Evaluating research performance in tourism and hospitality: The perspective of university program heads

In spite of the consensus on the importance of research and its close relationship to academic promotion and tenure, the existing tourism and hospitality literature has no published article that examine the importance of various research-related activities. While counting published articles in selected journals or citation frequency can serve as a proxy for research achievement, these methods are subject to bias and incomplete definition. Specifically, these counting methods do not consider the effort that academic staff have devoted to input, service, and other output types that are also an essential part of academic research. To bridge this gap, this paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated the perceived importance of 31 research-related items from the perspective of university program heads in tourism and hospitality departments. Empirical findings from the respondents of 78 universities around the world show that only seven items were viewed as important or very important.