Backgrounds of, and Factors Affecting, Highly Productive Leisure Researchers

Ranking universities and university programs has become increasingly common. Internationally, there are the QS World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities, and Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Nationally, grading schemes have been implemented in Australia (i.e., Research Quantum), the United Kingdom (i.e., Research Assessment Exercise), and elsewhere (Barker, 2007; Geuna & Martin, 2003). Within our own broad field, Thomas and Reeve (2006) ranked American kinesiology and physical education programs; Severt, Teson, Bottorff, and Carpenter (2009) ranked tourism and hospitality programs globally; and Jackson (2004) and Walker and Fenton (2011) ranked U.S. and Canadian leisure studies programs.Although rankings are calculated using a variety of measures, research productivity is almost always a core metric. In terms of leisure studies, for example, Jackson (2004) reported the results of a comprehensive analysis of all of the research articles published in six major leisure journals, and all of the abstracts published in 14 leisure conference proceedings, during the 1990's. Among his findings were that the top 10 North American universities were responsible for 38.8% of all article and abstract authorships. In a follow-up to and extension of Jackson's work, Walker and Fenton (2011) found that between 2000 and 2008, while the number of North American universities authoring leisure articles and abstracts increased 15.5%, the Top 10 universities accounted for 46.2% of all authorships.Walker and Fenton (2011) also recommended that "because an institution's research productivity is ultimately dependent upon its faculty members' research productivity, future research should examine the factors that facilitate and constrain the most prolific leisure scholars" (p. 488). The benefits of such an investigation have been outlined elsewhere; with, for example, May rath (2008) holding that by "modeling one's writing after experts in the field, beginning scholars can utilize a template or style that has already been proven successful" (p. 41). Research on scientific creativity also suggests that "in general, the periods during the course of a scientist's career in which the most total output is produced tend to be those periods in which the most high-impact work appears" (Simonton, 2003, p. 477). On the other hand, there may be costs associated with increased research productivity depending on how and why it occurs. For instance, if it is at the expense of personal goals (e.g., work-life balance) or other institutional objectives (e g., teaching, service), if it is seen not as being facilitated by external funding but rather as a by-product thereof, or if it is driven by other extrinsic factors such as the pursuit of prestige within the academic hierarchy (i.e., "striving"; O'Meara, 2007), then faculty members and the scholarly communities they compose may be in harm's way.Based on the above the purpose of this study is fivefold; to better understand (a) the sociodemographic and academic backgrounds of highly productive leisure researchers; (b) the personal, institutional, and other factors that facilitate their research productivity; (c) the factors that constrain their research productivity; (d) the effects of leisure on their research productivity'; and (e) what this may mean for early-career academics interested in improving their own research productivity as well as for the leisure studies field more broadly. To accomplish this, we first outline previous research in other areas that has examined the socio-demographic and academic variables that facilitate researcher publication output. We then describe a theoretical framework that posits that individual, institutional, and other factors influence research productivity (i.e., Bland, Center, Finstad, Risbey, & Staples, 2005). In addition, we expand on this framework by exploring the potential contribution of two leisure behavior concepts: the role of constraints to research productivity and the role of leisure participation in research productivity. …