RAPID: Winners and Losers when Science Moves Home: Differential Effects of COVID-19 based on Discipline, Caregiving, and Career Stage

COVID-19 is having widespread?but disparate?effects on the nation's scientific capacity housed in the higher education sector, including the STEM researchers who conduct basic and applied research, and who train future generations of scientists. One-half of basic research conducted in the United States is performed in the higher education sector, and the federal government finances over half of it. The research universities, and the academic STEM researchers who are employed by them, are essential to the national science system. The overarching question of this project is, how do changes brought about by COVID-19 affect the productivity of academic STEM researchers and the science they conduct? Results will inform policy making to help the core of the nation's research enterprise to meet the challenge of conducting research vital to the nation?s interests during a worldwide pandemic. Although COVID-19 is a specific instance of a macro-level disruption to science, findings from this study will also inform how to build STEM research capacity to be resilient when confronted with future large-scale changes. Because academic STEM researchers are also student research mentors and educators, understanding adaptations such as use of new technologies, will improve the quality and impact of STEM education and contribute to a better prepared STEM workforce.

In this multi-method study, we study the impacts of macro social disruption and dislocation on patterns of academic productivity, choice of research topics and projects pursed, and sustaining or rethinking patterns of collaboration and teamwork. The first arm of the study is to conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews of STEM professors in the following broad areas: large-scale infrastructure-dependent research (e.g., that requiring large congregate specialized research facilities, such as observatories); smaller-scale infrastructure-dependent research (e.g., laboratories located at universities); fieldwork dependent research; applied research; and analytic research. We expect differences in impact on research productivity across these different types: We hypothesize that infrastructure-dependent science will be affected more negatively than other modes of science. In selecting participants in the qualitative arm, we will ensure diversity across a variety of dimensions to test our hypothesis that the COVID-19 crisis will have especially negative impacts on early career researchers, and those with more caretaking responsibilities. Results from the qualitative arm of the study will enable the development of extensive indices of potential impacts and scientific adjustments, which will then form the basis of a national survey to assess the project's hypotheses on a nationally representative survey of academic scientists. The study design is longitudinal, including two waves of the survey.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.