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The rankings of programs in almost all the specialty areas are based on surveys by experts in those specialties. For two specialties—Chinese Philosophy and Indian Philosophy—we had an insufficient number of responses to the faculty quality survey to rely solely on that; in those cases, members of the Advisory Board (and sometimes other experts in the fields) were consulted on the ranking, using the limited survey data we did have as a starting point.
Because, in many cases, the ratings reflect the presence of only one or two faculty in a department, the Advisory Board decided that we would not publish the precise scores. Programs are placed in "groupings" based on the rounded mean (rounded to the nearest .5). Next to each grouping, you will find the rounded mean for that group; next to the name of each program within that group you will find the median score for that faculty in parentheses, and then the mode score: where the mode and median are higher or lower than the mean, it is probably safe to assume that there was some notable divergence of opinion among evaluators. Within a grouping, programs are listed alphabetically. Only programs with a rounded mean of "3" (meaning "Good") or higher are so grouped.
The Advisory Board has added to the specialty rankings two categories of programs. Faculties ranked in 2004, but not included in the 2006 survey, are marked with an #. Faculties not rated in 2004 or 2006, but deemed by the Board strong in an area, are marked with an *.
The purpose of the specialty rankings is to identify programs in particular fields that a student should investigate for himself or herself. Because of the relatively small number of raters in each specialization, students are urged not to assign much weight at all to small differences (e.g., being in Group 2 versus Group 3). More evaluators in the pool might well have resulted in changes of .5 in rounded mean in either direction; this is especially likely where the median score is either above or below the norm for the grouping. Also bear in mind that, in general, programs with more faculty specializing in an area tended to be rated more highly than those with just one philosopher in the field.
The lines between the specialty categories are not always hard-and-fast. What one philosopher might call an issue in philosophy of language, another might call an issue in philosophical logic or philosophy of mind. Students might look at the useful Blackwell Companions to Philosophy, or the equally valuable (albeit less detailed) Oxford volumes (ed. Grayling) on Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, to get some sense of how the fields are customarily demarcated.
A note about one special case. The University of St. Andrews/University of Stirling Joint Program is listed only in those cases where its combined rating is higher than the rating for St. Andrews considered by itself.
It is worth noting that the results were checked for evidence of strategic voting; there was none. Evaluators were admirably responsible and honest in their assessments, and there were fairly high levels of consensus on the strengths of the faculties among the evaluators who completed the surveys.
* inserted by Board
# based on 2004 results, in some cases with modest adjustments by the Advisory Board to reflect changes in staff in the interim
Remember: evaluators were not permitted to evaluate either their own department or the department from which they received their highest degree (PhD, DPhil, sometimes the BPhil).
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