qualitative research diminishes your lifetime pay by about 9%
We’ve all heard complaints about the difficulty of getting qualitative research into the leading journals, but how many people have computed the effect on the qualitative scholar’s paycheck? Let’s work through a simple model of publication outcomes of qualitative and quantitative research:
- On the average, a competitive quantative researcher produces a “top” journal hit every three years. A competitive qualitative researcher produces a “top” journal hit every five years. Let’s assume that this rate captures book output as well (a few books over a career might be equal to six or seven top journal hits). This difference may be due to difficulty of publication or the high cost of data collection in terms of time.
Let’s also offer a simple model of paycheck elasticity:
- A top journal hit increases your paycheck 3%, due to your department loving you or in response to other offers.
Alright, let’s crunch numbers (no offense, qual folks) to see how this translates into the academic paycheck. This is a simplification, so let’s say we start at $50,000 for the annual paycheck. There is no inflation and no sudden jumps in salary due to people doing administrative work, getting grants, or moving abruptly up the prestige ladder. This is also not a model of superstars, who can maintain strong salary levels even with infrequent publications. This is a model of a single, typical person going up the career ladder within a single institution:
- The assistant professor level: Quant jock gets two top hits during their 6 years. Qual gets one. Pay check after 6 years? Quant: $53,045. Qual: $51,500. Difference? 2.9% Total difference over 6 years? $4,500, or 1.4% of the quant jock’s total earnings.
- Over a 30 year career: Quant yearly @ year 30? $95,805. Qual? $73,426. Qual makes 76% of their counterpart. Total career take home? $1,991,007 vs. $1,808,632 – a difference of $182, 374, or 9.1 %. You could buy a college education, or a house, with that difference.
- Adjusted 30 year: Since qualitative researchers often take longer times to complete the dissertation, let’s shave off three years for qual. The qual 27 year annual paycheck is 74% of the 30 year quant annual check. Total qual 27 vs. quant 30? The person who took three extra years to graduate has made 21% less than the quant total.
- These might be underestimates of disparities if you account for the entire population of quant and qual researchers, since it might be the case that qual grad students are less likely to get jobs and add “zero” to the numerator.
- As a compound interest process, pay check disparities increase as the initial pay check increase. This should be worst at top schools.
First, I’d be interested if there is any evidence of sociology pay check disparity being tied to quant/qual differences. Perhaps the work of Erin Leahy might answer this question, or some ASA report. Is the financial penalty implied by the model actually happening? Is qualitative research really a monetary disaster zone? Does this toy model capture anything about career dynamics in the sociology profession?
Second, what is the response? One is to say that quantity of work is the coin of the academic realm, unless you are lucky and can capture lightning in a bottle. That’s life and not every specialty gets paid at the same level. Another response is for deans to weight top journal qualitative publications to account for their relative rarity within a person’s carreer. Of course, one might also shift the terms of qualitative publication so it can be published more often (e.g., uniform standards, shorter peices, etc.). Any other thoughts?
orgtheory.net 
This is an interesting exercise. I’d say labor markets are not “competitive” in the economics sense of the word, so salaries probably do not reflect the supply and demand clearance. Yet supply and demand will still matter to a degree even if other institutional or structural factors do as well. So, could any salary difference should there be any also reflect an larger supply of qualitative types and/or higher paying outside opportunities for quantitative types? This is a common explanation for variation in salaries across disciplines. It also matters to some extent within discipilnes, such as economics.
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mikemcbride
July 10, 2008 at 4:47 am
So basically, those that can do (quantitative), those that can’t do qualitative. :-)
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stevphel
July 10, 2008 at 8:30 am
Fabio: In your first bullet point I assume you mean that a competitive quantitative researcher can publish a top journal article every three years?
I think that because books at top publishers vastly outweigh articles in their salary impact (as you note), many good qualitative researchers are able to boost their incomes to about the same level as those of their quant colleagues. Qual researchers are more likely to publish books at top presses aren’t they?
