Performance, perception, and legitimation in academic science

Do careers in modern-day professional science have peaks?  It is often thought that careers peak when one is young and that creativity declines with age.  This work challenges both claims and draws different conclusions.  Using a sample of 60 academics at different stages of their careers and employed at three different types of universities in the United States, this study examines performance in a profession by determining whether peaks mark scientific careers, how common they may be, and when and with what frequency they occur over time.  The study utilizes mixed-methods.  Qualitative data gathered from interviews with academics are used to examine their experience of work in order to discern how professionals biographically depict “highs” and “lows” across a career.  Quantitative data gathered from academics’ publication records are used to construct alternate depictions of their evolving professional biographies.  Two different types of career peaks are examined: those established subjectively by scientists’ perceptions and those established objectively by scientists’ performance.  The two types of peaks are then compared with each other in order to see the extent of their correspondence.  We are thus able to assess questions, such as: Are people as good objectively as they subjectively believe?  Are people better performers than they believe themselves to be?  Variation in perception and performance by field is considered, as is variation by university type and by career stage.  The paper concludes by discussing the importance of career peaks to the construction and maintenance of status orders.  Subjective and objective status orders operate as differing means by which legitimation is established in stratified fields of activity, as emblematic in professions.  Legitimation creates a ground on which members of a group, varied in their performances, can lay defensible claim to a robust work identity.