Collaborative Research: Impacts of Hard/Soft Skills on STEM Workforce Trajectories

这项研究将评估个人在获得博士学位时所掌握的技能，以及这些技能可能对个人职业发展轨迹产生的可衡量的影响。调查人员将进行一项纵向研究，将个人水平数据、学术计划数据、专业成就数据和雇主个人资料数据联系起来。这些数据将能够对沟通、领导和管理技能在塑造学术和非学术就业部门的博士研究生职业轨迹中所起的作用进行实证评估，同时考虑到研究团队层面的博士培训环境的特点。研究结果将为博士教育的循证实践提供信息，通过提供数据来指导资源的投资，以便最好地为博士接受者的工作做好准备。研究人员将结合心理学、社会学和经济学的视角，根据五个研究问题确定科学贡献及其现实世界影响的关键认知、经验和职业转换预测因素。第一条研究路线需要在大约完成学位时对博士毕业生进行评估，以确定(1)他们可能在多大程度上精通已确定的软技能，(2)他们报告的这些技能培训在多大程度上可以预测他们的熟练程度，以及(3)这些技能的测量熟练程度可以在多大程度上预测学院内外的职业发展轨迹。调查人员将把个人的评估表现和体验式培训数据与由创新与科学研究所(IRIS)维护的衡量创新、竞争力和科学研究(UMETRICS)效果的大学数据集联系起来。这一数据基础设施将使项目团队能够了解研究生培训的效果以及软技能的特征和随后的职业结果，从而产生关于他们进入学术和非学术职业生涯的有价值的见解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The study will assess the skills held by individuals at the time of PhD attainment and the measurable impacts that such skills may have on individual career trajectory. Investigators will conduct a longitudinal study that links individual-level data, academic program data, professional attainment data, and employer profile data. These data will enable an empirical assessment of the role that communication, leadership, and management skills play in shaping the career trajectories of PhD recipients across both academic and non-academic employment sectors, while accounting for characteristics of doctoral training environments at the research team level. Findings will inform evidence-based practice for PhD education by providing data that can guide the investment of resources to best prepare doctoral recipients for the workforce.Theinvestigators will integrate psychological, sociological, and economic lenses to identify key cognitive, experiential, and career translational predictors of scientific contributions and their real-world impacts in line with five research questions. The first line of research entails assessing PhD graduates at the approximate time of degree completion to determine (1) the extent to which they may or may not be proficient in the identified soft skills, (2) the extent to which their reported training in these skills might predict their proficiency, and (3) the extent to which measured proficiency for these skills might predict professional trajectories within or outside the academy. Investigators will link individuals’ assessment performance and experiential training data to the Universities Measuring the Effects of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness and Science (UMETRICS) data set maintained by the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS). This data infrastructure will enable the project team to understand the effects of graduate student training and characteristics of soft skills and subsequent career outcomes, generating valuable insights about their entry into academic and non-academic careers.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.