Some departments also may weight the importance of qual research (or quant research) differently. Having other qual researchers around helps create more of a consensus about what quality research is. The more qual researchers there are in a department, the more even salaries will be based on tenure rank.
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brayden
July 10, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Mike McBride: Good points of course. The model assumes away outside salary pressures. And I do agree that in many disciplines the supply of qual folks is much larger than quant folks, at least in grad school. However, the key point is that an individual’s relative salary within an academic discipline is strongly influenced by a zero sum game: competition over pages in top journals. The point of the model is that the time and difficulty associated with qual research cuts down the rate of top journal hits.
Perhaps the salary model should be:
salary = supply/demand with profession + outside salary pressues (e.g., from industry) + difficulty of landing top journal hits
Then, I’d add that supply/demand and industry pressures figure a lot more earlier, while your specialities ease of getting into journals matters in the whole career.
Brayden: You are right that qual researchers tend to shift away to presses. But it’s about the rate. For example, the very best assistant profs (like you!) can crank out a top journal hit every year, or every other year. Sometimes, multiple top hits in one year. A qual researcher who may write the same quantity must bundle it into one package. While the quant person publishes a steady stream, they get salary boosts. According to the model, the quant researcher doesn’t get the boost until the big article/book comes out. So in the meanwhile, they start falling behind.
Of course, the very best professors can wing both qual books and articles. Our own guest blogger, Mario Small, is highly adept at both styles and has a record to prove it. But I’m not going for the best, it’s the average I’m looking at.
And you are right about different departments. There is the concept of the “article” dept vs. the “book” department, which solves part of the problem. I’d be interested in seeing if article folks in book departments do better, which is strong evidence for this model.
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fabiorojas
July 10, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Fabio, Thanks for the thoughts. Out of curiosity, what trend do you see in publication rates for quant vs qual in the near future in soc journals? Growing proporition of quant?
As an aside, there has been a tremendous shift in general econ journals in the last twenty or thirty years. It is not a quant vs qual shift but a theory vs empirical shift. The percent of pure theory papers has dropped dramatically and applied micro (aka empirical micro, such as labor econ or io) now dominates. It is not obvious which is easier, but I have empirical colleagues who often claim theory is easier and quicker (I personally think both are equally difficult). It also seems true that empirical economists have more outside opportunities and higher salaries. They also are greater in supply. Basically, the theory market is a thinner market (lower supply and lower demand), and it yields lower salaries despite being “easier” in some people’s minds.
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mikemcbride
July 10, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I wonder if qualitative articles in top journals have higher average citation counts than quantitative articles (the hypothesis–and it’s just a hypothesis–would be that qualitative articles are often more theoretical and would thus have longer citation lives). Then, if “impact” was taken into account over time, maybe some of the difference between qualitative and quantitative work would decrease. But, as in the case with books, this would require big enough eventual boosts to overcome the gap that accrues annually. Of course, maybe this is also just wishful thinking on my part (not that I have a horse in this race–nope, not me).
Mike: I think that top journals in sociology actually publish more qualitative work than they did 20 years ago I don’t know what to guess about the near future except that I would be surprised to see this trend completely reversed. Others may have a different view.
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Michael
July 10, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Mike McBride: I think we’re at a steady state, when it comes to method in soc. Qual stuff is still in the minority, but there a fair amount and the major journals publoish it. But I sense a similar shift away from “theory” to grounded empirical work of the middle range. Even up til the early 90’s, you could see people endlessly mull over Marx or post-modernism in the major journals. That has now completely shifted to the specialty journals while the flagships are empirical. This is highly analagous to the shift you describe.
Michael Sauder: I have no idea if qual articles have longer impacts… If you believe the idea that qual publishing is harder, then you expect a stronger batch of article to make it through the review process.
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fabiorojas
July 11, 2008 at 12:48 am