"There are two groups most likely to not respond to this survey. First, faculty with a wide range of political views who don't see any problems with bias and feel indifferent to academic freedom may be less likely to respond to a survey explicitly about this topic, undercounting the number of moderates and conservatives while overrepresenting faculty on the far right who feel oppressed."
"Conservatives who feel silenced and have experienced consequences for their speech are likely to be overrepresented because of the indifferent conservatives who ignored the survey, while liberals who have been silenced are likely to be underrepresented because those faculty might boycott the survey due to its source."
"These potential biases make it difficult to trust the validity of the results, especially data such as this: 'While liberal faculty are more likely to express controversial views, conservative faculty who do express views report experiencing institutional consequences-such as warnings from administrators-at substantially higher rates than liberal faculty who express views.'"
A survey of UW Madison faculty examining ideological imbalance and academic freedom contains serious methodological flaws. While the 633 responses from 2,400 faculty represents a reasonable response rate, response bias distorts the results. Moderates and conservatives indifferent to bias concerns likely did not respond, while far-left faculty may have boycotted the survey due to distrust of its source, the Tommy G. Thompson Center. This creates systematic distortion: conservatives who feel silenced are overrepresented while liberals who experienced silencing are underrepresented. Consequently, claims about conservative faculty experiencing institutional consequences at higher rates than liberal faculty warrant skepticism due to these underlying biases.
Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs
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