¹ Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), NSOPF:99 was conducted in 1999 and asked a nationally representative sample of faculty and instructional staff about their employment and work activities in fall 1998. According to NSOPF:99, there were approximately 1.1 million faculty and instructional staff employed by public and private not-for-profit 2-year and above postsecondary institutions in fall 1998. Of these, about 976,000 reported having some instructional responsibilities for credit, including teaching classes for credit or advising students about academic activities for credit. Among these individuals, approximately 90 percent, or 882,000 (501,000 full-time and 381,000 part-time), reported teaching one or more classes for credit in fall 1998. These individuals become the core sample of this report. In the interest of brevity, these individuals are often referred to as "instructional faculty and staff," "instructional faculty," or simply "faculty" throughout this report, although they are a subset of faculty and instructional staff included in the NSOPF:99. (return to text)

² Quality of computing resources reflects the average of respondents' ratings of their institution's personal computers and local networks, centralized (main frame) computer facilities, Internet connections, and technical support for computer-related activities. (return to text)

³ Bivariate correlations showed that the effect sizes of the independent variables on use of e-mail were small to moderate, with correlations ranging in absolute value from .001 to .295. The most important factor in accounting for the variance in e-mail use was Internet access, with a correlation of .290 between having Internet access both at home and at work and e-mail use, and a correlation of -.295 between having no Internet access and e-mail use. The correlations of the independent variables to use of websites all represented small effect sizes, ranging in absolute value from .001 to .130 (having Internet access both at home and at work). (return to text)

⁴ Total student contact hours were calculated as follows: For each for-credit class taught (a maximum of 5 classes could be reported by respondents), the number of hours per week spent teaching the class was multiplied by the number of students in the class. The products were then summed to obtain the total number of student classroom contact hours. (return to text)