Projets de recherche

Description

Faculty research productivity in STEM disciplines drives scientific advancement, university-industry knowledge transfer, innovative economic activity, and data-driven government decision-making. In recent decades, however, USA STEM research productivity has plateaued despite increases in federal research funding, leading to questions of how to maximize productivity in the STEM academic research workforce beyond financial means.

The objective of this project is to investigate the role of motivation in STEM higher education faculty research productivity and development. Motivated faculty are expected to be more productive and stay in the higher education workforce, particularly if they are from populations traditionally underrepresented in the STEM research workforce. Results of the current project will inform higher education institutions, particularly universities striving to increase scholarly productivity, as to specific strengths and deficits in STEM faculty motivation that relate to measurable gains in research productivity. This is a critical step toward designing research development interventions from university-based induction programs to NSF training grants aimed at bolstering motivation to enhance the productivity of STEM faculty researchers. Findings will provide guidance to universities on best practices and policies for supporting STEM faculty in producing innovative basic and applied scientific knowledge, tackling key social and economic challenges with their research, and training the next generation of flexible, knowledgeable, and diverse STEM researchers. This project is jointly funded by the Science of Science Innovation and Policy Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.

This multi-institution project will be the first to pair STEM faculty psychological surveys responses with bibliometric indicators of research productivity (publications, citations, social media attention). These data will be used to test a conceptual model hypothesizing how faculty characteristics (demographic, employment) and institutional qualities (research resources, social-environmental factors) relate to motivational variables (autonomy, competence, relatedness, interest, control, value, self-regulation, grit) that, if supported, should yield optimal intrinsic motivation and positive emotions, and result in enhanced research productivity (e.g., bibliometric, self-report). Structural equation modeling will be used to analyze the posited relationships cross-sectionally and predict the development of STEM faculty researchers longitudinally over a three-year period. Additionally, the project will examine hypothesized relationships among traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM fields based on gender, race, and ethnicity. This research will improve our understanding of the STEM higher education research workforce in several ways.

• First, this project represents the first interdisciplinary study pairing faculty survey data with independent, bibliometric indicators of research productivity.
• Second, these studies will utilize reliable and valid measures of variables relating to faculty research outcomes and evaluate the generalizability of the hypothesized model in a large USA sample of ~1,400 faculty across 10 higher education institutions.
• Third, this research will expand upon limited empirical findings investigating psychological variables associated with faculty research productivity and development, and explore the interplay with faculty characteristics (e.g., underrepresented minority groups in STEM) and institutional qualities.
• Fourth, the project will utilize established motivation theories rarely applied to faculty research productivity and development to generate new knowledge and best practices in this under-examined domain. As such, the current project will guide the establishment of critical variables and benchmarks for STEM faculty motivation to predict research productivity and development over time.