Vu Thi Trang

Type of the article: Research Article

This study examines how institutional policy support, academic work environment, access to professional development opportunities, and academic compensation and incentives are associated with individual academic performance among political science faculty in Vietnam, while also testing the mediating role of individual professional development. The analysis is based on 415 valid survey responses collected from political science faculty working in Vietnamese higher education institutions and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that academic compensation and incentives emerge as the strongest positive predictors of individual academic performance (β = 0.301), followed by academic work environment (β = 0.289), individual professional development (β = 0.189), institutional policy support (β = 0.165), and access to professional development opportunities (β = 0.081). Individual professional development also positively predicts academic performance and partially mediates the relationships between the four contextual factors and academic performance. The model explains 30.7% of the variance in individual professional development and 52.0% of the variance in individual academic performance. These findings suggest that incentive systems, supportive academic environments, and meaningful professional development are important factors associated with academic performance among political science faculty in Vietnam.

Acknowledgment(s)
This research is sponsored by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences under Grant No. KHXH/NV/2025-28.