EAGER: Sensible Science: A Sociometric Approach to Collaboration in Synthesis Groups

这项研究考察了跨学科的科学家小组如何合作，以产生高度整合和原创的解释。这种被称为合成的智力过程有可能改变科学领域，并解决与环境、能源和其他问题有关的挑战。它通过整合跨学科、专业部门或时空尺度的理论、方法或数据来实现这一点，以产生具有深刻原创性和特别广泛的适用性的解释。综合对科学和社会很重要，但实现它所需的组织和社会条件还没有得到很好的理解，因此管理它们的能力是有限的。该项目使用社会测量传感器徽章，这是一种研究小群体行为的新研究技术，结合科学、小群体研究、社会学和组织行为学中成熟的方法，来考察群体组织和互动模式如何影响绩效和创造力。对小群体的研究，特别是科学家群体的研究，往往依赖于观察。尽管这很有价值，但观察必然会受到观察者注意力或焦点的限制，并倾向于产生定性数据。社会测量传感器可以通过揭示群体动态的新方面并准确而不引人注目地测量它们来补充观察，还可以挖掘合作的情感维度。社会测量传感器，以及它们将产生的对群体行为的新见解，可能会改变科学中对协作、合成和情感的研究，并推动相关领域的研究。跨学科的综合和创新对于解决社会问题至关重要，鼓励综合的政策是国家科学议程上的优先事项。通过改善我们对综合的理解和我们研究综合的方法，这个项目将为关于协作、跨学科和综合的更好的政策、决策和组织实践奠定坚实的经验基础。

This study examines how interdisciplinary groups of scientists collaborate to produce explanations that are highly integrative and original. This intellectual process, which is called synthesis, has the potential to transform fields of science and to address challenges concerning environment, energy, and other matters. It does so by integrating theories, methods, or data across disciplines, professional sectors, or spatial and temporal scales to produce explanations that are deeply original and exceptionally broad in applicability. Synthesis is important to science and society, but the organizational and social conditions necessary to achieve it are not well understood, and so the ability to manage them is limited. This project uses sociometric sensor badges, a new research technology for the study of small group behavior, in combination with well-established methods in social studies of science, small-group research, sociology, and organizational behavior, to examine how patterns of group organization and interaction influence performance and creativity. Studies of small groups, particularly groups of scientists, tend to rely on observation. Valuable as this is, observation is necessarily limited by the observer's attention or focus and tends to produce qualitative data. Sociometric sensors can complement observation by revealing new facets of group dynamics and measuring them precisely and unobtrusively, and can also tap the affective dimension of collaboration. Sociometric sensors, and the new insights into group behavior they will produce, may transform studies of collaboration, synthesis, and emotion in science, and advance research in related fields. Interdisciplinary synthesis and innovation are vital for addressing societal problems, and policies to encourage synthesis are high on the national science agenda. By improving our understanding of synthesis and our methods for studying it, this project will lay a strong empirical foundation for better policies, decisions, and organizational practices concerning collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and synthesis.