Starting in December, 1997, we e-mailed surveys to approximately 400 Psychology and History Department webmasters at U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities. We received about 100 back. Below are some very preliminary results of our survey. Please do not quote or reference without specific permission of the authors.

Some survey results:

Question 1. Your relationship to the department:

While most webmasters who returned the survey are faculty, Psychology departments tend to have a higher percentage of faculty webmasters.


For faculty: how many years have you been a faculty member?

One of the surprising results of the survey was that for both Psychology and History departments, there was a bimodal distribution in terms of faculty experience. Webmasters were either fairly new faculty, or senior members of the department. The results from senior members were different from those of other respondents--there was a sense of "giving something back to the profession/institution" in their responses. I'll be exploring these in more detail.


Question 2. Has your department's web site been beneficial in furthering the department's mission?

While the results from this question look like the response was pretty positive, the question was worded with a score of "4" meaning no effect. I would reword this question if I had it to do all over again. The overwhelming consensus on departmental benefit was that the website was good for advertising the program and answering basic questions that used to be answered by phone calls.


Question 3. To what extent has the entire department been involved in determining the content of the web site?

Question 4. Has the development of the department's web site fostered collaboration within the department?

Departmental efforts are clearly an individual effort. In most cases (75% of the responses), the website was the work of just one or two people. Less than 10% of the respondents said that half or more of the department had anything to do with the website.


Faculty responses to question #7, "If you are a faculty member, has the reward structure of your department/institution supported your efforts?"

The resounding answer was "No." About 20% of the respondents expressed some anger or frustration with the lack of support they received from their colleagues/administration.


9. Has the investment of time/money that has been put into your department's web site been worth it?

Combining the results shown in the three figures above, then, shows an interesting result--while webmasters got little assistance, their work was rarely rewarded by the existing structure, and there was little collaboration by the department, webmasters nonetheless very much thought it was worth the effort. The most frequent response was something like "I've done it mostly on my own, it's been a lot of work, a few of my colleagues have thanked me for it, but I really enjoyed it and have a sense of accomplishment." Some were very overt in suggesting one needs to enjoy something like this to make it worthwhile.

More explanation to come soon.

Tom