Assessing basic research: Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy

As the costs of certain types of scientific research have escalated and as growth rates in overall national science budgets have declined, so the need for an explicit science policy has grown more urgent. In order to establish priorities between research groups competing for scarce funds, one of the most important pieces of information needed by science policy-makers is an assessment of those groups' recent scientific performance. This paper suggests a method for evaluating that performance.After reviewing the literature on scientific assessment, we argue that, while there are no simple measures of the contributions to scientific knowledge made by scientists, there are a number of ‘partial indicators’ — that is, variables determined partly by the magnitude of the particular contributions, and partly by ‘other factors’. If the partial indicators are to yield reliable results, then the influence of these ‘other factors’ must be minimised. This is the aim of the method of ‘converging partial indicators’ proposed in this paper. We argue that the method overcomes many of the problems encountered in previous work on scientific assessment by incorporating the following elements: (1) the indicators are applied to research groups rather than individual scientists; (2) the indicators based on citations are seen as reflecting the impact, rather than the quality or importance, of the research work; (3) a range of indicators are employed, each of which focusses on different aspects of a group's performance; (4) the indicators are applied to matched groups, comparing ‘like’ with ‘like’ as far as possible; (5) because of the imperfect or partial nature of the indicators, only in those cases where they yield convergent results can it be assumed that the influence of the ‘other factors’ has been kept relatively small (i.e. the matching of the groups has been largely successful), and that the indicators therefore provide a reasonably reliable estimate of the contribution to scientific progress made by different research groups.In an empirical study of four radio astronomy observatories, the method of converging partial indicators is tested, and several of the indicators (publications per researcher, citations per paper, numbers of highly cited papers, and peer evaluation) are found to give fairly consistent results. The results are of relevance to two questions: (a) can basic research be assessed? (b) more specifically, can significant differences in the research performance of radio astronomy centres be identified? We would maintain that the evidence presented in this paper is sufficient to justify a positive answer to both these questions, and hence to show that the method of converging partial indicators can yield information useful to science policy-makers.     

The role of social embeddedness in professorial entrepreneurship: a comparison of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley and Stanford

Professorial entrepreneurship has recently attracted much attention. This paper draws upon historical research, a survey of faculty, and an Internet-based methodology for identifying professorial affiliations with entrepreneurial firms at two of the premier electrical engineering and computer science departments in the US, The University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. We employ the concept of “nested embeddedness” to explain why the faculty members in these two institutions have different levels of entrepreneurship and corporate involvement. EE&CS faculty at both universities were found to be socially embedded in departments and disciplines that supported and placed value on entrepreneurial activities. However, while being embedded in a university environment with a history of success and high level of support for entrepreneurship, EE&CS faculty at Stanford had a significantly greater level of corporate involvement, including the founding of start-ups. Although significantly less than Stanford, the level of corporate involvement among EE&CS faculty at Berkeley was also substantial. This suggests that being embedded in an academic department and disciplines with cultures that are supportive of entrepreneurial activity can help counteract the disincentives created by a university environment that is not strongly supportive of these activities.     

Flavor-evaluative conditioning is unaffected by contingency knowledge during training with color-flavor compounds

In two experiments, participants inspected and drank a series of drinks, half of which contained sugar and half unpalatable Tween20 (tween). Each sugar and tween drink had a particular flavor and color. Following this training, the flavors of the sugar drinks were assigned higher hedonic evaluations than were those of the tween drinks, even though the participants did not reliably report which flavors had been present in the sugar and tween drinks during training. Moreover, the evaluative conditioning of the flavors was unaffected by whether or not the colors alone had been pretrained to predict the presence of sugar or tween in the drinks. In accord with Baeyens, Eelen, van den Bergh, and Crombez (1990), we conclude that flavor-evaluative conditioning is not mediated by contingency learning.     

Mindset change in a cross-cultural context

Imagine you are Thai and a member of a management team from a European company that acts in an Asian emerging market. Imagine you are a European expat with the assignment to double the turnover from that Asian company in a few years. Imagine you are a Change Maker and they ask you to facilitate the (multinational) management team of that Asian company to develop a market strategy and translate it into a business plan, and you have to deal with cultural differences. How do you manage a small-scale change process based on the principles of action learning in that specific multinational context? That's the essence of this account of practice.     

