{"id":20138,"date":"2021-01-15T00:54:27","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20138"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:28:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:28:33","slug":"faculty-student-demographics-comparison-at-texas-public-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2021\/01\/15\/faculty-student-demographics-comparison-at-texas-public-universities\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty and Student Demographics: A Comparison at Texas Public Universities"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A comparison of faculty and student demographics at Texas public universities<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Success of students in higher education can be attributed to many factors. Personal work ethic, academic preparation, effective learning environment, and support systems are just a few of the variables that promote student persistence and graduation from colleges and universities. Among higher education researchers, one of the underlying constructs that has risen to the surface as an element contributing to student success is a feeling or sense of belonging at the institution which the student attends. At its core, a sense of belonging is tied to whether a student can relate to others within the academic, social, and co-curricular communities on campus (Strayhorn, 2019<\/a>).<\/p>\n

One of the leading proponents of assessing students’ sense of belonging is the National Survey of Student Engagement, better known as NSSE<\/a>. In the most recent NSSE survey, which was administered in spring 2020 to more than 270,000 first-year and senior students at over 500 degree-granting colleges and universities, three survey items were used to measure the degree to which students felt they belonged on their campus: 1)\u00a0I feel comfortable being myself at this institution; 2)\u00a0I feel valued by this institution; and, 3)\u00a0I feel like part of the community at this institution. Students were asked to rate their agreement with each statement using the following scale:\u00a0Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly disagree.\u00a0Across institution types and respondents, NSSE’s research showed positive correlations between belongingness and student engagement\/success: “This relationship is particularly strong for students\u2019 quality interactions with others on campus, their sense of institutional support, and their perceived gains in learning and development attributable to their college experiences” (Building a Sense of Community for All<\/a>). Further exploration of these data can be made using the NSSE 2020 Sense of Belonging dashboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, why is an article about faculty and student demographics beginning with an introduction to the sense of belonging construct? I am glad you asked. In conversations related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, one of the perspectives that is often discussed is how demographically similar the faculty are to the student body that they teach, advise, mentor, and tutor. While beyond the scope of this blog post, it is not too great a leap to think that students who see faculty who are more similar to them are more likely to experience a higher sense of belonging than when greater dissimilarities exist between faculty and students.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Location Quotient: Measuring Demographic Similarities<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In order to compare faculty and student demographics, we will be using an analytical technique that quantifies the concentration of faculty by sex and race\/ethnicity relative to the concentration of students by sex and race\/ethnicity across the public universities in Texas. As opposed to simply taking the difference between percentages, calculating the location quotient (LQ) returns a standardized metric that allows comparison across demographic groups to determine the level of similarity between faculty and students. As a “ratio of ratios” metric, the LQ takes the percentage of faculty within a specific demographic as the numerator and uses the percentage of students in that same demographic as the denominator to calculate the LQ score.\u00a0Interpreting the LQ score is relatively straightforward:<\/p>\n