Career Decision-Making of Future Minority Biomedical Science Faculty

在过去的几十年里，NIH和NIGMS一直致力于增加生物医学领域的多样性， 科学家尽管为实现这一目标投入了大量财力和人力资源，但进展相对较小。 尤其是在科学领域。许多解释和理论，这种缺乏改善， 教师多样性已经提出，但没有研究系统地试图确定这种低利率 改进的原因是准备不足或受训人员，持续的歧视，或主动决定， 年轻的少数民族学生不追求学术生涯。这最后一种可能性将在拟议的 因为它对其他可能的解释也有广泛的影响。访谈方式 将采用定性研究方法研究青年科学家的职业决策， 实现以下具体目标：1）确定学生的职业道路和决策标准 1997年至2000年期间首次接受采访，在他们进入生物医学博士培训之前; 2）随着新的 学生样本，确定用于做出职业决定的过程和标准，特别是与 学术生涯，本科MARC，RISE，IMSD学生和PREP学者，在几个阶段， 3）确定MARC，RISE，IMSD和PREP计划的活动如何有助于学生的学习。 对学术生涯的看法和兴趣; 4）比较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; 5）确定是否 以前显示的预测学生可能进入生物医学博士课程的主题也预测持久性 完成博士学位和/或对学术生涯的兴趣; 6）确定职业生涯的细化程度 决策可以用社会认知生涯理论来解释，如果自我效能感较低， 结果期望或绩效目标与不愿承诺和努力实现 7）根据研究结果，提出短时间的建议， 和长期干预措施，以解决影响少数民族学生意愿的已确定的负面影响 和/或寻求学术生涯的能力。改善公共卫生的进展取决于生物医学科学家的不同观点。尽管 尽管做出了相当大的努力，但在过去几十年里，在增加大学的多样性方面只取得了微小的进展 以及大学的科学教师，他们决定研究什么样的研究问题，并充当榜样 以及未来几代生物医学科学家的导师。这项研究将研究决定- 制定青年科学家的程序，以确定必须采取哪些不同的做法，以增加科学家的多样性。 大学生命科学系。

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 inadequante preparation or 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 qualitaitive research methods will be use to study the career decision making of young scientists and accomplish the following Specifc 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. Progress to improve public health depends on diverse perspectives of biomedical scientists. Despite sizeable efforts, only minimal progress has been made in the past decades to increase the diversity of college and university science faculty, those who decide what research questions to study and serve as role models and mentors for future generations of biomedical scientists. The proposed research will study the decision- making processes of young scientists to determine what has to be done differently to increase diversity among university life science faculty.