research skills survey

What are research skills?

Last updated

26 April 2023

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Broadly, it includes a range of talents required to:

Find useful information

Perform critical analysis

Form hypotheses

Solve problems

It also includes processes such as time management, communication, and reporting skills to achieve those ends.

Research requires a blend of conceptual and detail-oriented modes of thinking. It tests one's ability to transition between subjective motivations and objective assessments to ensure only correct data fits into a meaningfully useful framework.

As countless fields increasingly rely on data management and analysis, polishing your research skills is an important, near-universal way to improve your potential of getting hired and advancing in your career.

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Dovetail streamlines research to help you uncover and share actionable insights

What are basic research skills?

Almost any research involves some proportion of the following fundamental skills:

Organization

Decision-making

Investigation and analysis

Creative thinking

What are primary research skills?

The following are some of the most universally important research skills that will help you in a wide range of positions:

Time management — From planning and organization to task prioritization and deadline management, time-management skills are highly in-demand workplace skills.

Problem-solving — Identifying issues, their causes, and key solutions are another essential suite of research skills.

Critical thinking — The ability to make connections between data points with clear reasoning is essential to navigate data and extract what's useful towards the original objective.

Communication — In any collaborative environment, team-building and active listening will help researchers convey findings more effectively through data summarizations and report writing.

What are the most important skills in research?

Detail-oriented procedures are essential to research, which allow researchers and their audience to probe deeper into a subject and make connections they otherwise may have missed with generic overviews.

Maintaining priorities is also essential so that details fit within an overarching strategy. Lastly, decision-making is crucial because that's the only way research is translated into meaningful action.

• Why are research skills important?

Good research skills are crucial to learning more about a subject, then using that knowledge to improve an organization's capabilities. Synthesizing that research and conveying it clearly is also important, as employees seek to share useful insights and inspire effective actions.

Effective research skills are essential for those seeking to:

Analyze their target market

Investigate industry trends

Identify customer needs

Detect obstacles

Find solutions to those obstacles

Develop new products or services

Develop new, adaptive ways to meet demands

Discover more efficient ways of acquiring or using resources

Why do we need research skills?

Businesses and individuals alike need research skills to clarify their role in the marketplace, which of course, requires clarity on the market in which they function in. High-quality research helps people stay better prepared for challenges by identifying key factors involved in their day-to-day operations, along with those that might play a significant role in future goals.

• Benefits of having research skills

Research skills increase the effectiveness of any role that's dependent on information. Both individually and organization-wide, good research simplifies what can otherwise be unwieldy amounts of data. It can help maintain order by organizing information and improving efficiency, both of which set the stage for improved revenue growth.

Those with highly effective research skills can help reveal both:

Opportunities for improvement

Brand-new or previously unseen opportunities

Research skills can then help identify how to best take advantage of available opportunities. With today's increasingly data-driven economy, it will also increase your potential of getting hired and help position organizations as thought leaders in their marketplace.

• Research skills examples

Being necessarily broad, research skills encompass many sub-categories of skillsets required to extrapolate meaning and direction from dense informational resources. Identifying, interpreting, and applying research are several such subcategories—but to be specific, workplaces of almost any type have some need of:

Searching for information

Attention to detail

Taking notes

Problem-solving

Communicating results

Time management

• How to improve your research skills

Whether your research goals are to learn more about a subject or enhance workflows, you can improve research skills with this failsafe, four-step strategy:

Make an outline, and set your intention(s)

Know your sources

Learn to use advanced search techniques

Practice, practice, practice (and don't be afraid to adjust your approach)

These steps could manifest themselves in many ways, but what's most important is that it results in measurable progress toward the original goals that compelled you to research a subject.

• Using research skills at work

Different research skills will be emphasized over others, depending on the nature of your trade. To use research most effectively, concentrate on improving research skills most relevant to your position—or, if working solo, the skills most likely have the strongest impact on your goals.

You might divide the necessary research skills into categories for short, medium, and long-term goals or according to each activity your position requires. That way, when a challenge arises in your workflow, it's clearer which specific research skill requires dedicated attention.

How can I learn research skills?

Learning research skills can be done with a simple three-point framework:

Clarify the objective — Before delving into potentially overwhelming amounts of data, take a moment to define the purpose of your research. If at any point you lose sight of the original objective, take another moment to ask how you could adjust your approach to better fit the original objective.

