DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7sqv9s51h
title: Long-term ecological studies' practices and goals for trainees

description: We created a survey for the other authors in the 2024 Ecology Letters
 special issue on very long-term ecological studies about their practices
 and goals for trainees. We received 27 responses from researchers around
 the world studying a broad range of organisms across ecosystems. In more
 than half of the responding programs, undergraduate students collect,
 curate, and analyze data, as well as develop research questions, present
 at conferences, and contribute to writing scientific papers. Unlike our
 program, which primarily recruits from one university, other long-term
 studies often target a variety of institutions (79% of respondents). About
 half reported targeted recruitment of students from marginalized
 identities and a similar proportion paid students for their work. Students
 were slightly more likely to collaborate with a cohort of other students
 (3.8 in 1-5 Likert scale) and have peer cohort building activities (3.6 in
 1-5 Likert scale). When asked to rank the helpful characteristics of
 long-term studies to undergraduate students, top choices included “links
 between research, internship, classes”, “extensive professional networks”,
 “rich data”, and “robust logistics”. The rank of “paid salaries” was
 split, with about a third of the programs ranking it least helpful to
 students but the other third of programs ranking it either as the first or
 second most helpful attribute of long-term programs. Based on comments
 related to funding, the low salary ranking might be associated with
 student funding opportunities available through university grants or
 independent fellowships. Overall, this suggests the most impactful
 transformation long-term studies can make is to advocate for paying
 trainees in future grant proposals.
description: We sent a survey to other scientists that submitted a proposal to
 the <em>Ecology Letters</em> special issue on very long-term
 ecological studies. The survey questions covered the following
 topics: Duration of study
 Trainee recruitment Trainee involvement in
 the scientific process Trainee mentorship and
 support Compensation for trainees
 Perceived value of program for trainees.
description: # Long-term ecological studies' practices and goals for trainees
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7sqv9s51h](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7sqv9s51h) We surveyed long-term ecological studies that submitted a proposal to an *Ecology Letters* special issue on very-long term studies to investigate opportunities and priorities for trainees. Our survey was open August-November 2023 and we received 27 complete responses. Questions on the survey covered: * How long has the long-term study been running? * How are trainees recruited? * What tasks do trainees perform? * What mentorship and support are available to trainees? * Are trainees compensated? * What is the perceived utility of the study to trainees' development as scientists? ## Description of the data and file structure Our dataset contains one CSV file (long-term-studies-survey-responses.csv) with aggregated survey responses. Personal identifying information of survey respondents has been removed. The fields in the CSV file are: * Question * Choice * Response * Count *Question* is the question asked on the survey, e.g. "Do undergraduate students perform any of the following tasks?". Some questions had multiple choices for respondents, which are contained in *Choice*. For example, the question "Do undergraduate students perform any of the following tasks?" had choices including "Analyze data", "Be a named author on a scientific papers", and "Clean equipment". *Response* is the response given to a question (and choice, if applicable). For example, the question "Approximately, how long has the study been running for?" had responses "10 years or less", "20 years", "30 years", ...; the question "How likely are undergraduate students to participate in the following activities while participating in the very long term study?" had multiple choices, e.g. "Cohort building activities" and "Have first-aid training", and the responses were a 5-point Likert scale. *Count* is the number of respondents for a given Question/Choice/Response. We only included survey results if the respondent replied to all questions. However, some choices within questions may have been skipped. Also, some questions had a response option "Other" that allowed the respondent to offer alternative responses. These have been removed from the data to preserve anonymity of respondents. As a result, the total number of responses varies between questions.