The survey asked respondents whether they had access to all the equipment they needed to perform their research. Three answers were coded: 2 = “Yes, I have everything I need,” 1 = “I have most of what I need,” and 0 = “I do not have access to major pieces of equipment that I need for my research.” We dichoto-
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□ Men □ Women
FIGURE 4-3 Percentage of men and women reporting having access to the equipment they need to conduct their research.
SOURCE: Survey of Faculty carried out by the Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty.
mized the answers to examine faculty who had access to an acceptable amount of the equipment they needed compared to those who did not (a “1” or “0”). Of those who responded, men were more likely than women to indicate that they had access to sufficient equipment (95 compared to 91 percent), which was a difference that is approaching significance (see Appendix 4-14). Disaggregated by field (see Figure 4-3 and Appendix 4-14), men were more likely to report that they had all the equipment they needed in chemistry and marginally more likely to report that they had all the equipment they needed in physics. We wanted to compare these results to data from the NSOPF :04. Unfortunately, that survey questionnaire does not include questions on satisfaction with equipment. The 1993 survey did ask respondents to rate the quality of “basic research equipment/instruments,” “laboratory space and supplies,” and “availability of research assistants,” but those questions have been dropped from the more recent (1999, 2004) surveys.