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Why Work with Undergraduate Researchers? Differences in Research Advisors' Motivations and Outcomes by Career Stage.

ABSTRACT: Undergraduate research is often hailed as a solution to increasing the number and quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates needed to fill the high-tech jobs of the future. Student benefits of research are well documented but the emerging literature on advisors' perspectives is incomplete: only a few studies have included the graduate students and postdocs who often serve as research advisors, and not much is known about why research advisors choose to work with undergraduate researchers. We report the motivations for advising undergraduate researchers, and the related costs and benefits of doing so, from 30 interviews with research advisors at various career stages. Many advisors stated intrinsic motivations, but a small group of early-career advisors expressed only instrumental motivations. We explore what this means for how advisors work with student researchers, the benefits students may or may not gain from the experience, and the implications for training and retaining research advisors who can provide high-quality research experiences for undergraduate students.

SUBMITTER: Hayward CN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5332039 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Why Work with Undergraduate Researchers? Differences in Research Advisors' Motivations and Outcomes by Career Stage.

Hayward Charles N CN Laursen Sandra L SL Thiry Heather H

CBE life sciences education 20170101 1

Undergraduate research is often hailed as a solution to increasing the number and quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates needed to fill the high-tech jobs of the future. Student benefits of research are well documented but the emerging literature on advisors' perspectives is incomplete: only a few studies have included the graduate students and postdocs who often serve as research advisors, and not much is known about why research advisors choose to work with unde ...[more]

PMID: 28213583

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Project description:IntroductionAs part of the Harbnger-2 project, this study aimed to discover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on junior researchers' work-life, career prospects, research and publishing practices and networking.MethodsAn online international survey of 800 early career researchers (ECRs) was conducted in 2022. A questionnaire was developed based on three rounds of interviews and distributed using multiple channels including publishers, social media, and direct email to ECRs.ResultsThe impact of the pandemic on career prospects, morale, job security, productivity, ability to network and collaborate, and quality and speed of peer review has on the whole been more negative than positive. A quarter of ECRs shifted their research focus to pandemic-related topics and half of those who did, benefited largely due to increased productivity and impact. The majority worked remotely/from home and more than two-thirds of those who did so benefitted from it. While virtual or hybrid conferences have been embraced by the majority of ECRs, around a third still preferred face-to-face only conferences. The use of library online platforms, Sci-Hub, ResearchGate, Google Scholar and smartphone to search and access full-text papers increased. ECRs prioritised journals with fast submission procedures for the publishing of their papers and spent more time on increasing the visibility of their research. Fees were a problem for publishing open access.ConclusionAlthough, generally, the pandemic negatively impacted many aspects of ECRs' work-life, certain research areas and individuals benefited from being more appreciated and valued, and, in some cases, resulted in increased resources, better productivity and greater impact. Changes, such as the use of digital technologies and remote working created new opportunities for some ECRs. While continuing work flexibility and hybrid conferences might benefit some ECRs, institutions should also take measures to help those ECRs whose career and productivity have been adversely impacted.

Project description:This article examined how researchers participated in research information management systems (RIMSs), their motivations for participation, and their priorities for those motivations. Profile maintenance, question-answering, and endorsement activities were used to define three cumulatively increasing levels of participation: Readers, Record Managers, and Community Members. Junior researchers were more engaged in RIMSs than were senior researchers. Postdocs had significantly higher odds of endorsing other researchers for skills and being categorized as Community Members than did full and associate professors. Assistant professors were significantly more likely to be Record Managers than were members of any other seniority categories. Finally, researchers from the life sciences showed a significantly higher propensity for being Community Members than Readers and Record Managers when compared with researchers from engineering and the physical sciences, respectively.When performing activities, researchers were motivated by the desire to share scholarship, feel competent, experience a sense of enjoyment, improve their status, and build ties with other members of the community. Moreover, when researchers performed activities that directly benefited other members of a RIMS, they assigned higher priorities to intrinsic motivations, such as perceived self-efficacy, enjoyment, and building community ties. Researchers at different stages of their academic careers and disciplines ranked some of the motivations for engaging with RIMSs differently. The general model of research participation in RIMSs; the relationships among RIMS activities; the motivation scales for activities; and the activity, seniority, and discipline-specific priorities for the motivations developed by this study provide the foundation for a framework for researcher participation in RIMSs. This framework can be used by RIMSs and institutional repositories to develop tools and design mechanisms to increase researchers' engagement in RIMSs.

Dataset Information

Why Work with Undergraduate Researchers? Differences in Research Advisors' Motivations and Outcomes by Career Stage.

Publications

Why Work with Undergraduate Researchers? Differences in Research Advisors' Motivations and Outcomes by Career Stage.

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