World Reputation Rankings 2022: methodology

The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings are created using the world’s largest invitation-only academic opinion survey – a unique piece of research.

The Academic Reputation Survey, available in 12 languages, uses United Nations data as a guide to ensure that the response coverage is as representative of world scholarship as possible.

The questionnaire, which is now run in-house by THE, targets only experienced, published scholars, who offer their views on excellence in research and teaching within their disciplines and at institutions with which they are familiar.

The 2022 rankings are based on a survey carried out between November 2021 and February 2022, which received a total of 29,606 responses from 159 countries.

Download the full methodology (pdf)

In the survey, scholars are questioned in terms of their knowledge of their specific discipline. They are not asked to create a ranking themselves or to list a large range of institutions; they only name, at most, 15 universities that they believe are the best in both research and teaching in their field. 

The two scores for research and teaching are combined at a ratio of 2:1, giving more weight to research because our expert advisers have suggested that there is greater confidence in respondents’ ability to make accurate judgements about research quality.

The survey data was used alongside 11 indicators to help create the THE World University Rankings 2023, unveiled in October 2022.

The Reputation Rankings’ scores are based on the number of times that an institution is cited by respondents as being one of the best in their field. The number one institution is the one selected most often and it receives a score of 100. The scores for all other institutions in the table are expressed as a percentage of this institution’s score. This scoring system, which differs from that used in the THE World University Rankings, is intended to give a clearer and more meaningful perspective on the reputation data in isolation.

The top 200 universities by reputation will be listed for the third year, up from 100 in 2019. THE has decided to score only the top 50 because the differentials between institutions after that point become narrow. The institutions that make up the second quarter of the table will be listed in groups of 10, while the institutions in the second half of the table will be listed in groups of 25. The number in each group may vary owing to some institutions at the thresholds having the same scores.