University of Rhode Island (URI) postdoc Evelyn Valdez-Ward is seeking participants for a study about postdoctoral experiences. As an NSF STEM Education Postdoctoral Fellow, her project aims to study the experiences of postdocs in STEM fields to understand the impacts of postdocs’ environmental contexts as well as the effects of those contexts on postdoctoral STEM identities, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and ultimately, career trajectories.

Who is involved?

This collaboration is led by Dr. Evelyn Valdez-Ward, with partnering organizations that include DisabledinSTEM, OutToInnovate, the National Postdoc Association, MinorityPostdoc, and co-advisors Dr. Sunshine Menezes and Dr. Bruno Takahashi. Together, we aim to use the findings from this study to better understand and improve the postdoctoral training landscape. Through interviews, we will collect baseline data from postdocs to understand their STEM identities, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and career trajectories.

Who is eligible to participate?

To be eligible to participate in this study:

• You must be 18 years of age or older.
• You must currently be (or within the last 2 months have been) in a postdoctoral position in a U.S.-based academic institution.
• You must be in a STEM field (broadly defined).

What are we asking you to do?

If you agree to be in this study, it will take you approximately 5 minutes for the intake survey and 60 minutes to complete the virtual interview. A survey will be emailed to you one week prior to your scheduled interview. Questions will be asked about your postdoc position, field, and personal demographic information. This survey will take about 5 minutes. Questions during the virtual 60 minute interview will be asked about your STEM identities, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and career trajectories. There are no known risks, or benefits for completing this interview.

Your responses will be strictly confidential. The responses may be used in published research papers and in practice guides. All responses will be anonymized and aggregated to remove potential identifiers prior to publication.

The research team will assign you a unique participant code and that code will be included with your responses. Upon scheduling an interview, a code will be assigned for you to use when taking the intake survey. You will receive your unique code with the survey link. The file linking your name with your code will be stored separately from your responses and will be password protected on a URI hard drive. Only the research team has access to the original record linking this code to your name.

During the virtual interview, researchers will record the interview for transcription purposes. After being transcribed, the recordings will be destroyed. Identifiers will be removed from your identifiable private information, and, after such removal, the information could be used for future research studies or distributed to another investigator for future research studies without additional approval from you.

Incentives

Those participants who complete the intake survey and participate in an interview will receive a US $30 gift card. Email addresses will be collected after the virtual interview only to deliver gift cards to eligible participants. Upon delivery of the gift cards, all email addresses will be deleted.

This research has been approved by the University of Rhode Island Institutional Review Board.

Upon clicking this link to schedule a time for your interview, you will see the agreement to participate. By clicking “Continue” at the bottom of the agreement to participate, you will indicate your agreement to participate in the study and the virtual interview.

LINK TO SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT

If you have any further questions, comments or concerns about the project, you may email: Evelyn Valdez-Ward, Postdoctoral Scholar at University of Rhode Island, evaldezward@uri.edu, or message her on Signal app (eveward.79); or Sunshine Menezes at sunshine@uri.edu.