Understanding Academic Science and Engineering: A Longitudinal Study of Research Groups

这项研究是美国科学和工程领域组织和背景对学术研究小组影响的纵向研究的第一阶段。这项研究将考察研究小组的组织方式及其随时间的变化；背景变量如何影响小组结构、功能和绩效；以及环境变量和小组变量如何共同影响成员的职业生涯、与工作相关的态度和价值观以及研究行为(包括问题选择、研究风格、生产率、质量和风险承受能力)。第一阶段的主要目的是落实主要概念和制定措施，实地测试数据收集技术，制定抽样计划，设计数据管理和分析系统，并通过分析初步数据解决和改进研究问题，这将通过面对面访谈、问卷调查和审查约55名研究人员及其团队的文件来完成。从四个领域的科学家和工程师的全国样本中提取。这个项目涉及学术研究的社会组织的基本问题，因此应该引起广大受众的兴趣，包括联邦决策者、对科学的社会组织感兴趣的学者、关注高等教育的研究人员和实践者社区，以及对团体、组织和工作生活感兴趣的社会科学家。第一阶段的直接成果将是一份详细的期末报告、一份执行摘要和一页的项目摘要(每份25份)，以及一篇学术论文(基于横截面数据)，报告研究团队在群体特征和表现上的差异。

This study is the first phase of a longitudinal study of organizational and contextual influences on academic research groups in U.S. science and engineering. The study will examine how research groups are organized and how they change over time; how contextual variables influence group structure, functioning, and performance; and how contextual and group variables together influence members' careers, work-related attitudes and values, and research behavior (including problem selection, research style, productivity, quality, and risk tolerance). The main purposes of Phase I are to operationalize major concepts and develop measures, field test data-gathering techniques, devise a sampling plan, design data management and analysis systems, and address and refine the research questions through analysis of preliminary data, This will be done through face-to-face interviews, questionnaires, and an examination of documents for approximately fifty-five researchers and their teams, drawn from a national sample of scientists and engineers in four fields. This project addresses fundamental questions about the social organization of academic research and thus should be of interest to a wide audience, including federal decision makers, scholars interested in the social organization of science, the community of researchers and practitioners concerned with higher education, and social scientists interested in groups, organizations, and work life. The immediate products of Phase I will be a detailed final report, an executive summary, and a one-page abstract of the project (25 copies of each) for NSF, and an academic paper (based on cross- sectional data) reporting on differences in group characteristics and performance among research teams.