Factors affecting the number and type of student research products for chemistry and physics students at primarily undergraduate institutions: A case study

Abstract

For undergraduate students, involvement in authentic research represents scholarship that is consistent with disciplinary quality standards and provides an integrative learning experience. In conjunction with performing research, the communication of the results via presentations or publications is a measure of the level of scientific engagement. The empirical study presented here uses generalized linear mixed models with hierarchical bootstrapping to examine the factors that impact the means of dissemination of undergraduate research results. Focusing on the research experiences in physics and chemistry of undergraduates at four Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) from 2004–2013, statistical analysis indicates that the gender of the student does not impact the number and type of research products. However, in chemistry, the rank of the faculty advisor and the venue of the presentation do impact the number of research products by undergraduate student, whereas in physics, gender match between student and advisor has an effect on the number of undergraduate research products. This study provides a baseline for future studies of discipline-based bibliometrics and factors that affect the number of research products of undergraduate students.

High impact: Examining predictors of faculty-undergraduate coauthored publication and presentation in psychology

“…To the best of our knowledge, only two studies have examined predictors of undergraduate publication and presentation. One study was restricted to faculty from research-intensive institutions (i.e., biomedical faculty at 13 R1 institutions) and examined predictors of publication only [ 14 ], whereas the other was restricted to faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions (i.e., chemistry and physics faculty at 4 PUIs) and examined predictors of publication and conference presentation [ 13 ]. We sought to significantly extend the literature in this area by (a) including multiple institution types (research intensive/doctoral universities, master’s universities, and PUIs) in the same study to allow for a comparison of undergraduate-only and graduate-serving institutions, (b) including a larger number of individual institutions ( n = 154; 52 participants did not specify their institution), (c) including a wider range of potential predictor variables, such as institutional variables (e.g., student selectivity, support for faculty-undergraduate research), which have been neglected in prior research, as well as research lab and project characteristics (e.g., typical participant, length of study, original vs. replication research), and (d) examining predictors of publication and conference presentation in which undergraduates serve as first author.…”

“…As noted earlier, there is a large body of research documenting the numerous benefits of such collaborations ([e.g., 41 , 42 ]) and there are a wide range of possible models that successfully engage undergraduates in research. Nonetheless, because the dissemination of research findings is both a crucial component of the research process [ 13 ] as well as helpful for graduate school admission [ 4 ], we hope that by identifying factors that predict undergraduate research outcomes, the current study might help institutions to improve the quality and success of their undergraduate research programs.…”

“…Although there are no empirical studies on undergraduate publication in psychology, there are a few such studies in other fields that can possibly offer insight. Mellis et al [ 13 ] examined data from 4 PUIs over a 10-year period from 2004 to 2013 (including 59 faculty and 548 research students) to identify factors that determine undergraduate presentation and publication in chemistry and physics. They found that although the majority of the outcomes were conference presentations (85%), a significant number (15%) were peer-reviewed publications.…”

Twenty years of exceptional success: The molecular education and research consortium in undergraduate computational chemistry (MERCURY)

“…The faculty published 2 peer‐reviewed books, [ 238,239 ] 9 peer‐reviewed book chapters, [ 240–248 ] and 115 peer‐reviewed research papers. [ 249–363 ] This comes to 1.6 peer‐reviewed products/faculty/year during the 3‐year grant period, which is 3.2 times the rate of publication for natural science faculty at PUIs. [ 46 ]…”

Beyond linear regression: A reference for analyzing common data types in discipline based education research

“…[67]). In discipline-based education research, Poisson regression might be used to determine how student, classroom, or program characteristics influence the number of students from a particular program who persist in a discipline [89] or the number of undergraduates completing research projects within a department [90]. Auerbach and colleagues [54] used Poisson regression to model the number of times an instructional practice, such as promoting metacognition, was noticed by experts compared to novices as they analyzed videos of active-learning classrooms.…”