Marital conflict and conduct problems in Children of Twins

The Children-of-Twins design was used to test whether associations between marital conflict frequency and conduct problems can be replicated within the children of discordant twin pairs. A sample of 2,051 children (age 14-39 years) of 1,045 twins was used to estimate the genetic and environmental influences on marital conflict and determine whether genetic or environmental selection processes underlie the observed association between marital conflict and conduct problems. Results indicate that genetic and nonshared environmental factors influence the risk of marital conflict. Furthermore, genetic influences mediated the association between marital conflict frequency and conduct problems. These results highlight the need for quasiexperimental designs in investigations of intergenerational associations.     

Relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in school for preadolescent children from economically disadvantaged families

This longitudinal study of 105 economically disadvantaged children examined the relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in 3rd- and 5th-grade assessments (8- to 12-year olds). The variable-centered results showed that reading problems predicted change in internalizing behavior in the context of child and family predictors. The person-centered results showed that children with reading problems in both grades had higher internalizing scores in 5th grade but not in 3rd grade than children with reading problems in 3rd grade or no problems. Child-reported negative emotion experiences varied similarly across grade. The results tie reading problems to emotional distress in school and support conclusions about the direction of effects and the internalization of academic difficulty for disadvantaged children.     

Together I Can! Joint Attention Boosts 3- to 4-Year-Olds’ Performance in a Verbal False-Belief Test

Effects of joint attention were addressed on 3- to 4-year-olds’ performance in a verbal false-Belief Test (FBT), featuring the experimenter as co-watcher rather than narrator. In two experiments, children (N = 183) watched a filmed-FBT jointly with a test leader, disjointed from a test leader, or alone. Children attending jointly with a test leader were more likely to pass the FBT compared with normative data and to spontaneously recall information indicating false-belief understanding, suggesting that joint attention strengthens the plausibility of the FBT and renders plot-critical information more salient. In a third experiment (N = 59), results were replicated using a typical, image-based FBT. Overall findings highlight the profound impact of experimenter as social context in verbal FBTs, and link recall of specific story features to false-belief understanding.     

Interventions supporting baccalaureate achievement of Latinx STEM students matriculating at 2-year institutions: A systematic review

Numerous national reports have identified the importance of significantly improving pathways that begin with Latinx students enrolling in 2-year institutions and ultimately completing baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields at 4-year institutions. Many programs using multiple interventions have been designed, implemented, and studied to achieve this goal. To synthesize what has been learned from studies of these programs, this article presents a systematic review of published studies of programs designed to support Latinx student success in 2-year institutions and successful transfer to 4-year institutions, particularly for STEM majors. A total of 49 quantitative, 9 qualitative, and 16 mixed-methods studies published as reports, articles, or dissertations since 1980 were identified that met the criteria for the review. Studies covered a wide range of interventions, including mentoring, counseling, advising, study groups, tutoring, scholarships, orientations, career services, undergraduate research, articulation agreements, and transfer programs. Individually, these studies report positive influences on student success outcomes, including 2- and 4-year graduation, transfer to a 4-year institution, retention, and success in individual courses. However, the number of qualifying studies was surprisingly small, considering the importance of improving success of Latinx students and the length of time during which the problem has been repeatedly emphasized. Few interventions have been undertaken from explicitly assets-based perspectives or theoretical frameworks. The lack of explicit frameworks underlying interventions—combined with a sole/primary focus on students—suggests many interventions were approached from a deficit-based perspective. Further, the study found no pattern of replication studies that might confirm effectiveness of potentially promising interventions. Based on our analysis of evaluations presented in the studies, it does not appear that the research community has developed agreed-upon methods to evaluate commonly agreed-upon outcomes. Finally, no intervention has been sufficiently supported that widespread implementation could be recommended.     

CHE Principles: facilitating authentic and dialogical semi-structured interviews in educational research

This paper examines the values of the CHE principles of Connectivity, Humanness and Empathy as a guiding framework for maximizing the ethical and methodological advantages of semi-structured interview research practices. The authors draw from two separate educational studies and apply the CHE principles to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of decision-making in facilitating sustainable relationships with the participants in each study. Findings highlight that dialogical relations with participants were evident in both studies, and identify significant junctures where decision-making and actions influenced effective rapport-building and respectful and reciprocal relationships with participants in the research. The CHE principles emerge as providing a robust framework for educational researchers to employ when auditing their decision-making prior to and during their engagement in qualitative interviews.