Understanding Academic Science and Engineering: A Longitudinal Study of Research Groups

本研究是对美国科学和工程领域学术研究团体的组织和环境影响进行纵向研究的第一阶段。这项研究将检查研究小组是如何组织的，以及它们如何随着时间的推移而变化；情境变量如何影响群体结构、功能和绩效；以及情境变量和群体变量如何共同影响成员的职业、与工作相关的态度和价值观，以及研究行为（包括问题选择、研究风格、生产力、质量和风险承受能力）。第一阶段的主要目的是实施主要概念和制定措施，实地测试数据收集技术，制定抽样计划，设计数据管理和分析系统，并通过分析初步数据来解决和完善研究问题。这将通过面对面访谈，问卷调查，并对大约55名研究人员及其团队的文件进行了检查，这些文件是从四个领域的全国科学家和工程师样本中抽取的。本项目涉及有关学术研究的社会组织的基本问题，因此应引起广泛受众的兴趣，包括联邦决策者，对科学的社会组织感兴趣的学者，关注高等教育的研究人员和实践者社区，以及对群体，组织，还有工作生活。第一阶段的直接成果将是一份详细的最终报告，一份执行摘要，一份一页的项目摘要（每份25份），以及一份学术论文（基于横断面数据），报告研究团队之间的群体特征和表现差异。

This study is the first phase of a longitudinal study of organizational and contextual influences on academic research groups in U.S. science and engineering. The study will examine how research groups are organized and how they change over time; how contextual variables influence group structure, functioning, and performance; and how contextual and group variables together influence members' careers, work-related attitudes and values, and research behavior (including problem selection, research style, productivity, quality, and risk tolerance). The main purposes of Phase I are to operationalize major concepts and develop measures, field test data-gathering techniques, devise a sampling plan, design data management and analysis systems, and address and refine the research questions through analysis of preliminary data, This will be done through face-to-face interviews, questionnaires, and an examination of documents for approximately fifty-five researchers and their teams, drawn from a national sample of scientists and engineers in four fields. This project addresses fundamental questions about the social organization of academic research and thus should be of interest to a wide audience, including federal decision makers, scholars interested in the social organization of science, the community of researchers and practitioners concerned with higher education, and social scientists interested in groups, organizations, and work life. The immediate products of Phase I will be a detailed final report, an executive summary, and a one-page abstract of the project (25 copies of each) for NSF, and an academic paper (based on cross- sectional data) reporting on differences in group characteristics and performance among research teams.