Improving the STEM Higher Education Research Workforce: Examining Motivation as a Predictor of Faculty Research Development and Productivity

STEM学科的教师研究生产力推动了科学进步、大学-产业知识转移、创新经济活动和数据驱动的政府决策。然而，近几十年来，尽管联邦研究经费有所增加，但美国STEM研究生产力却停滞不前，这导致了如何在经济手段之外最大限度地提高STEM学术研究队伍生产力的问题。该项目的目的是调查动机在STEM高等教育教师研究生产力和发展中的作用。积极进取的教师有望提高生产力，并留在高等教育队伍中，特别是如果他们来自传统上在STEM研究队伍中代表性不足的人群。当前项目的结果将告知高等教育机构，特别是努力提高学术生产力的大学，STEM教师动机的具体优势和缺陷与研究生产力的可衡量收益有关。这是设计研究发展干预措施的关键一步，从基于大学的入门计划到旨在提高STEM教师研究人员生产力的NSF培训资助。研究结果将为大学提供最佳实践和政策指导，以支持STEM教师生产创新的基础和应用科学知识，通过研究解决关键的社会和经济挑战，并培养下一代灵活、知识渊博、多样化的STEM研究人员。本项目由“科学创新与政策计划”和“促进竞争性研究既定计划”共同资助。这个多机构项目将是第一个将STEM教师心理调查结果与研究生产力的文献计量指标（出版物、引用、社交媒体关注）配对的项目。这些数据将用于测试一个概念模型，该模型假设教师特征（人口统计、就业）和机构质量（研究资源、社会环境因素）与动机变量（自主性、能力、相关性、兴趣、控制、价值、自我调节、毅力）之间的关系，如果得到支持，应该产生最佳的内在动机和积极情绪，并导致研究生产力的提高（例如，文献计量学、自我报告）。结构方程模型将用于横断面分析假设的关系，并在三年内纵向预测STEM教师研究人员的发展。此外，该项目将根据性别、种族和民族，研究STEM领域传统上代表性不足的群体之间的假设关系。这项研究将在几个方面提高我们对STEM高等教育研究人员的理解。首先，这个项目代表了第一个跨学科研究，将教师调查数据与研究生产力的独立文献计量指标相结合。其次，这些研究将利用与教师研究成果相关的可靠和有效的变量测量，并在美国10所高等教育机构的约1400名教师的大样本中评估假设模型的普遍性。第三，本研究将扩展有限的实证研究结果，调查与教师研究生产力和发展相关的心理变量，并探索教师特征（例如，STEM中代表性不足的少数群体）和机构质量之间的相互作用。第四，该项目将利用很少应用于教师研究生产力和发展的既定动机理论，在这个研究不足的领域产生新的知识和最佳实践。因此，目前的项目将指导建立STEM教师动机的关键变量和基准，以预测研究生产力和发展。本项目由“科学创新与政策计划”和“促进竞争性研究既定计划”共同资助。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。

Faculty research productivity in STEM disciplines drives scientific advancement, university-industry knowledge transfer, innovative economic activity, and data-driven government decision-making. In recent decades, however, USA STEM research productivity has plateaued despite increases in federal research funding, leading to questions of how to maximize productivity in the STEM academic research workforce beyond financial means. The objective of this project is to investigate the role of motivation in STEM higher education faculty research productivity and development. Motivated faculty are expected to be more productive and stay in the higher education workforce, particularly if they are from populations traditionally underrepresented in the STEM research workforce. Results of the current project will inform higher education institutions, particularly universities striving to increase scholarly productivity, as to specific strengths and deficits in STEM faculty motivation that relate to measurable gains in research productivity. This is a critical step toward designing research development interventions from university-based induction programs to NSF training grants aimed at bolstering motivation to enhance the productivity of STEM faculty researchers. Findings will provide guidance to universities on best practices and policies for supporting STEM faculty in producing innovative basic and applied scientific knowledge, tackling key social and economic challenges with their research, and training the next generation of flexible, knowledgeable, and diverse STEM researchers. This project is jointly funded by the Science of Science Innovation and Policy Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. This multi-institution project will be the first to pair STEM faculty psychological surveys responses with bibliometric indicators of research productivity (publications, citations, social media attention). These data will be used to test a conceptual model hypothesizing how faculty characteristics (demographic, employment) and institutional qualities (research resources, social-environmental factors) relate to motivational variables (autonomy, competence, relatedness, interest, control, value, self-regulation, grit) that, if supported, should yield optimal intrinsic motivation and positive emotions, and result in enhanced research productivity (e.g., bibliometric, self-report). Structural equation modeling will be used to analyze the posited relationships cross-sectionally and predict the development of STEM faculty researchers longitudinally over a three-year period. Additionally, the project will examine hypothesized relationships among traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM fields based on gender, race, and ethnicity. This research will improve our understanding of the STEM higher education research workforce in several ways. First, this project represents the first interdisciplinary study pairing faculty survey data with independent, bibliometric indicators of research productivity. Second, these studies will utilize reliable and valid measures of variables relating to faculty research outcomes and evaluate the generalizability of the hypothesized model in a large USA sample of ~1,400 faculty across 10 higher education institutions. Third, this research will expand upon limited empirical findings investigating psychological variables associated with faculty research productivity and development, and explore the interplay with faculty characteristics (e.g., underrepresented minority groups in STEM) and institutional qualities. Fourth, the project will utilize established motivation theories rarely applied to faculty research productivity and development to generate new knowledge and best practices in this under-examined domain. As such, the current project will guide the establishment of critical variables and benchmarks for STEM faculty motivation to predict research productivity and development over time. This project is jointly funded by the Science of Science Innovation and Policy Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive 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.