Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Discourse Analysis of Training Programs

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The anthropological research supported by this award will study programs that are trying to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups. Unlike studies that focus on large-scale social programming, this project will look at the effectiveness of smaller, less costly undertakings that concentrate their efforts on training individuals. The overarching research question is whether this more practical approach, which respects individual choice-making and agency, is as effective as larger scale approaches. This is an important question because all societies must sometimes ask their citizens to respond to changing circumstances. Policy makers need to understand the relationship between individual acts and larger social processes in order to bring about the necessary responses. The research will be undertaken in the United States, using candidate training programs as research sites. The researcher will assess how these programs understand, strategize about, and promote leadership by targeted groups. The researcher will collect data using a combination of ethnographic methods including: participant observation at training sessions; the collection and comparative analysis of discourse collected at programs targeted at different groups; text analysis of training materials; semi-structured interviews with trainers and trainees; and archival research. Findings from the research will contribute to better scientific understanding of how individual agents may or may not produce social transformation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.