
meeting attendance, and their level of satisfaction with the institution, combined with
demographics, could expose several relationships that exist. It could equally disprove
relationships that the researcher felt previously existed and were making an impact.
The descriptive statistics that will be used are the measures of central tendency, such as
mean, median, and mode. Standard deviation, or variance, will also be provided in the analysis.
Such statistics provide the reader with an opportunity to grasp the frequencies and averages of
the responses by the adjunct faculty members. In using graphs of the data, which will assist the
target in further interpreting the data, shapes of distributions will be provided and discussed.
Kurtosis and skewness discussion will also provide the researcher and the reader with an idea of
the distribution. Outliers and any scores that appear to be extreme will also be identified through
the use of descriptive statistics. These could be mistakes, which the researcher should also
identify as a possibility.
Due to the entire population being sampled, using inferential statistics could be difficult
as inferences about the population cannot be applied. Should the population of adjunct faculty
grow, as there are only 75 instructors meeting the criteria now to serve as respondents, the
researcher should consider the use of inferential statistics as part of their hypotheses testing.
Testing significance will certainly be used in the research. Pearsons r, for example, could assist
the researcher in determining the relationship between two variables, particular for the interval or
ratio variables. For example, the frequency of workshop participation, along with the frequency
of attending departmental meetings, could be two possible variables for such an analysis that

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could result in a significant relationship. For any categories that are nominal or ordinal, Chisquared or Cramers V could be applied. Chi-squared could assist the researcher in determining
what variables are contingent upon one another or are perhaps independent.

Discussion and Conclusion

The researcher will have the capability of running a variety of analyses to test their
hypotheses. The response from the survey instrument will provide the researcher with data that
can support or reject the various hypotheses. As mentioned in the hypotheses, it is expected that
the satisfaction rates by adjunct faculty will increase as does their participation in such programs
and activities that are offered for their smooth transition and effective integration.
As discussed in hypothesis 1, the researcher expects to determine that an adjunct with a
known mentor, be it assigned or not by the institution, will have a higher rate of satisfaction with
the institution. Having such connections makes for a smoother transition to institutional
processes and better classroom practices. In hypothesis 2, the researcher expects to see higher
level of satisfaction with the institution by the adjunct faculty that attended their new hire
orientation. Much like new student orientations and first-year experience programs, orientations
are vital to getting individuals off to a strong start. The new adjunct faculty orientation consists
of orienting faculty to resources, other procedures, online systems, and introducing them to other
faculty members. Within hypothesis 3, the researcher also expects to see a higher level of
satisfaction among adjunct faculty that attend in-service or workshops. In-service is held the day
before classes begin each semester and workshop day is at midterm of every semester.
Attendance is optional at each. The programming is focused on professional development and
topics vary, depending on the institutions focus at that given time. Those in attendance are also

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provided a time to give input to institutional decisions. Within hypothesis 4, the researcher will
look focus on adjunct faculty schedules, particularly those that teach only after 4:00 p.m. Those
teaching after 4:00 p.m., which is considered a night course, are likely to be less satisfied with
the institution as they will have less exposure to programming and to a majority of the
connections on campus, particularly staff. The final hypothesis focuses on satisfaction rates
among adjuncts and their attendance at departmental meetings. Not only will this analysis
demonstrate their involvement in department meetings, but it will also inform the researcher on
if they are being invited at all. This could provide the researcher with what departments are not
seeking inclusion among the adjuncts and where improvements could be made. The researcher
expects to see higher levels of satisfaction among adjunct faculty that attend at least 50% of such
departmental meetings.
With the hypotheses presented, the researcher could utilize the data to further improve
adjunct faculty integration to Sauk Valley Community College. Current programs are in place,
but they are optional, and are not assessed. By surveying the adjunct faculty and analyzing the
results, the researcher seeks to discover relationships among variables. Such relationships may
not result in causation, but they could provide valuable information that could result in further
investigations being pursued. With adjunct faculty making up a great proportion of the schedule,
ensuring their satisfaction levels remain high is crucial. High satisfaction levels leads to the
retention of such adjunct faculty members, which reduces the need to continually retrain them,
resulting in competent and confident leaders in the classroom.
The researcher could implement new hiring practices and initiatives, based upon the data.
An example of such programs would be the mandate of attendance at new orientations or the
creation of faculty mentoring programs. Many colleges offer faculty mentoring programs, which

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consist of full-time faculty engaging in new adjunct faculty, some of which include paid stipends
to full-time faculty. This includes the full-timer being a point of contact for the adjunct, but also
to encourage their attendance at departmental meetings, workshops, and in-services. The
researcher could also determine that adjunct faculty workspace is limited, resulting in negative
feelings among the participants and impacting their ability to prepare for class.
In conclusion, the researcher is seeking to learn more about what leads to high
satisfaction rates among adjunct faculty, but to equally determine what deficiencies are creating
low satisfaction. The researcher can expect to gather data that can change policy, particularly in
the area of professional development, hiring practices, shared governance, and access to
resources. This research has the potential to make an impact on the institution and facilitate the
success of the adjunct faculty.

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References

Evans, D. (2009, May 15). Adjunct Faculty and Quality. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/adjunct-facultyquality/7319

Kelly, R. (2008, August 30). Integrating adjuncts into the community college through
professional development, support. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from
http://www.facultyfocus.com/uncategorized/integrating-adjuncts-into-thecommunity-college-through-professional-development-support/