I applaud Brian Leiter's efforts to examine placement data in the past few days *Update 6/13/14: I have removed these links because I think that Brian Leiter's posts have the potential to mislead students. See my new post here*, as well as the efforts of David Marshall Miller and Andy Carson over the past few years. All of this is effort to improve the profession and deserves recognition as such. I plan to continue reporting placement data next year and will likely post the report to an independent website. Below is a list of features that I take to be essential to an ideal report on placement, together with some ideas for improvement on my own work. Please comment below!
1) the original data: as far as I know this is missing from both Brian Leiter and Andy Carson's efforts. This is important because it keeps the analyses honest by opening them up to public scrutiny. I have provided links to my data and will continue to do so. Recommendations on format are welcome here.
2) the methods: key information is missing in Brian Leiter's presentation, such as the criteria for determining which placements are to "research universities and selective liberal arts colleges," but as far as I can tell David Marshall Miller and Andy Carson are clear and up front about their methods. I have tried to be clear about my methods, but I have received some emails that reveal shortcomings here. Recommendations welcome.
3) completeness: Brian Leiter's efforts, as of this moment, include only a few departments (that were not selected at random). An ideal report should include all the philosophy departments that have made placements of the type in question, which is something David Marshall Miller, Andy Carson, and myself have all tried to do. What is missing from all of our reports is complete placement data. PhilAppointments is not a complete source, for example, but neither are placement pages. Further, placement pages are often missing key data points on placement (such as names, which help to identify duplicate candidates). Next year I aim to cross-reference PhilAppointments with individual placement pages. Recommendations on how to efficiently improve completeness are welcome.
4) recency: since these efforts are in their infancy, it is currently unknown what time frames are relevant. Recent data are ideal, so long as recency is balanced with completeness. Brian Leiter chose a 5-year time frame between 2005 and 2010, which I see as a drawback of his report. Although David Marshall Miller, Andy Carson, and myself have all used the most up-to-date data, David Marshall Miller also looked at different time frames. In the future, with more data, the use of time frames should help us to determine how recent our data needs to be. Recommendations on how to proceed with time frames is welcome here, since next year the data set I have will be in its fourth year (2011-2015).
5) neutrality: Those collecting, analyzing, and reporting the data should be as neutral as possible with respect to hypotheses and results. I have concerns about this with respect to Brian Leiter's report, especially given the absence of 1 and 2. The fact that David Marshall Miller, Andy Carson, and I have performed this work on our own is also potentially problematic, even with the inclusion of the original data and methods. Over the next year I plan to form a task force to work on placement data, composed of several people who have reached out to me over the past week or so (but others are welcome). Having more people on the project should help with neutrality. Recommendations on this point are welcome.
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