CAREER: Identifying Aspects of Research that Exacerbate Undergraduate and Graduate Student Depression and Developing Interventions to Improve Student Mental Health

本项目旨在促进对本科生和研究生科研经历与抑郁之间关系的认识，并通过制定干预措施来改善学生的心理健康，为国家利益服务。抑郁症是本科生和研究生最关心的心理健康问题之一，对那些在科学领域已经得不到充分服务的人的影响尤为严重，包括女性、第一代大学生、社会经济背景较低的人、LGBTQ+群体成员和残疾人。最近的研究已经证实，科研经历的某些方面会加剧抑郁症状。然而，目前尚不清楚研究的哪些方面最常使学生感到抑郁，研究的哪些方面对学生的心理健康最有害，以及研究的特定方面是否对特定学生群体的抑郁产生不成比例的影响。这个职业项目将通过访谈和调查研究来解决这些文献中的空白。此外，该项目将开发简短的、自我指导的在线干预措施，旨在帮助本科生和研究生的研究人员有效地应对研究中可能恶化心理健康的挑战。该项目将通过开发基于生物学教育课程的本科研究经验，将研究和教学结合起来，这些经验将提供给亚利桑那州立大学在线生命科学学士学位课程的学生。在线学生将参与真实的研究活动，重点关注科学教育与抑郁症之间的关系。本研究的目的是使用探索性顺序混合方法设计来检查生命科学本科生和研究生的科学研究与抑郁症状之间的关系。此外，该项目旨在制定和评估单次干预措施，以帮助本科生和研究生应对可能加剧抑郁症状的科学研究方面的问题。具体而言，探索性访谈研究将进一步探讨为什么生物学本科生和研究生认为研究方面会加剧（有时会减轻）抑郁症状，并确定研究与学生抑郁之间关系的调节因子。这些研究还将探索创造更具包容性的研究环境的潜在目标。访谈的结果将为国家调查研究提供信息，以评估大规模生物学本科生和研究生的研究与抑郁之间的关系，以及本科生和研究生研究人员认为哪些方法最有效地改变研究空间，使其更具包容性。这些研究的结果将用于制定单次干预措施，以帮助学生应对研究中的共同挑战；这些干预措施将易于管理，独立于教师或导师，免费提供，并可大规模交付给学生。为了整合研究和教学，建立科学教育与抑郁症之间关系的基础研究体系，并使学生的心理健康问题正常化，亚利桑那州立大学在线生命科学学士学位课程将开发和教授基于生物教育课程的本科生研究经验。这种方法将为一群学生提供真实的研究经验，这些学生很少有研究机会，他们经常报告比亲自完成学位的同龄人患抑郁症的比例更高。该奖项的资金由改善本科STEM教育计划和美国国家科学基金会研究培训计划提供，以表彰该项目与这两个分别关注本科和研究生STEM教育企业的计划的目标一致。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by advancing the understanding of the relationship between scientific research experiences and depression among undergraduates and graduates, and by developing interventions to improve student mental health. Depression is one of the top mental health concerns among undergraduate and graduate students and disproportionately impacts those who are already underserved in science, including women, first-generation college students, individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities. Recent research has established that aspects of scientific research experiences can exacerbate depressive symptoms. However, it is unknown what aspects of research that exacerbate depression are most commonly experienced by students, which aspects of research are most detrimental to student mental health, and whether specific aspects of research disproportionately affect depression for particular student groups. This CAREER project will address these gaps in the literature using interview and survey studies. Additionally, the project will develop brief, self-guided online interventions designed to help undergraduate and graduate researchers productively cope with challenges in research that can worsen mental health. This project will integrate research and teaching by developing biology education course-based undergraduate research experiences that will be offered to students enrolled in Arizona State University’s online life sciences Bachelor of Science degree programs. Online students will engage in authentic research activities focused on the relationship between science education and depression.The goal of this project is to use an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to examine the relationship between scientific research and depressive symptoms among undergraduate and graduate students in the life sciences. Additionally, the project aims to develop and evaluate single-session interventions to help undergraduate and graduate students cope with aspects of scientific research that can exacerbate depressive symptoms. Specifically, exploratory interview studies will further probe why biology undergraduate and graduate students perceive that aspects of research exacerbate, and sometimes alleviate, depressive symptoms, as well as identify moderators of the relationship between research and student depression. These studies will also explore potential targets for creating more inclusive research environments. The findings from the interviews will inform national survey studies to assess the relationship between research and depression among biology undergraduate and graduate students at scale and what approaches undergraduate and graduate researchers perceive would be most effective in transforming research spaces to be more inclusive. The results of these studies will be used to develop single-session interventions to help students cope with common challenges in research; the interventions will be easy to administer, independent of instructors or mentors, freely available, and deliverable to students at scale. To integrate research and teaching with the intent to build a foundational body of research on the relationship between science education and depression, and to normalize mental health concerns among students, biology education course-based undergraduate research experiences will be developed and taught to students in Arizona State University’s online life sciences Bachelor of Science degree programs. This approach will deliver authentic research experiences to a population of students who have very few research opportunities and who often report higher rates of depression than their peers completing degrees in person. Funding for this award is being provided by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program and the NSF Research Traineeship program in recognition of the alignment of the project with the aims of these two programs that focus on the undergraduate and graduate STEM education enterprises, respectively.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.