Collaborative Research: Research: An exploration of how faculty mentoring influences doctoral student psychological safety and the impact on work-related outcomes

有必要更好地了解工程学系如何培养更具包容性、心理安全的环境，让博士生感到安全，可以从事人际冒险活动，特别是在研究环境中。心理安全的环境的特征是，人们感到表达想法和担忧是安全的，愿意寻求反馈，彼此之间有积极的意图，进行建设性的对抗，感到安全，愿意冒险和实验，所有这些都是内在的危险人际行为。在学术研究环境中，教员在培养研究小组内部心理安全的环境方面发挥着重要的领导作用。尽管工程学教师拥有很强的研究技能，但他们通常很少或根本没有接受过关于如何有效地向研究生提供心理社会支持以及如何创造积极的团队氛围的培训。这些文献表明，女性和其他代表性不足的群体仍然经常在STEM遇到“寒冷”的学术环境，或经历缺乏归属感，导致负面结果，如增加心理困扰和/或对对学习、创造力和创新至关重要的智力冒险的恐惧。这些结果阻碍了研究生履行学业责任的能力，可能会阻止他们继续攻读学位课程，并加剧已经困扰研究生教育的日益严重的心理健康危机。这项研究将进一步加深我们对学术研究环境中心理安全的理解，并为如何培养包容的、心理安全的研究氛围以支持广泛的工作结果而制定实用策略和干预措施。找出在研究生教育背景下建立心理安全的有效方法可以增加学生的学习和成绩，这将支持工程师的专业形成和创新工程研究的产生。改善的指导关系和研究氛围也将有助于研究生的幸福感、留校率和扩大参与度。因此，本研究的总体目的是加深我们对工科研究生研究环境中心理安全的理解，并开发出积极的解决方案，以进一步促进博士生在他们的研究小组和导师关系中的心理安全。在行业环境中的大量研究证据表明，心理安全有助于个人/群体的学习、表现和创新，并减轻与工作相关的压力。然而，目前还没有研究在研究实验室中研究心理安全的影响，也没有研究教师如何有效地开发心理安全。本研究采用解释性的混合方法设计，并辅之以纵向访谈。解释性混合方法设计将利用调查和随后的两组访谈来检查教师指导在研究组博士生心理安全以及相关工作成果(如学习和心理健康)中的作用。这项调查将首先描述教师顾问指导、博士生心理安全与随后的积极和消极工作相关结果之间的关系，以及不同人口统计背景的学生之间的差异。第一组访谈将探讨调查确定的关系(解释性设计)。纵向访谈将记录加入研究小组的即将到来的博士生的经历，以及教师顾问如何沟通影响研究小组成员心理安全的政策、规范和价值观。这项研究的结果将被用来开发教育资源，包括为教师顾问举办的基于情景的培训讲习班，以支持研究小组的心理安全，以及为研究生学习心理安全的教育模块。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。

There is a need to better understand how engineering departments can cultivate more inclusive, psychologically safe environments in which doctoral students feel safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking, especially in research settings. A psychologically safe environment is characterized by people who feel safe to voice ideas and concerns, willingly seek feedback, have positive intentions to one another, engage in constructive confrontation, and feel safe to take risks and experiment, all of which are inherently risky interpersonal behaviors. In academic research environments, faculty have a major leadership role in cultivating a psychologically safe environment within research groups. While engineering faculty possess strong research skills, they often receive minimal to no training on how to effectively provide psychosocial support to graduate students and how to create a positive team climate. The literature suggests women and other underrepresented groups still frequently encounter “chilly” academic climates in STEM, or experience a lack of sense of belonging, leading to negative outcomes such as increased psychological distress and/or a fear of intellectual risk-taking that is essential to learning, creativity, and innovation. These outcomes hamper graduate students’ ability to fulfill their academic responsibilities, may dissuade them from continuing with their degree program, and contribute to a growing mental health crisis that is already plaguing graduate education. This study will further our understanding of psychological safety in academic research settings and inform the development of pragmatic strategies and interventions on how to cultivate inclusive, psychologically-safe research climates that support a wide-range of work outcomes. Identifying effective approaches to establishing psychological safety in graduate education contexts can lead to increased student learning and performance, which will support the professional formation of engineers and the production of innovative engineering research. Improved mentoring relationships and research climates will also support graduate student wellbeing, retention, and broadening participation. The overarching purpose of this study is thus to further our understanding of psychological safety in engineering graduate research settings and develop proactive solutions that can further promote doctoral students’ psychological safety in their research groups and mentoring relationship. Considerable research evidence in industry settings suggests psychological safety supports individual/group learning, performance, and innovation, and mitigates work-related stress. Yet there is no research that has been conducted to study the impact of psychological safety in research labs, nor how it is effectively developed by faculty. The proposed study leverages an explanatory mixed methods design coupled with longitudinal interviews. The explanatory mixed methods design will utilize surveys followed by two sets of interviews to examine the role of faculty mentorship in psychological safety of doctoral students in research groups and associated work outcomes such as learning and mental health. The survey will first characterize relationships between faculty advisor mentoring, doctoral student psychological safety, and subsequent positive and negative work-related outcomes and how these differ for students from different demographic backgrounds. The first set of interviews will explore the relationships identified by the surveys (explanatory design). The longitudinal interviews will document the experience of incoming doctoral students who join a research group and how faculty advisors communicate policies, norms, and values that impact the psychological safety of research group members. The results of this research will be leveraged to develop educational resources, including scenario-based training workshops for faculty advisors to support research group psychological safety and an educational module for graduate students to learn about psychological safety.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.