Rural Veteran Personality, Delay Discounting, and the Interference Preservation Hypothesis

从现役军人到平民生活的过渡充满了挑战。从军队退休后找到一份工作很重要，尤其是因为它是健康和福祉的主要社会决定因素。伊利诺伊州只有3%的退伍军人从事科学、工程、技术或数学（STEM）职业，而全国的这一比例为7%。此外，居住在农村的退伍军人在STEM领域工作的可能性比居住在城市的退伍军人低近50%。由于许多退伍军人生活在农村地区，在STEM领域缺乏代表性，因此非常需要为居住在农村的退伍军人提供STEM培训机会。位于卡本代尔的南伊利诺伊大学的这个项目将寻求从伊利诺伊州最南端的16个县（联邦政府指定的低社会经济地位地区）招募180多名大学生退伍军人，参加为期17周的培训项目，重点是计算机编程、数据科学、计算机器学习分类模型，以及教育研究方法的专业发展。训练计划中的一个新实验将检验一个迄今为止未陈述的研究假设。延迟绩效反馈（7天）使“时间2”的训练绩效优于即时反馈，这与Kulhavy和Anderson的干扰保存假说一致。虽然人们可能会表现出对现在的偏见，这是一个基本的行为经济学原理，通常通过延迟折扣措施（即，“我更喜欢我现在能得到的”）来运作，但延迟奖励或反馈可能会带来更好的结果。在学习和训练任务表现的背景下，延迟反馈可能为学习者提供足够的时间来忘记不正确的过程。然而，与上述讨论平行的是，人格已被证明与学习过程和不同训练任务绩效之间存在复杂的联系，但尚未有研究调查人格类型是否会调节反馈时间和训练任务绩效之间的关系。因此，在“时间2”提高任务表现的努力可能需要个性化的方法。本项目旨在通过两组随机对照试验来验证这一假设。重要的是，延迟折扣——一种衡量冲动的行为经济学指标——和学习风格将被控制，以隔离个性的独特影响。结果可能导致干扰保持假说的分水岭修正。该项目得到了美国国家科学基金会EDU核心研究：STEM教育研究能力建设（BCSER）项目的支持，该项目旨在培养研究人员开展高质量STEM教育研究的能力。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。

The transition from active-duty military service to civilian life is challenging. Securing a job following retirement from the military is important, not least because it is a major social determinant of health and wellbeing. Only 3% of military veterans in Illinois - compared to 7% nationally - are employed in science, engineering, technology, or mathematics (STEM) occupations. Furthermore, rural-dwelling veterans are nearly 50% less likely than urban-dwelling veterans to work in STEM. Because many veterans live in rural areas and lack representation in STEM fields, there is a considerable need to provide STEM training opportunities to rural-dwelling veterans. This project at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale will seek to recruit more than 180 college student veterans from the 16 southernmost counties in Illinois, a federally designated region of low socioeconomic status, for participation in a 17-week training program focused on computer programming, data science, and calculating machine learning classification models, as well as professional development in education research methods.A novel experiment within the training program will test a heretofore unstated research hypothesis. Delayed performance feedback ( 7 days) facilitates superior training performance at "time 2" over immediate feedback with is consistent with Kulhavy and Anderson's interference preservation hypothesis. While people may exhibit bias for the present, which is a foundational behavioral economics principle typically operationalized by delay discounting measures (i.e., "I prefer what I can get now"), delayed rewards or feedback may render superior outcomes. In the context of learning and training task performance, delayed feedback may provide enough time for learners to forget incorrect processes. However, paralleling the forgoing discussion, personality has been shown to be intricately associated with learning processes and differential training task performance, yet no study has investigated whether personality type moderates the relationship between feedback timing and training task performance. Therefore, efforts at enhancing task performance at "time 2" may require a personalized approach. This project aims to test the hypothesis in a two-group randomized controlled trial. Importantly, delay discounting - a behavioral economic measure of impulsivity - and learning style will be controlled for so as to isolate the unique effect of personality. Results could lead to a watershed modification of the interference preservation hypothesis. The project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research: Building Capacity for STEM Education Research (BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators' capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.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.