Peer Mentoring Program Increases Faculty Productivity (PQUAD)

Academic Productivity

A dual-incentive peer mentoring model, Positive Peer-Pressured Productivity (PQUAD), shows promising results in increasing academic productivity of early-career faculty and trainees. PQUAD is a virtual scholarship leaderboard which combines an increased awareness of peers’ academic work with a weighted lottery for which tickets are earned on the basis of academic output. The incentive program assigns points for different scholarly activities (e.g., one point for abstract submission, two points for poster presentation, three points for oral presentation, etc.). The accumulated points translate into lottery tickets for a semi-annual drawing for monetary prizes, and participants can monitor their progress against their peers on a leaderboard that displays the top point leaders. Combining an increased awareness of peers’ academic productivity with a weighted lottery financial incentive appears to be a useful model for stimulating academic productivity in early-career faculty.

Positive Results

In the initial pilot of PQUAD among academic faculty at the University of Minnesota, overall annual productivity per faculty member (as measured by total PQUAD score) increased with a doubling of abstract submissions. Submissions and acceptances also increased in all categories except posters, which were unchanged. A majority (73%) of post-survey respondents indicated that the financial incentive motivated them to submit academic work, and 100% indicated that increased awareness of their peers’ work was a motivator.  

Similar results were found when rolled out to the residency program, with a nearly 300% increase in manuscript submissions over three years. 

Video overview

This quick video overview of the program explains more about the PQUAD incentive system.

BENEFITS AND FEATURES:

• Dual-incentive peer mentoring
• Increasing academic productivity of early-career faculty
• Increases awareness of peers’ academic work
• Weighted lottery tickets earned based on academic output
• Accumulated points translate into lottery tickets for a semi-annual drawing for monetary prizes
• Financial incentive appears to be a useful model for stimulating academic productivity
• Users have ability to download a spreadsheet of their ongoing scholarship

APPLICATIONS:

• Increasing academic productivity of early-career faculty
• Colleges and universities

Phase of Development

• Product available: one license allows for unlimited contests across a department (i.e. for faculty, residents, fellows, etc).