Organizational characteristics of dental schools associated with research productivity

The purpose of this study was to identify organizational characteristics of dental schools that relate to research productivity. Published data on 53 U.S. dental schools comprised the seven predictor variables. The criterion variable of school research productivity (SRP) was defined as the aggregate number of faculty publications generated by each dental school. Using stepwise multiple regression, it was found that three of the variables predicted 34 percent of the variance in SRP: (1) level of NIDR funding, R2 = .28; (2) student/faculty ratio, R2 = .31, and (3) number of library books, R2 = .337. An ANOVA was conducted between source of basic science instruction and SRP and revealed that the use of medical school faculty to teach basic science courses for dental students had the strongest positive relationship to SRP. The "ideal" combination of dental school characteristics associated with research productivity was $420,000 or more in NIDR funds, a student/faculty ratio of 4.75 or less, a dental library with at least 10,000 dental-related books, and the use of medical school faculty to teach basic science courses.