In recent years, economic developments in society have not stopped at universities and their educational improvement and quality assurance activities (Leiber, 2019). The widespread establishment of the entrepreneurial university and publication metrics shape scientific communities because they have a strong impact on self-centered competitive behaviors, struggles for financial and other resources as well as on career opportunities. Such a situation raises questions about whether collegiality can still survive in departments and faculties. From a theoretical perspective, for example, Johnston, Schimmel, and O’Hara (2010) have identified in their model on collegiality six indicators: Altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue. From reviewing such and similar theories and related research, it can be concluded that existing conceptual approaches on individual activity-based collegiality in higher education are highly diverse and not integrated, not specific when it comes to research-related activities, and overlooking the context dimension of collegiality.
Therefore, within this paper, it was the goal to design an integrative theoretical model of collegiality in research which focuses on positive and negative research-based activities and its evaluation. Here, an innovative bi-polar theoretical approach has been chosen, because a low positive behavior does not correspond with a negative behavior in social relationships. Negative behavior often has a stronger and also a different effect on relationships than a low or no positive behavior. For example, Rogge, Fincham, Crasta, and Maniaci (2017) have stressed that individuals in relationships simultaneously have both negative and positive sentiments towards partners which emphasizes the need to have a positive-negative focus.

The descriptive multi-dimensional model assigns 10 activities to the dimensions of involvement and relationship quality. It is also assumed that the evaluation of collegiality not only considers the activities of colleagues, but also the attributional context. In this context, the use of evidence, transparency, and intention play an important role. For example, the five positive activities concern (ranging from high to low involvement): (1) Being friends concerns all activities which indicate a warm, supporting, and lasting relationship in and outside research institutions like spending work breaks together, joint leisure activities, or family gatherings. (2) Cooperating means to work together in order to realize research proposals, publications, scientific meetings, study programs, courses, and other products of research. (3) Positive citing is about acknowledging or praising colleague’s research in one’s own products of scientific work. (4) Positive proposing refers to activities in which colleagues are suggested for research or other professional awards or grants (without neglecting research ethics). Finally, (5) using ideas concerns the integration of goals, or other components from assumptions, theories, or methods of others in one’s own research. Such an integration often occurs in early or diffuse stages of scientific development, and within informal or implicit scenarios in a way that clear quotation is not possible (e.g., as in incidental comments in conversations).

On the basis of this model, a rating-scale has been developed which can be used for self-assessment-based quality assurance, educational improvement, faculty development and multiple exploratory purposes in Higher Education research and practice. Within a first empirical test, the rating scales have been adapted and applied successfully to a sample of college students (Astleitner & Zumbach, 2021).

The developed model is based on empirical evidence on the issue of collegiality. The model has been created by focusing on the mentioned evidence-based models of collegiality, related research and their shortcomings as well as on measurable activities of researchers (see the Researcher Development Framework from the Careers Research and Advisory Centre, 2011). For model building, theory-building techniques like clustering, making contrasts/comparisons, partitioning variables, factoring, and making conceptual/theoretical coherence were applied (Jaccard & Jacoby, 2010). The “rational method” for questionnaire design was used for item production consisting of concept analysis, item specification, item judgment and scale construction (Oosterveld, 1996).

The main results of this work are an innovative theoretical model and a related self-assessment instrument (in a short with 14 items and long form with 56 items) based on a 4-point-Likert-scale. A first exploratory test within a college student sample (n=196) with the long and adapted version of the instrument revealed good reliability and validity (Astleitner & Zumbach, 2021). Here, a descriptive and multi-dimensional model of collegiality in Higher Education has been presented for the first time. The model integrates given approaches and expands their applicability on individual research-based activities and their attributional contexts. The model-based self-rating scales on collegiality can be seen as an instrument for personal screening with exploring and identifying individual strengths and weaknesses, for stimulating exploratory qualitative studies, or for designing quantitative empirical studies in the context of educational improvement and quality assurance. The scales include items like: I have a warm, supporting, and lasting relationship with my colleague(s). I spend work breaks at the department with my colleague(s). Or, I meet my colleague(s) privately. As an application of the rating scales, researchers can, for example, carry out a self-assessment and link the ratings per item with lines. These lines then form a profile of your own collegiality which can be used for individual faculty development. In the context of exploratory qualitative studies, the rating scales can, for example, be used for stimulating to focus on issues or serve as basis for formulating key questions for interviewing. In case of carrying out a quantitative study on the issue of collegiality in research, the rating scales could be used for validating other instruments, or for measuring collegiality in research activities itself.

Astleitner, H. & Zumbach, J. (2021). What makes a collegial college student? How personality and goal orientations contribute to social behavior (Unpublished manuscript). Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) (2011). Researcher development framework. Retrieved from https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/rdf-related/researcher-development-framework-rdf-vitae.pdf/view Jaccard, J. & Jacoby, J. (2010). Theory construction and model-building skills. A practical guide for social scientists. New York, London: Guilford. Johnston, P. C., Schimmel, T., & O’Hara, H. (2010). Revisiting the AAUP recommendation: Initial validation of a university faculty model of collegiality. College Quarterly, 13. Retrieved from http://collegequarterly.ca/2010-vol13-num02-spring/johnston.html Leiber, T. (Ed.). (2019). Impact evaluation of quality management in higher education. London, New York: Routledge. Oosterveld, P. (1996). Questionnaire design methods. Berkhout Nijmegen BV. Rogge, R. D., Fincham, F. D., Crasta, D., & Maniaci, M. R. (2017). Positive and negative evaluation of relationships: Development and validation of the Positive–Negative Relationship Quality (PN-RQ) scale. Psychological Assessment, 29, 1028–1043. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000392