Scrutinize sources — Cross-reference data with other sources, paying close attention to each author's credentials and motivations.

Organize research — Establish and continually refine a data-organization system that works for you. This could be an index of resources or compiling data under different categories designed for easy access.

Which careers require research skills?

Especially in today's world, most careers require some, if not extensive, research. Developers, marketers, and others dealing in primarily digital properties especially require extensive research skills—but it's just as important in building and manufacturing industries, where research is crucial to construct products correctly and safely.

Engineering, legal, medical, and literally any other specialized field will require excellent research skills. Truly, almost any career path will involve some level of research skills; and even those requiring only minimal research skills will at least require research to find and compare open positions in the first place.

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Research Skills: What they are and Benefits

Research skills play a vital role in the success of any research project, enabling individuals to navigate the vast sea of information, analyze data critically, and draw meaningful conclusions. Whether conducting academic research, professional investigations, or personal inquiries, strong research skills are essential for obtaining accurate and reliable results.

LEARN ABOUT:   Research Process Steps

By understanding and developing these skills, individuals can embark on their research endeavors with confidence, integrity, and the capability to make meaningful contributions in their chosen fields. This article will explore the importance of research skills and discuss critical competencies necessary for conducting a research project effectively.

Content Index

What are Research Skills?

Important research skills for research project, benefits of research skills.

• Improving your Research Skills

Talk to Experts to Improve Skills

Research skills are the capability a person carries to create new concepts and understand the use of data collection. These skills include techniques, documentation, and interpretation of the collected data. Research is conducted to evaluate hypotheses and share the findings most appropriately. Research skills improve as we gain experience.

To conduct efficient research, specific research skills are essential. These skills are necessary for companies to develop new products and services or enhance existing products. To develop good research skills is important for both the individual as well as the company.

When undertaking a research project, one must possess specific important skills to ensure the project’s success and accuracy. Here are some essential research skills that are crucial for conducting a project effectively:

Time Management Skills:

Time management is an essential research skill; it helps you break down your project into parts and enables you to manage it easier. One can create a dead-line oriented plan for the research project and assign time for each task. Time management skills include setting goals for the project, planning and organizing functions as per their priority, and efficiently delegating these tasks.

Communication Skills:

These skills help you understand and receive important information and also allow you to share your findings with others in an effective manner. Active listening and speaking are critical skills for solid communication. A researcher must have good communication skills.

Problem-Solving:  

The ability to handle complex situations and business challenges and come up with solutions for them is termed problem-solving. To problem-solve, you should be able to fully understand the extent of the problem and then break it down into smaller parts. Once segregated into smaller chunks, you can start thinking about each element and analyze it to find a solution.

Information gathering and attention to detail:

Relevant information is the key to good research design . Searching for credible resources and collecting information from there will help you strengthen your research proposal and drive you to solutions faster. Once you have access to information, paying close attention to all the details and drawing conclusions based on the findings is essential.

Research Design and Methodology :

Understanding research design and methodology is essential for planning and conducting a project. Depending on the research question and objectives, researchers must select appropriate research methods, such as surveys, experiments, interviews, or case studies. Proficiency in designing research protocols, data collection instruments, and sampling strategies is crucial for obtaining reliable and valid results.

Data Collection and Analysis :

Researchers should be skilled in collecting and analyzing data accurately. It involves designing data collection instruments, collecting data through various methods, such as surveys or observations, and organizing and analyzing the collected data using appropriate statistical or qualitative analysis techniques. Proficiency in using software tools like SPSS, Excel, or qualitative analysis software can be beneficial.

By developing and strengthening these research skills, researchers can enhance the quality and impact of their research process, contributing to good research skills in their respective fields.

Research skills are invaluable assets that can benefit individuals in various aspects of their lives. Here are some key benefits of developing and honing research skills:

Boosts Curiosity :

Curiosity is a strong desire to know things and a powerful learning driver. Curious researchers will naturally ask questions that demand answers and will stop in the search for answers. Interested people are better listeners and are open to listening to other people’s ideas and perspectives, not just their own.

