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A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19
Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice on college campuses. How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected undergraduate researchers’ progress is poorly understood. We examine how demographics, academic characteristics, research disruptions and faculty mentorship are associated with four barriers...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180582/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682120 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116534 |
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author | Grineski, Sara E. Morales, Danielle X. Collins, Timothy W. Nadybal, Shawna Trego, Shaylynn |
author_facet | Grineski, Sara E. Morales, Danielle X. Collins, Timothy W. Nadybal, Shawna Trego, Shaylynn |
author_sort | Grineski, Sara E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice on college campuses. How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected undergraduate researchers’ progress is poorly understood. We examine how demographics, academic characteristics, research disruptions and faculty mentorship are associated with four barriers to research progress. Data are drawn from a survey of over 1000 undergraduate student researchers across the US. We examine students who actively continued to conduct faculty-mentored research during mid-March/April 2020 (n = 485). Using generalized estimating equations that control clustering by institution, we found economic hardship, discomfort teleconferencing, lower quality mentors, sexual minority status and higher grade point averages were associated with motivation problems. Economic hardship, serious illness, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and lower a frequency of mentor–mentee communication were associated with a time crunch with regard to conducting research. Discomfort teleconferencing, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and decrease in research workload were associated with task uncertainty. Economic hardship, serious illness and being an engineering major were associated with lacking needed tools for the research. In sum, economic hardship was an important correlate of research barriers, as were communication challenges and sexual minority status. Results can inform practical actions by research program directors and faculty undergraduate research mentors. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9180582 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91805822022-06-10 A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 Grineski, Sara E. Morales, Danielle X. Collins, Timothy W. Nadybal, Shawna Trego, Shaylynn Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice on college campuses. How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected undergraduate researchers’ progress is poorly understood. We examine how demographics, academic characteristics, research disruptions and faculty mentorship are associated with four barriers to research progress. Data are drawn from a survey of over 1000 undergraduate student researchers across the US. We examine students who actively continued to conduct faculty-mentored research during mid-March/April 2020 (n = 485). Using generalized estimating equations that control clustering by institution, we found economic hardship, discomfort teleconferencing, lower quality mentors, sexual minority status and higher grade point averages were associated with motivation problems. Economic hardship, serious illness, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and lower a frequency of mentor–mentee communication were associated with a time crunch with regard to conducting research. Discomfort teleconferencing, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and decrease in research workload were associated with task uncertainty. Economic hardship, serious illness and being an engineering major were associated with lacking needed tools for the research. In sum, economic hardship was an important correlate of research barriers, as were communication challenges and sexual minority status. Results can inform practical actions by research program directors and faculty undergraduate research mentors. MDPI 2022-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9180582/ /pubmed/35682120 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116534 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Grineski, Sara E. Morales, Danielle X. Collins, Timothy W. Nadybal, Shawna Trego, Shaylynn A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title | A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title_full | A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title_fullStr | A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title_full_unstemmed | A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title_short | A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19 |
title_sort | us national study of barriers to science training experienced by undergraduate students during covid-19 |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180582/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35682120 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116534 |
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