About

Dr. Stephen Porter is a Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University. He teaches graduate courses on applied statistics and causal inference. He earned his Ph.D. in political science with a concentration in econometrics from the University of Rochester. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Porter spent ten years in university administration, culminating in his role as Director of Institutional Research at Wesleyan University. His research primarily focuses on student success, emphasizing evaluation methods using causal inference techniques and survey methodology. His extensive body of work has been supported by funding from prominent organizations such as the Institute of Education Sciences, the Lumina Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Walton Family Foundation. Dr. Porter has served on the editorial boards of multiple scholarly journals and has chaired grant review panels for the Institute of Education Sciences. He has held visiting scholar positions at institutions including RTI International and Nagoya University in Japan, and has provided consulting for national postsecondary student aid studies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Economics
• Mathematics education
• Sociology
• Statistics
• Economic growth
• Medical education
• Accounting
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Library science
• Econometrics
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Correction to: Understanding ORCID adoption among academic researchers

  Scientometrics · 2025-06-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding ORCID adoption among academic researchers

  Scientometrics · 2025-04-22 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Just over a decade ago, the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) was created to provide a unique digital identifier for researchers around the world. The ORCID has proven essential in identifying individual researchers and their publications, both for bibliometric research analyses and for universities and other organizations tracking the research productivity and impact of their personnel. Yet widespread adoption of the ORCID by individual researchers has proved elusive, with previous studies finding adoption rates ranging from 3% to 42%. Using a national survey of U.S. academic researchers at 31 research universities, we investigate why some researchers adopt an ORCID and some do not. We found an overall adoption rate of 72%, with adoptions rates ranging between academic disciplines from a low of 17% in the visual and performing arts to a high of 93% in biological and biomedical sciences. Many academic journals require an ORCID to submit a manuscript, and this is the main reason why researchers adopt an ORCID. The top three reasons for not having an ORCID are not seeing the benefits, being far enough in the academic career to not need it, and working in an academic discipline where it is not needed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding the counterfactual approach to instrumental variables: a practical guide

  Asia Pacific Education Review · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Econometrics
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• U.S. Policymakers Need to Mind the Gap between Think Tanks and Geographic Seams: Policy Recommendations for Improving Research Studies and Expert Commentary on Africa and the Middle East at American Think Tanks

  2024-04-29

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The Biden Administration recently declared transcending geographic seams to be a national security priority. However, this declaration does not appear to have spurred systematic changes in the production of research studies and expert commentary on African affairs within the United States think tank community. An exploration of the metatags used to label commentary articles published on an African affairs blog by a major United States think tank serves as case in point. Far from transcending the geographic seams, this publication appears to be rife with geographic bias that directs the attention of politicians, policymakers, and regional experts away from these very seams. If the Biden Administration is serious about making progress on transcending geographic seams, then the authors argue that the White House should take immediate action to tackle this problem.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effects of the Pandemic on Faculty at Public Research Universities

  Teachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2023-10-01 · 2 citations

  article

  We provide results from the first national survey of research university faculty on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on research productivity and tenure and promotion plans. Our analytic sample consists of almost 4,000 tenured and tenure-line faculty from 31 research universities. A large majority of faculty report disruptions to research due to the pandemic, with time spent moving instruction online listed as the most common cause (80%), followed by travel restrictions (80%) and inability to focus attention (66%). Although the extent of research disruption varied across academic disciplines, the reasons for disruptions were remarkably similar across disciplines. Forty-two percent of junior faculty stated they were likely to extend their tenure clocks due to the pandemic.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Themes in Postsecondary Research Using Topic Modeling and Journal Abstracts

  Research in Higher Education · 2023 · 5 citations

  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Agnieszka Sobocinska. <i>Saving the World?: Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex</i>.

  The American Historical Review · 2023-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Journal Article Agnieszka Sobocinska. Saving the World?: Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex. Get access Agnieszka Sobocinska. Saving the World?: Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. x, 318. Paper $44.99. Stephen R. Porter Stephen R. Porter University of Cincinnati, US Email: portersp@ucmail.uc.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 992–993, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad174 Published: 22 June 2023

  PublisherDOI

• Using an Assessment System for Data-Driven Reform

  The Elementary School Journal · 2022-02-01 · 1 citations

  article

  The present study employed a difference-in-difference approach to determine the impact of a technologically enhanced diagnostic and formative assessment system implemented in one US state in kindergarten through third grade on school-level end-of-year third-grade reading test scores and percentage of students receiving special education services. Data were obtained for 795 elementary schools that implemented the assessment system in a staggered progression across multiple years. The analysis estimated the effect of the assessment system on the entire third-grade sample, and by selected demographic characteristics. Results showed no effect of the assessment system on average end-of-year reading scores or school-level percentage of students receiving special education services. Follow-up models including time and fidelity information also obtained null results overall. Given the null, schools should consider modifications to the ways they obtain, manage, and use assessment data.

