On the Way to Researching Universities

Abstract

This chapter aims to shed light on the significant experiences and challenges that have occurred during a university-funded project, exploring the dynamics of academic employment in the light of gender roles. The data for this mixed methods study comes from a research on Turkish universities, including 505 questionnaires and 46 in-depth interviews with academics from 39 different universities, located in 20 different cities of Turkey. The stratified sample of quantitative research represents the distribution of gender, department, managerial experience, position, and development level of the city, where the universities are located. In-depth interviews are used along with the survey to better understand the nature of academic employment and the implications of quantitative data. This chapter addresses the challenges, such as accessing the universities, ethical and emotional considerations, the effect of Turkish culture, censorship, and the ways that they affect the research process itself and the researchers.