Career Decision-Making of Future Minority Biomedical Science Faculty

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去的几十年里，NIH和NIGMS一直致力于增加生物医学科学家的多样性。尽管为实现这一目标投入了大量的财力和人力资源，但取得的进展相对较小，尤其是在理工科教师中。对于教师多样性缺乏改善，人们提出了许多解释和理论，但没有研究系统地试图确定这种低改善率是由于受训者准备不足，持续的歧视，还是年轻的少数民族学生主动决定不追求学术事业。最后一种可能性将在拟议的研究中进行研究，因为它对其他可能的解释也有广泛的影响。采用访谈型定性研究方法对青年科学家的职业决策进行研究，实现以下具体目标：1)确定1997 - 2000年生物医学博士培养前首次访谈学生的职业道路和决策标准；2)通过新的学生样本，确定本科MARC、RISE、IMSD学生和PREP学者在培训的几个阶段进行职业决策的过程和标准，特别是与学术职业相关的决策；3)确定MARC、RISE、IMSD和PREP项目的活动如何有助于学生对学术生涯的看法和兴趣；4)将这些学生的决策标准与进入相同或类似美国生物医学博士项目的非少数民族学生进行比较；5)确定先前显示的预测学生可能进入生物医学博士课程的主题是否也预测坚持完成博士学位和/或对学术生涯的兴趣；6)确定社会认知职业理论在多大程度上可以解释职业决策的细化，以及少数民族和/或非少数民族学生对自我效能感、结果期望或绩效目标的较低感知是否与不愿致力于和努力从事学术生涯有关；7)根据研究结果，提出短期和长期干预措施，以解决已确定的影响少数民族学生寻求学术生涯意愿和/或能力的负面影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): For the past several decades, NIH and NIGMS have led efforts to increase diversity among biomedical scientists. Despite committing great financial and human resources to this goal, relatively little progress has been made, especially among science faculty. Many explanations and theories for this lack of improvement in faculty diversity have been put forth, but no studies have systematically attempted to determine if this low rate of improvement is due to inadequate preparation of trainees, ongoing discrimination, or the active decision of young minority students not to pursue academic careers. This last possibility will be studied in the proposed research because it has broad implications for the other possible explanations as well. Interview-based qualitative research methods will be use to study the career decision making of young scientists and accomplish the following Specific Aims: 1) Determine the career paths and decision making criteria of students first interviewed between 1997 and 2000, prior to their entrance into biomedical PhD training; 2) With a new sample of students, determine the processes and criteria used to make career decisions, especially related to academic careers, of undergraduate MARC, RISE, IMSD students, and PREP scholars, at several stages of training; 3) Determine how activities of MARC, RISE, IMSD and PREP programs contribute to students' perceptions of and interest in academic careers; 4) Compare the decision making criteria of these students with non-minority students who enter the same or similar U.S. biomedical PhD programs; 5) Determine if themes previously shown to predict students likely to enter biomedical PhD programs also predict persistence to PhD completion and/or interest in academic careers; 6) Determine the degree to which refinement of career decisions can be explained by Social Cognitive Career Theory, and if lower perceptions of self-efficacy, outcome expectations or performance goals associate with reluctance to commit to and work toward an academic career for minority and/or non-minority students; 7) Based on the results of the study, propose short and longer-term interventions to address identified negative influences impacting minority students' willingness and/or ability to seek academic careers.