Age, Gender and Research Productivity: A Study of Speech and Hearing Faculty in India

Introduction: Productivity as a function of demographic variables is a management conundrum. While previous studies have covered the sciences and humanities, the field of allied health sciences remains uninvestigated. Aims: The aims of this study included (a) investigation of publication productivity trend across age groups, (b) finding out the age at which the publication productivity peaks, and (c) to study the variance in publication productivity across age groups, gender-wise. Method: Following a cross-sectional longitudinal study, the data set covered 1174 Research Productive Units (RPU) from 1995-96 to 2014-15 relating to scientific publications involving 114 teaching faculty in speech and hearing institutions. Findings:The findings of this study revealed that research performance score for scientific publications showed two peaks, in the age group >55 yrs and another in the age group of < 30 yrs, the former being the higher of the peaks. Other findings include: The male teaching faculty (N=520, Mean score=12.47, Median =12.00 SD=4.671) fared better than the female teaching faculty (N=654, Mean score=11.70, Median = 9.00 , SD=4.784 ). Conclusion:The study can contribute to formulation of appropriate HRD strategies and policies in areas like determination of age for retirement, fixing of differential teaching workload for different age groups based on the “research productive” yrs.

Keywords: Age Cohorts, Demographic Variables., Gender, Research Policy, research productivity, Speech and Hearing.