Stoecker J; Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago,IL. Stoeckej@finchcms.edu.

PURPOSE: Identifying factors which facilitate scholarship may assist physical therapy faculty to meet recent increased expectations for scholarly activity. The purpose of this research was to identify factors which faculty perceived to be instrumental in developing their scholarship activity. SUBJECTS: Three hundred fifty physical therapy faculty were surveyed. Thirty-one percent of the sample responded to the first mailing of the survey. Eighty-four percent of the respondents were Caucasian and female with seventy-eight percent holding a Master of Science or higher degree. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A comprehensive survey of physical therapy faculty work was designed. Field tests were conducted with 15 local faculty and following review, alterations were made in the survey. The final survey was mailed to a random, national sample of 350 faculty. Survey design and mailing procedures were performed according to the method of Dillman. Faculty responded to questions on teaching, research and professional activities, as well as, academic and personal background. For this analysis, the respondent was asked to consider discovery, application, integration and teaching forms of scholarship, including presentation, publication and grant activities over their entire career. ANALYSES: Data were analyzed using frequency distributions. RESULTS: Sixty-five percent of the respondents reported that having designated time to do scholarly activity greatly facilitated their work. Having a mentor and having a collaborator were considered to have greatly facilitated scholarly activity by 59% and 53% of the respondents, respectively. Laboratories and clinical space were considered important by less than 25% of the respondents. CONCLUSIONS: A majority of professional faculty see time and collaboration opportunities as key elements in facilitating their scholarly activity. Physical resources appear important for a smaller group. Physical therapy department chairs developing scholarship initiatives for their faculty may find efforts to establish collegial linkages are more productive than the development of physical resources. FUNDING SOURCE: None.

Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Therapy Association

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