Appendix A 



METHOD OF THE INQUIRY 



The purpose of this appendix is to add further 

 details to the description in Chapter 2 of the 

 procedure of sending inquiry letters to the research 

 community and processing the replies. 



The inquiry letters were mailed out in the spring 

 and summer of 1975, on the dates shown in Table A-l. 

 In particular, on July 1 letters were sent to vice 

 presidents for research at universities, asking for the 

 names of five of their department chairmen. At that 

 time, each vice president also received five copies of 

 the inquiry letter to distribute to those chairmen. 

 Hence those letters were received by the chairmen on 

 or after July 1. Appendix B contains the texts of all the 

 letters sent. 



Each individual who received an inquiry letter and 

 did not send a reply was contacted with a follow-up 

 telephone call, if he or his organization could still be 

 located. These calls occurred in August and 

 September. 



The processing of the response letters was ter- 

 minated on September 22. Letters received after that 

 date could not be included in the tabulation of issues, 

 though they are counted in Chapter 2 and in the 

 complete list of respondents in Appendix C. About 15 

 letters were thereby excluded, all from department 

 chairmen at universities. 



In December and January, a new letter was sent to 

 some of the persons who had responded to the inquiry 

 letter. This new letter sought their permission to use 

 a quotation from their response in the present Report. 

 The exact passage to be quoted was included, so that 

 they could agree that the passage accurately 

 represented their views. Thus written permission 

 has been obtained for the use of every attributed 

 quotation from a respondent that appears in this 

 Report. 



At universities, the officials who had been con- 

 tacted were divided into three levels, which for 

 working purposes were called presidents, vice 

 presidents for research, and department chairmen. 

 This was a simplification of the actual situation. For 

 one thing, the Carnegie Commission listings 

 sometimes name individual campuses of multicam- 

 pus institutions, while at other times they list the 

 whole institution as a single unit. The "president", 

 therefore, is whatever official is highest in the unit 

 listed, whether the whole institution or a single 

 campus. Some of these officials are in fact 

 chancellors. Vice presidents for research were 

 selected in the same way if an official could be found 

 with that title or a similar one. If not, an official was 

 chosen whose responsibility seemed to be in much 

 the same area, such as the dean of graduate studies. In 

 a few cases a vice president for research was 

 contacted from a central university administration, 

 rather than from an individual campus that happened 

 not to have such an official. 



The department chairmen were from whatever 

 campus the vice president for research happened to 

 choose. In almost every case, these were the cam- 

 puses in theCarnegie Commission list. These persons 

 had various titles. Some were heads of university- 

 based research laboratories. Others were actually 

 deans or assistant deans of academic divisions, but 

 were still counted as chairmen. In other cases, the 

 respondent was a member of the department other 

 than the chairman. 



In a number of cases, a person addressed by our 

 inquiry letter delegated to someone else the respon- 

 sibility of replying. Whenever it could be ascertained 

 that this had occurred, the reply was counted as 

 coming from the person originally addressed, 

 regardless of who had actually written or signed it. 



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