Weighting the Indicators of Turkish University Rankings: The Example of University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) Turkey General Rankings

The purpose of this research is to identify the statistically significant indicators in the URAP Turkey General Rankings and to weight these significant indicators as a percentage. This research was designed as a regression model based on the secondary usage of URAP data. The data set was generated from the scores in the URAP Turkey General Rankings between 2010 and 2018. Five indicators in the URAP Turkish Universities Ranking are Article, Total Citation, Total Scientific Document, The Number of Doctoral Graduates and Faculty/Student scores. For each indicator, the mean score of first seven years was determined, and these mean scores were assigned as independent variables to explain universities’ total scores in the URAP Turkey General Rankings. Stepwise Regression Analysis was performed to establish the most comprehensive statistical model including all significant indicators together in order to attain the highest determinant (R2) coefficient close to one. This analysis adjusted the regression model that explains nearly the entire variance (R2=.942) for the 2017-18 URAP Turkey General Rankings. Among five indicators, only Total Scientific Document Score (p>.05) is not a significant indicator in this model. As significant indicators, Article, Total Citation, The Number of Doctoral Graduates, and Faculty/Student scores were weighted using standardised beta (β) coefficients for the mean scores of these four indicators. The weights for significant indicators were calculated 47.83% for Article, 33.61% for The Number of Doctoral Graduate, 13.48% for Total Citation, and 5.08% for Faculty/Student scores. Two rankings were formed based on the sum of weighted 2017-18 scores for significant indicators and the sum of unweighted 2017-18 scores for significant indicators, and then these rankings were compared. The comparison revealed that 19 universities take same places in these two rankings, but the order of 102 universities in these rankings differ from one to 22 places