(210) Qualitative Analysis to Explore the Impact of a Writing Retreat to Boost Scholarly Productivity

Objective : This research explores the impact of a writing retreat on the development and maintenance of improved writing habits.

Methods: Four pharmacy faculty members spent a long weekend immersed in scholarly writing at a vacation home. Along with daily scholarly writing, participants kept a journal documenting their progress, thoughts, emotions, barriers, and experiences throughout the retreat, with one additional entry 4-6 weeks later. Journals were analyzed using qualitative methods via exploratory, inductive coding among a two-coder team. Member checking was used for validation and emergence of additional codes. Themes aligned with Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), emphasizing cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors that determine motivation, learning, and action. The data were recoded using SCT to ensure no additional codes or themes were missed.

Results: Participants included one assistant professor, two associate professors, and one non-faculty researcher from the Southwest, Southeast, and Midwest with experience ranging from three years to 11 years. Participant journaling yielded eight journals for analysis. All participants reported positive emotions and productivity during the retreat with sustained benefits 4-6 weeks afterwards. Five themes were identified, including the impact of emotions and mindset on writing, challenges around maintaining focus, specific ideas about the writing process, and critically, the importance of social connection.

Conclusions: Scholarship is an expectation of faculty, but how many consistently engage in effective writing habits? A writing retreat dedicated to immersion in scholarship was shown to be effective and favored by participants, with benefits extending beyond the retreat, and may help other faculty build effective writing habits, associate positive emotions with writing, minimize writing resistance, build positive social connection in scholarship, and ultimately increase sustainable scholarly productivity.