Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Paul Spicer Center for Applied Social Research Department of Anthropology There are broad similarities across most social science disciplines There is a continuum of approaches ranging from the more humanistic and interpretive to the experimental There is also a sizable body of observational research There is growing recognition that the human dimensions of most problems are among the most intractable Indexed in a huge popular social science literature (and TED talks!) Increasing interest in social science research, even from within science and technology Longstanding opportunities within medicine And stand-alone opportunities to advance social science itself (primarily at NSF) Many of you can do your dissertation research with no extra money In many social science disciplines your research can be embedded in faculty research The University provides nominal research support through various mechanisms Experiments can be run with undergraduates fairly easily Or you can run up some debt But much of the most interesting work will cost money The ability to secure external resources may help win jobs Applications of your work engendered in grant writing will open new possibilities Funding provides some autonomy Grant writing is a useful skill Projects can be a lot of fun The NSF provides basic funding in most social science disciplines Unfortunately it does not generally fund your salary The NIH funds your salary But it generally assumes you are working on faculty-funded research Foundations may be more or less relevant depending on your discipline Faculty can submit proposals (or supplements) to support your work (if it overlaps with theirs) Apply for an NSF fellowship as soon as you get here These are very competitive, but are designed to support new graduate students And are available across the broad set of social sciences that NSF funds They free you up from working for three years! There are new pressures to get through graduate school The waiver limits assistantships for those who have them And a lack of assistantships adds pressure to finish for those who don’t Please do not extend your education just to keep taking student loans! Sure there are lots of interesting books to read and ideas to try out And many of us are drawn to academic work precisely because we like to do this But we can’t get paid for it until we have done original research All graduate seminars provide opportunity to refine thesis and dissertation research Everything you do should be connected to your research It cannot be something you do only under thesis or dissertation hours You’ve had your liberal education, now’s the time to get real The dissertation or thesis is a beginning, not an end The most deadly faculty members are the ones who stopped learning in graduate school We all should be professional learners A thesis or dissertation provides us with an opportunity to learn skills that you can apply in multiple new ways once you’re done The road is littered with ABDs A long-term perspective is crucial to maintaining your focus now And moving on in a productive way once you’re done here You need a problem You need to be the one(s) to do this You need an approach You need a budget You need an opportunity I need an opportunity I need a budget I need an approach I need to be the one(s) to do this I need a problem And for students it really should There are few funds for dissertation research that require a specific problem Most dissertation funding is designed to support investigator-initiated research In all cases, the most important question is why? For NIH, the review criteria of significance and innovation speak to this question directly At NSF, both intellectual merit and broader impact are crucially concerned with this You have to begin with why your research matters And it does not matter just because it’s never been done! They emphasize innovation and transformation precisely because they don’t know what it is or how to support it Successful grant getters recognize the incremental nature of science Reviewers know BS (they are often experts themselves) What you propose has to be attainable And the logical next step for you, your sponsor, and the field But this means your grant could be uninspiring Your research should be exciting Not to most of your friends, probably, but certainly to your “peers” Your grant needs to convey this enthusiasm And show how your approach provides an important advance If you’re not excited about your grant, nobody is going to be The trick is to share that enthusiasm in a measured way Do not promise too much or too little! If you err, err on the side of promising a bit too much Then, when they cut your budget you can get real People are funding you Grants are never reviewed blindly The investigator is inevitably a focus in any review Especially for students, your funding is an investment in you For fellowships, the near exclusive attention is on you You need to be able to demonstrate why you can do this research And why it fits the work of your faculty sponsor You need to know the strengths of your program and University You need to recognize the opportunities we have And you need to be cognizant of our limitations Graduate school is not the time to strike out completely on your own You need to build on what we have which is presumably why you came here If your research matters at all, it matters in a specific literature You need to take every opportunity to master this literature And you need to be able to position your research within that literature This can be done quickly, however, so don’t use this as an excuse to delay Broad overviews of most areas exist Big questions tend to emerge early and often as you read And please don’t strain to rewrite high theory! Your approach is the heart of the matter Are there methods available to you that can answer your question? All social research is multi-method But most is not cognized as such Even the most careful surveys and experimental designs are grounded in some rather limited inductive work which is often why they work less well in other people’s lives! Certainly in my own discipline of anthropology truth claims are very suspect They often are imperialist But people will not fund you to only tell them what they cannot know You need to have a question that can be answered with methods you command Even if your methods are primarily qualitative and certainly if your methods are primarily quantitative In qualitative research we often seek to improve conceptualizations We sample purposively We code inductively But this is also science! We just need to be wary of causal language and guard against overgeneralizing Anthropologists can be quite lazy about sampling These can be experimental or observational Here the goal is often explicitly to examine cause And to provide generalizable results But we need to recognize how tricky determining cause is And how generalizable such tightly controlled work can ever be This is not boring This is where you get real about what you can actually accomplish Budgeting is an invaluable skill At the heart of strategic planning in any organization For me, beginning with the budget provides me with an opportunity to see what is possible before I get too far down the road of dreaming stuff up And in the real world of professional research, these activities consume much of our time So you should learn to embrace it Working with CRPDE and your faculty is key I couldn’t pretend to know all of the opportunities that are relevant to your work This kind of match making is probably one of the more enjoyable parts of Alicia, Todd, and Nancy’s jobs But certainly you should all seek funding from NSF And you should all explore the possibilities of leveraging your advisor’s research (or other opportunities) to support your work You are all here to train in a discipline Unless, of course, you are in an interdisciplinary degree But once you leave graduate school most of the funding is available to solve complex problems which require respect and tolerance for other approaches I would encourage all of you to think not only about how your work advances your field, but also how it may ultimately matter And how you can take advantage of the opportunity your research presents to learn to play well with others