Cultivates Self-awareness :

As well as being aware of other people’s subjective opinions, one must develop the importance of research skills and be mindful of the benefits of awareness research; we are exposed to many things while researching. Once we start doing research, the benefit from it reflects on the beliefs and attitudes and encourages them to open their minds to other perspectives and ways of looking at things.

Effective Communication:

Research skills contribute to practical communication skills by enhancing one’s ability to articulate ideas, opinions, and findings clearly and coherently. Through research, individuals learn to organize their thoughts, present evidence-based arguments, and effectively convey complex information to different audiences. These skills are crucial in academic research settings, professional environments, and personal interactions.

Personal and Professional Growth :

Developing research skills fosters personal and professional growth by instilling a sense of curiosity, intellectual independence, and a lifelong learning mindset. Research encourages individuals to seek knowledge, challenge assumptions, and embrace intellectual growth. These skills also enhance adaptability as individuals become adept at navigating and assimilating new information, staying updated with the latest developments, and adjusting their perspectives and strategies accordingly.

Academic Success:

Research skills are essential for academic research success. They enable students to conduct thorough literature reviews, gather evidence to support their arguments, and critically evaluate existing research. By honing their research skills, students can produce well-structured, evidence-based essays, projects, and dissertations demonstrating high academic research rigor and analytical thinking.

Professional Advancement:

Research skills are highly valued in the professional world. They are crucial for conducting market research, analyzing trends, identifying opportunities, and making data-driven decisions. Employers appreciate individuals who can effectively gather and analyze information, solve complex problems, and provide evidence-based recommendations. Research skills also enable professionals to stay updated with advancements in their field, positioning themselves as knowledgeable and competent experts.

Developing and nurturing research skills can significantly benefit individuals in numerous aspects of their lives, enabling them to thrive in an increasingly information-driven world.

Improving Your Research Skills

There are many things you can do to improve your research skills and utilize them in your research or day job. Here are some examples:

• Develop Information Literacy: Strengthening your information literacy skills is crucial for conducting thorough research. It involves identifying reliable sources, evaluating the credibility of information, and navigating different research databases.
• Enhance Critical Thinking: Critical thinking is an essential skill for effective research. It involves analyzing information, questioning assumptions, and evaluating arguments. Practice critical analysis by analyzing thoughtfully, identifying biases, and considering alternative perspectives.
• Master Research Methodologies: Familiarize yourself with different research methodologies relevant to your field. Whether it’s qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research, realizing the strengths and limitations of each approach is crucial.
• Practice Effective Time Management: Research requires dedicated time and effort. Develop good time management skills to ensure that you allocate sufficient time for each stage of the research process, including planning, data collection, analysis, and writing.
• Embrace Collaboration: Collaborating with peers and colleagues can provide a fresh perspective and enrich your research experience. Engage in discussions, share ideas, and seek feedback from others. Collaborative projects allow for exchanging knowledge and skills.
• Continuously Update Your Knowledge: Stay informed about your field’s latest developments and advancements. Regularly read scholarly articles, attend conferences, and follow reputable sources of information to stay up to date with current research trends.

There is plenty of information available on the internet about every topic; hence, learning skills to know which information is relevant and credible is very important. Today most search engines have the feature of advanced search, and you can customize the search as per your preference. Once you learn this skill, it will help you find information. 

Experts possess a wealth of knowledge, experience, and insights that can significantly enhance your understanding and abilities in conducting research. Experts have often encountered numerous challenges and hurdles throughout their research journey and have developed effective problem-solving techniques. Engaging with experts is a highly effective approach to improving research skills.

Moreover, experts can provide valuable feedback and constructive criticism on your research work. They can offer fresh perspectives, identify areas for improvement, and help you refine your research questions, methodology, and analysis.

At QuestionPro, we can help you with the necessary tools to carry out your projects, and we have created the following free resources to help you in your professional growth:

• Survey Templates

Research skills are invaluable assets that empower individuals to navigate the ever-expanding realm of information, make informed decisions, and contribute to advancing knowledge. With advanced research tools and technologies like QuestionPro Survey Software, researchers have potent resources to conduct comprehensive surveys, gather data, and analyze results efficiently.

Where data-driven decision-making is crucial, research skills supported by advanced tools like QuestionPro are essential for researchers to stay ahead and make impactful contributions to their fields. By embracing these research skills and leveraging the capabilities of powerful survey software, researchers can unlock new possibilities, gain deeper insights, and pave the way for meaningful discoveries.

