Why research productivity of some scientists is higher? Effects of social, economic and cultural capital on research productivity.

In the past decades, the awareness about the concept of research productivity at higher education institutions has improved which led to an increase in the number of studies dealing with the subject. Such studies mostly deal with correlations between research productivity and organizational elements, gender, age, professional experience, and alma mater characteristics. To provide an innovative dimension to the existing studies this study focuses on the interaction between the research productivity of the scientists and their childhood period and childhood setting. In this context, the aim of our study is to examine the effects of cultural, economic, and social capitals on research productivity of both scientists' current status and their parents' during their childhood. The data were collected from 9499 faculty members through a survey questionnaire which included items on cultural, economic, and social capital. The data on research productivity of the participants were taken from the Web of Science. The major findings of the study are as follows: (a) Turkish scientists both have lower levels of parents' level of-during childhood- and their current level of cultural capital, and they mostly come from families with the lower-middle economic level; (b) they have medium level social capital; (c) cultural and social capitals together can account for 69% of research productivity, and the order of the related items are found to be childhood objectified cultural capital, current embodied cultural capital and parents' embodied cultural capital during childhood; (d) among social capital structures, relational social capital is the strongest predictor of research productivity and (e) economic capital is not a significant predictor of research productivity. We believe that our current findings contribute to the studies on higher education research by uncovering the new relationships between structures.

The effects of parental's cultural and economic capital and parental support on being an elite scientists.

Despite the rapid increase in the number of scientists all over the world in recent years, very few scientists can achieve to be part of elite scientist's category. Although there are many studies focusing on elite scientists, these studies generally do not focus on their childhood and parental background. In this study, which attempts to fill this gap, we focus on the cultural and economic capital of the families of elite scientists in Turkey and their parental support in childhood to analyze the roles of these variables in their being elite scientists. First, we assess the impact of cultural capital (institutional, objectified, and embodied), economic capital, parental support, and perceived academic success in basic education on the probability of becoming an elite scientist. Second, we analyze the differences among elite scientists to shed light on the gender gap in academia. We collected the data from 1,966 scientists working at 87 universities in Turkey through an online survey. Some of our main findings are as follows: (a) cultural capital, parental support, and academic success in basic education all have a strong positive effect on becoming an elite scientist; (b) objectified cultural capital has the highest impact in that an increase in this capital increases the probability of becoming elite scientists by 19%; (c) economic capital has no significant effect on elite scientists. Elite scholars have certain common characteristics, but significantly they are different from their average peers in terms of cultural capital and parental support and (d) elite female scientists have higher of cultural capital, economic capital, parental support, and academic success than elite male scientists. This finding supports the existence of the academic inequality and suggests that female scientists need higher cultural capital, economic capital, parental support, and perceived academic success to become elite scientists than their male counterparts.

Acceptance and use of the distance education systems of Turkish medical educators during COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of contextual factors with the UTAUT2.

The aim of this study was to analyze the factors that has affected the use and approval of distance education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey according to the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). The study provided valuable insights on factors affecting the acceptance and use of distance education systems, which have become vital media of instruction since 2020. A total of 708 medical educators volunteered to participate in the study. The data were collected with a scale that was developed according to the UTAUT2 model. The scale consists of the variables of the UTAUT2 model as a ten-point Likert type questionnaire, including twenty-five items and seven dimensions: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, habits, facilitating conditions and behavioral intentions. The data were processed through correlation analysis, simple and multiple linear regression, and the structural equation model. The findings of the study indicated that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, habit, facilitating conditions and behavioral intentions all had positive effects on medical educators using distance education systems.