Race and Research Productivity

Throughout the development of the sociology of science, one of the focal points of empirical investigation has been the study of scholarly productivity. A number of variables have been examined in regard to their impact upon productivity including sex (Austin, 1969), age (Pelz and Andrews, 1966), quality of department of doctoral training (Hagstrom, 1971), institutional affiliation (Crane, 1965), college grades (Folger et al., 1971), and professional orientation (Babchuk and Bates, 1962). One factor, however, which has received little attention is race. As Conyers (1968) has pointed out, students of productivity have generally ignored race as a possible explanatory variable. The present study attempts to shed some light upon the relationship between race and research output by examining the productivity of black and nonblack holders of the Ph.D.