The Collaborative for Enhancing Diversity in the Sciences (CEDS) proposes to host a workshop of university and college representatives, social science research methodology experts, and STEM disciplinary stakeholders to examine data collection and associated research methodology and reporting standards to advance the STEM stakeholders' power to more effectively deal with demographic discrepancies in STEM. This request is to support a workshop to establish a common standard for measuring and evaluating success of diversity-enhancing programs. The one-day workshop will include stakeholders from universities and colleges, professional societies and associations as well as local, regional and national federal and private organizations.
It is well-recognized in the scientific community that data-driven, scientifically rigorous tools are needed to stimulate and enhance efforts to use the talents of all our citizens, including underrepresented minorities and women. There is an additional need to look beyond individual efforts to begin to pursue a system-based analysis. This workshop will address the need to establish a more comprehensive and cohesive effort to track the many and various efforts of government (federal, state, and local), private foundations, universities and colleges, scientific societies, and professional associations. Systematic data collection would allow possible answers to broad and important questions such as: To what extent should research training be supported collaboratively? What are the best practices that could be adapted that would allow for a maximum increase on the return on investment?
On May 24, 2012, the Collaborative for Enhancing Diversity in Science (CEDS), led by COSSA Deputy Director Angela Sharpe, held its second workshop around enhancing diversity in science (for information about the earlier workshop, including its report, go to www.cossa.org.) The new workshop, Enhancing Diversity: Working Together to Develop Common Data, Measures and Standards, was designed to address the need to establish a more comprehensive and cohesive effort to track the many and various efforts of government, university, private foundations and associations to enhance minority participation in the sciences. The Workshop was sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), the Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD); and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Education & Human Resources (EHR) (Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) and Research on Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE)) and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) (Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences) (BCS) - Social Psychology program and the Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES) programs in Economics, Science of Organizations and Sociology; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Sloan); the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the William T. Grant Foundation (W.T. Grant). Intellectual Merit The May 24, 2012 workshop recognized that moving towards collaboration on a common set of high priority measures has the potential to inform, target, and strengthen efforts to increase diversity in the sciences, and to do so across institutions participating in these efforts. Further, the process of working towards common measurement in itself can provide an opportunity for mutual updates on data tracking efforts and initiatives that government agencies are sponsoring, and in which colleges, universities, foundations, and nonprofits are already engaged. Achieving agreement on what data elements are high priority to collect and on specific measures to use will make it possible to aggregate findings across studies and to coordinate efforts to increase diversity across agencies, universities, and organizations. At present, unfortunately, there is little consistency in what data are collected and how they are collected. Just as important, there is widespread acknowledgement of the crucial need to understand the effectiveness of approaches, such as fellowships and mentoring, to strengthening diversity in the workforce, though it is generally agreed that there is a need for an integrated summary of the research in this area that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. Similarly, there is agreement that in addition to studying effects on individual targets of intervention efforts, research is needed that considers the social context, environment, and culture of the institutions, programs, and/or departments in which these students and professionals participate, allowing for a nuanced understanding of perceptions and experiences with programs to enhance diversity. The inclusion of data collected from program providers as well as program participants is important for both bringing programs to scale and to sustaining them. Finally, methodological consideration across the range of different data collection methods is also imperative. Efforts are required to minimize respondent burden, include the highest data priority elements, and provide data formats that allow the basis for summary variables that inform the efforts to diversify and encourage enrollment and retention of students and professionals. Broader Impact There are three main recommendations for action that emerged from the workshop. Overarching Workshop Recommendation No. 1: Establish a federal interagency working group of federal science agencies and the Department of Education to examine and define common data elements that all federally supported programs and individuals would be required to collect for tracking and evaluation purposes. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) should take the lead and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the primary supporters of federal research and training, should serve as co-chairs of this interagency working group, similar to their collaboration on the STAR Metrics program. The first task of the federal interagency working group should be to jointly sponsor a National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) study with two goals: (1) to summarize existing evaluation studies of programs, approaches, and interventions to support diversity; and (2) to review current data collection efforts by agencies, colleges and universities, and other organizations in order to make recommendations on common data elements. Overarching Workshop Recommendation No. 2: Develop a permanent central web-based repository for data on diverse populations in the science pipeline, as well as publications focusing on this issue. Overarching Workshop Recommendation No. 3: Launch a new set of fellowships focused on increasing diversity in the scientific workforce using a public/private partnership and taking into account recent research and practice on the structuring of fellowships and training experiences.
