Data on the hiring process, as described above, are scant. Unfortunately, nationally representative information is not available. First, there is no national evidence on applicant behavior. It is not known if male and female S&E doctorates apply to positions in a similar manner. Second, evidence of how search committees select one candidate over another is lacking, perhaps because the selection process can be difficult to quantify. Third, there is little evidence describing the number of individuals who go through the hiring process. While departments collect information on the number of applicants who apply for a position and are interviewed, and while gender is often noted for these individuals, data are rarely made public for rather good reasons, including the right to privacy of job appli — cants.[44] Further, comparable data on hiring activities at different universities are not generally available to allow an examination of how university and departmental search policies and practices affect hiring outcomes. National statistics such as the National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty or the Survey of Doctorate Recipients focus on individuals in their current positions. The SDR asks doctorates about their postgraduate plans and whether they are interested in a postdoctoral or academic position, but does not follow respondents any further. As a result, this chapter will draw primarily from this study’s departmental survey described in Chapter 1 and in Appendix 1-4.[45]
The survey asked chairs of the six targeted departments in each of the Research I institutions to report whether they had conducted any searches during the 2002-2003 or 2003-2004 academic years. Of the 492 surveyed, 417 responding departments reported a total of 1,218 searches, ranging between 1 and 15 searches per department. Responding departments were asked to identify whether the search was for a tenured or tenure-track position. In a few instances respondents wrote in “both” (17 out of 1,218), and to a lesser degree “target of opportunity” (5 out of 1,218). A few (40 out of 1,218) left this question unanswered. Respondents were then asked to provide data on the number of applicants and interviewees for each advertised position by gender. Finally, they were asked to identify the gender of the individual who was first offered the position and the gender of the person who was ultimately hired.[46]
In general, departments were much more knowledgeable about the later stages of the hiring process and thus provided more complete data on offers and hires than on interviews or applicants. The number of cases for which we had complete information on applicants, interviewees, first offers, and hires—all disaggregated by gender—varied between 534 cases (with complete hire information) and 758 cases (with complete applicant information). Thus, the number of cases considered in this chapter depends on the stage of the hiring process. Only tenured and tenure-track cases are considered in the analysis. For each stage in the hiring process (applications, interviews, offers), descriptive statistics based on the data collected from the departmental survey are first presented. Then, the appropriate statistical models are fit in order to understand the departmental characteristics associated with the percent of females at each stage of the hiring process.