As a perfect kick-off to our upcoming fall semester, Jill Gladstein writes about the amazing work she and her colleague Brandon Fralix have done creating and curating the invaluable National Census of Writing. Their work was supported by a prestigious Mellon Foundation grant and is a game-changing resource for conversations in the field.
Often someone posts a question on WCenter or via social media asking about common practices in the writing center. Where is your writing center located? How many consultations did you hold last year? Are your consultants undergraduates, graduate students, or professional tutors? How are they trained and paid? Who directs the writing center? Sometimes people request this information with urgency in order to save a threatened writing center or other times people request this information out of curiosity to provide context for how their individual writing center fits into the larger landscape of writing centers. The answers to these questions provide perspective for folks working in and out of our centers, but we have been limited by the lack of response to these data requests.
Last fall my colleague Brandon Fralix from Bloomfield College and I, with the assistance and support of many, launched the National Census of Writing database.
We sent individuals at over 2500 institutions a 200+ question survey covering eight broad topics.
Our goal was to complement individual research projects and larger projects such as the Writing Centers Research Project and WAC Mapping Project by providing a large set of data that would be easily accessible via the internet. We wanted to make it easier for people to create a data-informed practice within their writing program or center.
In the end, the database contains responses from 680 four-year institutions and 220 two-year institutions in the United States. These responses can be searched through the four-year or two-year institution databases by question, through a variety of filters such as institutional type and size, and through constructing an advanced search.
In constructing the database we assumed most users would want quick responses. For example, if someone wanted to know how many writing centers at four-year institutions are free-standing or part of a larger institutional unit, the Census would report:
Or if someone wanted to know how separate writing center director positions at four-year institutions are classified then the Census would report:
The Census provides quick responses to many commonly asked questions through its basic search features; however to learn more a user can select the advanced feature. Let’s say I want to know if the institutional location, whether a writing center is free-standing or part of an institutional unit, changes how writing center director positions are classified—putting the two questions above in conversation with each other. The advanced search will present the data in columns much like an Excel spreadsheet, and users can download the data and create whatever type of graphic that will work for them and their research.
For example, with the above search, I downloaded the responses from the two questions into a separate file. Then due to the size of the sample, I combined some of the categories used in the Census. After figuring out some percentages, I decided to present the results in the following table because this graphic illustrates the information in an accessible manner.
There is not enough space in this blog post to explore these findings. Through my own experiences with the Census I find that as I dig deeper into the data, more questions emerge. What about location changes the nature of these positions? Of these centers? What other Census questions can I look at to inform my understanding of director positions and how they are classified? What are the limitations of the Census data? To encourage this type of engagement with the Census, Brandon and I are launching a blog that will also be located on the Census website where people can submit a 500-600 word post about a question or two from the Census. Contact me at jgladst1@swarthmore.edu if you wish to submit a post.
Please let me or Brandon know if you have any questions about the Census and its many uses. We would love to hear how you use it and what questions we might consider adding or deleting for the next round of data collection, which will begin summer of 2017.
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