The Importance of Soft Skills for US Research Administrators

Analysis of the RAAAP-1 Dataset (Kerridge & Scott, 2018a) has revealed which skills are deemed most important by research administrators. In this paper we focus on the subset (n=941) of respondents from the USA to the initial RAAAP survey (Kerridge & Scott, 2018b) and their responses to the questions about the importance of different skills to their roles as research administrators.The worldwide survey was conducted in 2016 and received a total of 2,691 responses, however here we focus on the (n=941) from the USA in order to provide a coherent picture. In all, 31 skills were asked about, of which, 13 were deemed as soft (transferable) skills and 18 as hard (research administration related technical) skills. For each skill, a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 Not, 2 Some, 3 Yes, 4 Very, 5 Extremely, with an additional option for No Response) was used. Table 1 shows the skill type, skill, and the average response value (excluding No Response answers - these only account for 0.6-2.5% ofresponses).The data clearly show that US research administrators view soft transferable skills as more important fortheir roles than the hard research administration specific skills.