Career Decision-Making of Future Minority Biomedical Science Faculty

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去的几十年里，NIH和NIGMS一直致力于增加生物医学科学家的多样性。尽管为实现这一目标投入了大量的财力和人力资源，但取得的进展相对较小，特别是在科学教师中。许多解释和理论，这种缺乏改善教师的多样性已经提出，但没有研究有系统地试图确定这种低的改善率是由于受训人员准备不足，持续的歧视，或年轻的少数民族学生的积极决定不追求学术生涯。最后一种可能性将在拟议的研究中进行研究，因为它对其他可能的解释也有广泛的影响。本研究将采用质性研究方法，对青年科学家的职业决策进行研究，具体目的如下：1）确定1997年至2000年首次接受访谈的学生在进入生物医学博士培训之前的职业道路和决策标准; 2）与学生的新样本，确定过程和标准用于作出职业决策，特别是与学术生涯，本科MARC，RISE，IMSD学生，和PREP学者，在几个阶段的培训; 3）确定MARC、RISE、IMSD和PREP项目的活动如何有助于学生对学术生涯的看法和兴趣; 4）将这些学生的决策标准与进入相同或相似的美国生物医学博士课程的非少数民族学生进行比较; 5）确定先前显示的预测可能进入生物医学博士课程的学生的主题是否也预测了博士毕业的持续性和/或6）确定职业决策的细化程度可以通过社会认知职业理论来解释，如果自我效能感较低，结果期望或绩效目标与不愿意承诺和努力为少数民族和/或非少数民族学生的学术生涯相关联; 7）根据研究结果，提出短期和长期干预措施，以解决影响少数群体学生寻求学术职业的意愿和/或能力的已查明的负面影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): For the past several decades, NIH and NIGMS have led efforts to increase diversity among biomedical scientists. Despite committing great financial and human resources to this goal, relatively little progress has been made, especially among science faculty. Many explanations and theories for this lack of improvement in faculty diversity have been put forth, but no studies have systematically attempted to determine if this low rate of improvement is due to inadequate preparation of trainees, ongoing discrimination, or the active decision of young minority students not to pursue academic careers. This last possibility will be studied in the proposed research because it has broad implications for the other possible explanations as well. Interview-based qualitative research methods will be use to study the career decision making of young scientists and accomplish the following Specific Aims: 1) Determine the career paths and decision making criteria of students first interviewed between 1997 and 2000, prior to their entrance into biomedical PhD training; 2) With a new sample of students, determine the processes and criteria used to make career decisions, especially related to academic careers, of undergraduate MARC, RISE, IMSD students, and PREP scholars, at several stages of training; 3) Determine how activities of MARC, RISE, IMSD and PREP programs contribute to students' perceptions of and interest in academic careers; 4) Compare the decision making criteria of these students with non-minority students who enter the same or similar U.S. biomedical PhD programs; 5) Determine if themes previously shown to predict students likely to enter biomedical PhD programs also predict persistence to PhD completion and/or interest in academic careers; 6) Determine the degree to which refinement of career decisions can be explained by Social Cognitive Career Theory, and if lower perceptions of self-efficacy, outcome expectations or performance goals associate with reluctance to commit to and work toward an academic career for minority and/or non-minority students; 7) Based on the results of the study, propose short and longer-term interventions to address identified negative influences impacting minority students' willingness and/or ability to seek academic careers.