research activities seldom exerts any substantial impact on one university’s research
efficiency.
Hypothesis II: Research efficiency and productivity varies among universities
First, China is a country with a vast territory, there exists obvious economic and
educational differences among different areas. It’s for sure that universities’
research efficiency and productivity differs with respect to their location. Second,
inside 211Us, there are also different attributes (985Us v.s. Non-985Us) and dif-
ferent types (comprehensive university v.s. technological university), and they also
differ in external environment, policy focus,financial support, thus it’s normal for
them to present differences in the resulted research efficiency and productivity.
Hypothesis III: Research efficiency and productivity varies among different
disciplines within university
Roughly speaking, disciplines in university can be classified into two broad groups,
NEAM and HSS. HSS and NEAM subjects are very different from each other in
many aspects such as research subject, research methods, research instrument,
research aim, discipline property, and publication or application of research out-
comes, which makes each other hold a relatively independent knowledge system.
Therefore, it’s normal for NEAM and HSS disciplines to have their own traits in
research efficiency and productivity.
The three hypotheses above are the preconditions for us to apply DEA to
evaluate university research efficiency, since DEA requires homogeneity and
independence. Hypothesis III is also the rationale for us to evaluate NEAM and
HSS disciplines separately. Furthermore, in this book, we will take university
location into consideration, and compare research efficiency and productivity by
university location (Eastern China, Central China, and Western China, and Eastern
China being subdivided into three groups as Jing-Jin-Ji, Hu-Su-Zhe, and Others);
we will also take 985 category into consideration, and compare the differences
between 985Us and non-985Us. These contribute to the test of hypothesis II. Since
the development mode of technological 211Us are almost the same with compre-
hensive 211Us, and we’ve already planned to evaluate NEAM and HSS disciplines
separately, we will no longer make comparative analysis on comprehensive 211Us
and technological 211Us separately.
2.6.2 Research Methodology............................
Our research is relied on administrative data of NEAM and HSS research input and
output from“China Statistical Yearbook on University Science and Technology”
(2006–2010),“China Statistical Yearbook on University Social Sciences”(2006–
2010), and journal article data from China Science Citation Database (CSCD),
China Social Science Citations Index (CSSCI), and from ISI website, and apply a
mixed method with qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the status
28 2 Evaluation on University Research Efficiency and Productivity...