A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity
Creators: name: Layton, Rebekah
name: Brandt, Patrick
name: Varvayanis, Susi
name: Baas, Tracey
name: Bolgioni, Amanda
name: Alder, Janet
name: Petrie, Kim
name: Dominguez, Isabel
name: Brown, Abigail
name: Stayart, C.
name: Singh, Harinder
name: Van Wart, Audra
name: Chow, Christine
name: Mathur, Ambika
name: Schreiber, Barbara
name: Fruman, David
name: Bowden, Brent
name: Wiesen, Chris
name: Golightly, Yvonne
name: Holmquist, Chris
name: Arneman, Daniel
name: Hall, Joshua
name: Hyman, Linda
name: Gould, Kathleen
name: Chalkley, Roger
name: Brennwald, Patrick
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Other Life Sciences
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Biology
subject: Biomedical
subject: Career and professional development
subject: Doctoral
subject: Graduate education
subject: Internship
subject: PhD
subject: Productivity
subject: Publication metric

description: PhD-trained scientists are essential contributors to the workforce in diverse employment sectors that include academia, industry, government, and non-profit organizations. Hence, best practices for training the future biomedical workforce are of national concern. Complementing coursework and laboratory research training, many institutions now offer professional training that enables career exploration and develops a broad set of skills critical to various career paths. The National Institutes of Health funded academic institutions to design innovative programming to enable this professional development through a mechanism known as Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST). Programming at the BEST awardee institutions included career panels, skill-building workshops, job-searching workshops, site visits, and internships. Because doctoral training is lengthy and requires focused attention on dissertation research, an initial concern was that students participating in additional complementary training activities might exhibit an increased time to degree or diminished research productivity. Metrics were analyzed from ten BEST awardee institutions to address this concern, using time to degree and publication records as measures of efficiency and productivity. Comparing doctoral students who participated to those who did not, results revealed that across these diverse academic institutions, there were no differences in time to degree or manuscript output. Furthermore, a few institutions demonstrated a positive correlation between participation in career and professional development activities and productivity. Our findings support the policy that doctoral students should participate in career and professional development opportunities that are intended to prepare them for a variety of diverse and important careers in the workforce. Note: Institutional data has been de-identified and each file corresponds to institutional labels consistent with publication manuscript (e.g., "Institution A" in manuscript corresponds to file "ZA TTD data deidentified"; Brandt et al, 2021). Columns for each institutional data set include: coded trainee ID; trainee participation data and dose-bin assigned; time to degree and/or defense; and number of publications (total, first author, and/or pub metric composite score).