Internationalization of the academics in Turkey: Participating in International Activities and an Investigation with CHAID Analysis

Like in many parts of the world, internationalization has evolved to a fundamental area of interest in Turkish higher education through rapidly developing policies and implementations. As a key stakeholder in higher education, academics and enhancing their participation in internationalization hold an important place in these policies and implementations. This research aims at examining the participation of Turkish academics in internationalization activities with a large-scale respondent group. Employing a quantitative survey design, the study firstly identifies the most and least participated international activities among Turkish academics and then investigates the distribution of participation levels in internationalization activities according to a variety of demographic variables. Finally, by carrying out CHAID analysis, the research focuses on the prediction structure of academics’ participation in internationalization according to independent and merged demographic variables. According to the analysis results of the 973 participant responses, the mostly participated internationalization activities of Turkish academics include activities related to international publication process, while academics’ participation in student-related internationalization activities appears as the least. Findings also indicate that the distribution of academics’ participation in internationalization activities varies, and the independent and merged groups of variables including discipline, academic title and graduate experiences abroad have an impact on the prediction structure of participating in internationalization activities. Findings are discussed in the light of related literature as well as recent implementations in Turkey, and recommendations for Turkey’s higher education are provided