Build and Broaden 3.0: Assessing the Effects of a Publicly Engaged Scholarship

该项目旨在了解公共参与奖学金的影响，并为学术社区的多元化做出贡献。这项研究将衡量公众参与的社会和研究影响，或学者在学术受众之外的交流，并与更广泛、更普通的受众分享他们的专业知识。有少量但不断增长的学术文献表明，公众参与的学术研究可以有更大的学术和社会影响力，但在社会科学研究中，很少有经验证据表明参与和影响力之间的关系。为了检验这种关系是否存在以及在多大程度上存在，本研究将使用一项随机对照试验，涉及不同的公众参与策略，宣传社会科学奖学金，并测量学术和社会影响力指标。这项研究将包括一项调查实验，参与者被随机分配阅读通过公共参与工具分享的研究。调查问题将衡量公众对科学和学术专家的信心和信任。本研究项目使用交叉干预措施来衡量公众参与的社会科学的影响，并以少量但不断增长的基于证据的文献为基础，探讨公众参与的学术如何具有更大的学术和社会影响力。该研究包括一项随机对照试验，以衡量宣传社会科学奖学金的多种公众参与策略（如博客文章、维基百科条目、社交媒体分享等）的相对影响，测量学术影响力指标，如引用数量，以及社会影响力指标，如Altmetric分数。该研究的治疗后调查问题将评估参与者对正在讨论的研究以及更广泛的科学和学术专家的看法。本研究将为公众参与策略如何改善政策影响和公众对研究的信任提供证据。为随机对照试验所做的公众参与工作也将把研究结果以一种外行观众也能接触到的方式带给更广泛的公众。这项工作将得到一项新的高级本科生培训计划的支持。本科生研究员将在一个学期内接受研究方法的正式培训，然后在下一个学期完成研究学徒。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 seeks to learn the impact of publicly engaged scholarship and contribute to diversifying the academic community. The study will measure the social and research impact of public engagement, or scholars communicating beyond academic audiences and sharing their expertise with a broader, more general audience. There is a small but growing academic literature that shows scholarship that is publicly engaged can have greater academic and societal reach, but there is little empirical evidence of this relationship between engagement and reach when it comes to social science research. To examine whether and the extent to which there is such a relationship, this study will use a randomized controlled trial involving different public engagement strategies that publicize social science scholarship and measure indicators of academic and societal reach. The study will include a survey experiment in which participants are randomly assigned to read about research shared via public engagement tools. The survey questions will measure public confidence and trust in science and scholarly experts. This research project uses intersecting interventions to measure the impact of publicly engaged social science and builds on the small but growing evidence-based literature on how scholarship that is publicly engaged can have greater academic and societal reach. The study includes a randomized controlled trial to measure the relative impact of multiple public engagement strategies (e.g., blog posts, Wikipedia entries, social media shares, etc.) that publicize social science scholarship, measuring indicators of academic reach, such as citation counts, as well as societal reach, such as Altmetric scores. The study’s post-treatment survey questions will assess participants’ views of the research being discussed and of science and scholarly experts more broadly. This study will provide evidence of how public engagement strategies can improve policy impact and public trust in research. The public engagement work done for the randomized controlled trial will also bring research findings to the broader public and in a way that is accessible to a lay audience. This work will be supported by a new training program for advanced undergraduate students. Undergraduate fellows will receive formal training in research methods in one academic term and then complete a research apprenticeship in the following academic term.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.