Martin M. Chemers - US grants

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This four-year project aims to strengthen programs that promote entry into and success in biomedical research careers, particularly by underrepresented minority students. The research questions are: 1) how do program activities, particularly research participation and mentoring, influence: a) students' skills in science inquiry and teamwork, b) their beliefs in their abilities, and c) their stage-appropriate career outcomes; and 2) are these influences similar or different for minority and non-minority students. Students from high school, community college, undergraduate, and graduate levels will participate in the study. Three separate studies will test theoretical hypotheses. An Alumni Retrospective Survey will involve 700 high school program alumni, 500 undergraduate program alumni, 100 graduate program alumni, and 500 undergraduate and 100 graduate science alumni who did not participate in formal support programs. These responses, as well as qualitative information from program faculty and staff and from field observations, will provide the foundation for the design and testing of simulations that serve both as performance-based assessments of science inquiry and scientific teamwork skills and as educational experiences. In the COSMOS Simulation and Survey, 280 high school students recruited for COSMOS because of their high abilities in science and mathematics will participate in the simulations at the beginning and end of their four-week residential program. In the Undergraduate Simulation and Survey, 100 undergraduates involved in science support programs will participate in the simulations at the beginning and end of the 2006-07 academic year. Across these studies, approximately 54% of the sample will be females, and 44% from underrepresented minority groups. With the student as the unit of analysis, our primary dependent measures are intention to continue and actual continuation toward research careers, skills in scientific inquiry and teamwork, and beliefs about those skills. Data will be analyzed primarily through correlational and multiple regression procedures. [unreadable] [unreadable]

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Attempts to support underrepresented minority (URM) students for education and careers in scientific research have had some success. Programs such Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) sponsored by the National Institutes of Health Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH-GMS) have been shown to increase the likelihood that URM students will continue successfully towards careers in biomedical science research (Barlow and Villarejo, 2004). However, until quite recently, very little research had been reported that addressed how intervention programs have their effects, information that could be used to enhance programs and scale up support efforts. In 2003, NIH-GMS began to fund basic research designed to understand the processes and effects of intervention programs under the "Efficacy of Interventions Promoting Entry into Biomedical Research Careers" initiative. The first grants awarded are now entering the fourth and final year of funded support, and other projects have been added to the cluster. There are now eleven projects under way. Timely analysis and synthesis of these research findings would go far to maximize the utility of this research for NIH policy and decision makers. The present proposal seeks funding to support an annual conference ("Annual Conference to Accelerate Research to Practice"), which will bring together, for a two-day conference, the principle investigators and other key research personnel who are grantee on this cluster. (There are currently eleven such grantees with an expectation of adding up to six more each year, with four to six grantees finishing each year.) During the conference, each grantee group will present a progress report on the group's research activities with an emphasis on key findings during the past year. After all groups have presented the principle investigators will meet, and with the facilitation of an expert consultant, will analyze and synthesize the collective body of findings presented with the goal of identifying replicable and significant findings across groups. The consultant (to be chosen) will have high levels of expertise in (a) the literature on efforts to support underrepresented minority (URM) students, (b) support program design, and (c) social and behavioral science research methodology. Following the conference, the R13 principle investigator and the consultant will co-author a report to the NIH-GMS leadership.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The persistent underrepresentation of Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans in the ranks of Ph.D.-level researchers in the biomedical fields has long been recognized as a problem for our nation. The National Institutes of Health have sponsored extensive minority-target training programs under the Minority Opportunity in Research (MORE) program. Although some evaluations have found that students in MORE programs are more likely than other students to pursue research careers, the results are not unequivocal. Moreover, very little high-quality research has addressed the question of how such programs work, i.e., the processes by which the programs have their effects. Reliable information on positive and negative aspects of the enrichment process would permit the development of guidelines for optimally effective programs and would provide opportunities for scaling up for a larger number of trainees. To attain valid information about MORE program effects, NIH-GMS launched an RO1 initiative for "Research on the Efficacy of Interventions that Promote Research Careers" in 2003. At a recent (May 2007) workshop sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, it was acknowledged that there has been a dearth of high-quality proposals for the initiative. Although many of the proposals come from individuals with great understanding of and insight into the programs (e.g., natural scientists or medical educators), the proposals lack expertise and sophistication in the social and behavioral science research that is necessary to answer the proposed questions and suffer from insufficient theoretical grounding, weak designs, and/or weak or inappropriate data analysis strategies. The current proposal seeks funding to offer conferences/workshops to introduce previously unsuccessful or potential proposal writers to (a) the basic logic of social and behavioral science research, (b) appropriate research designs and analyses, and (c) strategies for the composition of interdisciplinary teams. Taught by knowledgeable and experienced social and behavioral scientists, the workshops will employ lectures, demonstrations, problem sets, and small group sessions to allow participants to address the necessary topics. The goal of the workshop is not to make participants experts in social science research, but rather to increase their capabilities to organize and manage highly effective research teams.