  PublisherDOI

• Refugees, Statelessness, and the Disordering of Citizenship

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-11-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  American responses to refugee dilemmas in the decades following the Cold War in many ways mirrored the country’s broader and often ambivalent attempts to redefine itself as an enduring global hegemon over that period. During the Cold War, American refugee advocates within and outside of government had promoted refugee assistance as an important tool for advancing US influence internationally, part of the country’s “arsenal of peace” and “strategy of freedom” as one government official put it. Such initiatives purportedly heralded to global and American audiences alike the country’s commitment not only to such soft-power principles of international humanitarianism and an American way of life that welcomed immigrants into a prosperous land of freedom; they were additionally designed to signal America’s prudent, hard-nosed concern with promoting international stability and US national interests, especially in the struggle against communism. As Americans considered what role the United States should play in a post-Cold War world that President George H. W.

  PublisherDOI

• How evaluation affects accountability mechanisms.

  UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) · 2020-07-01

  dissertationOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In international development people with power often publicly demand accountability on the basis that it supports enhanced poverty reduction. Accountability mechanisms are forums where these demands for accountability are realised through agents meeting to exercise and constrain power. In exercising and constraining power, the agents in the accountability mechanism draw on evaluation to assist decision-making. Evaluators are familiar with providing evaluation as an instrument that responds to demands of accountability mechanisms (Christie and Alkin, 2014; Rossi et al, 2018). For evaluators though, there is a gap in research related to how they affect accountability mechanisms to support the achievement of a goal – be it responsiveness to the voices of marginalized people, social betterment, evidence use, or transformation. To close the evidence gap, this thesis presents a middle-range theory of how evaluation affects accountability based on a thorough review of relevant studies and a metaethnographic synthesis of five studies that I authored or co-authored.&#13;\n&#13;\nThe thesis proposes a middle-range theory for how evaluation affects accountability mechanisms through a strategic approach in which evaluators with other agents target achievement of a common goal, such as, expanded voice of citizens. Strategically the middle range theory prioritizes navigating the authorising environment in order to develop partnerships that provide leadership and exercise power towards a common goal. Three tactics implemented in the process of evaluation support strategic change in the authorising environment, namely, (i) expanding the focus of demand, (ii) accessing the agenda of agents; and (iii) undertaking a shared journey on evaluation quality. When evaluators work towards a common goal in an accountability mechanism’s authorising environment and activate the three tactics in the process of evaluation, the logic of decision-making adapts.&#13;\n&#13;\nIn working to affect accountability mechanisms evaluators require relational and analytical approaches to engage in political spaces. This thesis identifies five approaches that can be combined to assist in both the authorising environment and evaluation processes. Evaluators need approaches to work in a relational manner, which in this study meant undertaking Helping (Porter, 2011; Schein, 2009) and joint production (Packard Foundation, 2010b;Porter, 2013). Evaluators also require approaches to map opportunities and constraints for affecting accountability mechanisms by, for example, by detailing the demand for evaluation (Porter and Goldman, 2013) and the political economy of the context (Porter, 2017). The Capability Approach (Alkire, 2005; Sen, 1999) arises in this study as a guiding framework for affecting accountability mechanisms. The capability approach goes further than the other approaches discussed in the study by providing an underlying ethic, which has both relational and analytical applications. The capability approach also has an in-depth justification for the prioritisation of freedom in both the means and ends of development, and an emphasis on a broad information basis for evaluation (Porter and de Wet, 2009).

  OA PDF

Frequent coauthors

• Barbara Schepps

  Providence College

  25 shared

• Jonathan H. Sunshine

  25 shared

• Paul D. Umbach

  North Carolina State University

  11 shared

• Michael E. Whitcomb

  NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital

  9 shared

• G R Busheé

  George Mason University

  5 shared

• James Minogue

  North Carolina State University

  5 shared

• David Lalman

  5 shared

• Temple A. Walkowiak

  North Carolina State University

  5 shared