Collaborative Research: Research: An exploration of how faculty mentoring influences doctoral student psychological safety and the impact on work-related outcomes

有必要更好地了解工程部门如何培养更具包容性、心理安全的环境，让博士生在人际冒险中感到安全，尤其是在研究环境中。心理安全环境的特点是，人们可以安全地表达自己的想法和担忧，愿意寻求反馈，对彼此有积极的意图，参与建设性的对抗，并且可以安全地承担风险和实验，所有这些都是具有内在风险的人际行为。在学术研究环境中，教师在培养研究小组的心理安全环境方面起着主要的领导作用。虽然工程学院拥有强大的研究技能，但在如何有效地为研究生提供心理社会支持以及如何创造积极的团队氛围方面，他们通常只接受过很少甚至没有接受过培训。文献表明，女性和其他代表性不足的群体在STEM领域仍然经常遇到“寒冷”的学术气候，或者缺乏归属感，导致负面结果，如心理困扰增加和/或害怕智力冒险，而这对学习、创造和创新至关重要。这些结果阻碍了研究生履行学术责任的能力，可能会劝阻他们继续攻读学位课程，并导致日益严重的心理健康危机，这已经困扰着研究生教育。本研究将进一步加深我们对学术研究环境中心理安全的理解，并为如何培养包容的、心理安全的研究氛围提供实用策略和干预措施，以支持广泛的工作成果。确定在研究生教育环境中建立心理安全的有效方法可以提高学生的学习和表现，这将支持工程师的专业形成和创新工程研究的产生。改善师徒关系和研究氛围也将支持研究生的福利、留任和扩大参与。因此，本研究的主要目的是进一步了解工程研究生研究环境中的心理安全，并制定前瞻性的解决方案，以进一步促进博士生在其研究小组和师徒关系中的心理安全。在行业环境中大量的研究证据表明，心理安全支持个人/团体学习、绩效和创新，并减轻工作压力。然而，目前还没有研究人员在实验室里对心理安全的影响进行过研究，也没有研究人员如何有效地开发心理安全。提出的研究利用解释混合方法设计与纵向访谈相结合。解释性混合方法设计将利用调查和两组访谈来检验教师指导在研究小组博士生心理安全中的作用以及相关的工作成果，如学习和心理健康。该调查将首先描述指导教师指导、博士生心理安全以及随后的积极和消极工作相关结果之间的关系，以及不同人口背景的学生在这些方面的差异。第一组访谈将探讨调查确定的关系（解释设计）。纵向访谈将记录即将加入研究小组的博士生的经历，以及指导教师如何沟通影响研究小组成员心理安全的政策、规范和价值观。这项研究的成果将用于开发教育资源，包括为指导教师提供基于场景的培训讲习班，以支持研究小组的心理安全，以及为研究生提供学习心理安全的教育模块。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is a need to better understand how engineering departments can cultivate more inclusive, psychologically safe environments in which doctoral students feel safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking, especially in research settings. A psychologically safe environment is characterized by people who feel safe to voice ideas and concerns, willingly seek feedback, have positive intentions to one another, engage in constructive confrontation, and feel safe to take risks and experiment, all of which are inherently risky interpersonal behaviors. In academic research environments, faculty have a major leadership role in cultivating a psychologically safe environment within research groups. While engineering faculty possess strong research skills, they often receive minimal to no training on how to effectively provide psychosocial support to graduate students and how to create a positive team climate. The literature suggests women and other underrepresented groups still frequently encounter “chilly” academic climates in STEM, or experience a lack of sense of belonging, leading to negative outcomes such as increased psychological distress and/or a fear of intellectual risk-taking that is essential to learning, creativity, and innovation. These outcomes hamper graduate students’ ability to fulfill their academic responsibilities, may dissuade them from continuing with their degree program, and contribute to a growing mental health crisis that is already plaguing graduate education. This study will further our understanding of psychological safety in academic research settings and inform the development of pragmatic strategies and interventions on how to cultivate inclusive, psychologically-safe research climates that support a wide-range of work outcomes. Identifying effective approaches to establishing psychological safety in graduate education contexts can lead to increased student learning and performance, which will support the professional formation of engineers and the production of innovative engineering research. Improved mentoring relationships and research climates will also support graduate student wellbeing, retention, and broadening participation. The overarching purpose of this study is thus to further our understanding of psychological safety in engineering graduate research settings and develop proactive solutions that can further promote doctoral students’ psychological safety in their research groups and mentoring relationship. Considerable research evidence in industry settings suggests psychological safety supports individual/group learning, performance, and innovation, and mitigates work-related stress. Yet there is no research that has been conducted to study the impact of psychological safety in research labs, nor how it is effectively developed by faculty. The proposed study leverages an explanatory mixed methods design coupled with longitudinal interviews. The explanatory mixed methods design will utilize surveys followed by two sets of interviews to examine the role of faculty mentorship in psychological safety of doctoral students in research groups and associated work outcomes such as learning and mental health. The survey will first characterize relationships between faculty advisor mentoring, doctoral student psychological safety, and subsequent positive and negative work-related outcomes and how these differ for students from different demographic backgrounds. The first set of interviews will explore the relationships identified by the surveys (explanatory design). The longitudinal interviews will document the experience of incoming doctoral students who join a research group and how faculty advisors communicate policies, norms, and values that impact the psychological safety of research group members. The results of this research will be leveraged to develop educational resources, including scenario-based training workshops for faculty advisors to support research group psychological safety and an educational module for graduate students to learn about psychological safety.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.