Measuring Intellectual Diversity in Groups, and Its Effects on Scientific Impact and Productivity
Loading...
Date
2017-11-09
Authors
Graham, Alexander Victor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
I answer questions regarding the relationship between the intellectual diversity of an individual’s
collaborations and their impact and productivity. I propose two new measures of intellectual
diversity∶ coauthor diversity score and group intellectual diversity. Coauthor diversity score
measures how different an author is from their immediate collaborators. Group intellectual diversity
measures how diverse a group is as a composite of each members difference to every other member.
These measures allow me to test hypotheses regarding the relationship between intellectual diversity
and career outcomes. I conduct two case studies, using data from the Web of Science database, to
examine the measures in biomechanical modelling and nanotechnology. I bootstrapped negative
binomial regressions with squared interaction terms for diversity measures to test for relationships
between individual and group diversities against career citations. Increasing diversity is associated
with more citations until an maximum after which citations exhibit negative returns as diversity
increases. This behaviour is consistent in both case studies. I use a bootstrapped linear regression to
show that individual and group diversities have a significant effect on publication rates in
biomechanical modelling, but not in nanotechnology.
Description
Keywords
Social Network Analysis, Sociology of Science, Innovation, Creativity, Diversity, Interdisciplinary