Authors : Gargi Ghamandi & Sandeep Kokane

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Research skills are the ability to find out accurate information on a topic. They include being able to determine the data you need, find and interpret those findings, and then explain that to others. Being able to do effective research is a beneficial skill in any profession, as data and research inform how businesses operate.

Whether you’re unsure of your research skills or are looking for ways to further improve them, then this article will cover important research skills and how to become even better at research.

Key Takeaways

Having strong research skills can help you understand your competitors, develop new processes, and build your professional skills in addition to aiding you in finding new customers and saving your company money.

Some of the most valuable research skills you can have include goal setting, data collection, and analyzing information from multiple sources.

You can and should put your research skills on your resume and highlight them in your job interviews.

What are research skills?

Why are research skills important, 12 of the most important research skills, how to improve your research skills, highlighting your research skills in a job interview, how to include research skills on your resume, resume examples showcasing research skills, research skills faqs.

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Research skills are the necessary tools to be able to find, compile, and interpret information in order to answer a question. Of course, there are several aspects to this. Researchers typically have to decide how to go about researching a problem — which for most people is internet research.

In addition, you need to be able to interpret the reliability of a source, put the information you find together in an organized and logical way, and be able to present your findings to others. That means that they’re comprised of both hard skills — knowing your subject and what’s true and what isn’t — and soft skills. You need to be able to interpret sources and communicate clearly.

Research skills are useful in any industry, and have applications in innovation, product development, competitor research, and many other areas. In addition, the skills used in researching aren’t only useful for research. Being able to interpret information is a necessary skill, as is being able to clearly explain your reasoning.

Research skills are used to:

Do competitor research. Knowing what your biggest competitors are up to is an essential part of any business. Researching what works for your competitors, what they’re doing better than you, and where you can improve your standing with the lowest resource expenditure are all essential if a company wants to remain functional.

Develop new processes and products. You don’t have to be involved in research and development to make improvements in how your team gets things done. Researching new processes that make your job (and those of your team) more efficient will be valued by any sensible employer.

Foster self-improvement. Folks who have a knack and passion for research are never content with doing things the same way they’ve always been done. Organizations need independent thinkers who will seek out their own answers and improve their skills as a matter of course. These employees will also pick up new technologies more easily.

Manage customer relationships. Being able to conduct research on your customer base is positively vital in virtually every industry. It’s hard to move products or sell services if you don’t know what people are interested in. Researching your customer base’s interests, needs, and pain points is a valuable responsibility.

Save money. Whether your company is launching a new product or just looking for ways to scale back its current spending, research is crucial for finding wasted resources and redirecting them to more deserving ends. Anyone who proactively researches ways that the company can save money will be highly appreciated by their employer.

Solve problems. Problem solving is a major part of a lot of careers, and research skills are instrumental in making sure your solution is effective. Finding out the cause of the problem and determining an effective solution both require accurate information, and research is the best way to obtain that — be it via the internet or by observation.

Determine reliable information. Being able to tell whether or not the information you receive seems accurate is a very valuable skill. While research skills won’t always guarantee that you’ll be able to tell the reliability of the information at first glance, it’ll prevent you from being too trusting. And it’ll give the tools to double-check .

Experienced researchers know that worthwhile investigation involves a variety of skills. Consider which research skills come naturally to you, and which you could work on more.

Data collection . When thinking about the research process, data collection is often the first thing that comes to mind. It is the nuts and bolts of research. How data is collected can be flexible.

For some purposes, simply gathering facts and information on the internet can fulfill your need. Others may require more direct and crowd-sourced research. Having experience in various methods of data collection can make your resume more impressive to recruiters.

Data collection methods include: Observation Interviews Questionnaires Experimentation Conducting focus groups

Analysis of information from different sources. Putting all your eggs in one source basket usually results in error and disappointment. One of the skills that good researchers always incorporate into their process is an abundance of sources. It’s also best practice to consider the reliability of these sources.

Are you reading about U.S. history on a conspiracy theorist’s blog post? Taking facts for a presentation from an anonymous Twitter account?

If you can’t determine the validity of the sources you’re using, it can compromise all of your research. That doesn’t mean just disregard anything on the internet but double-check your findings. In fact, quadruple-check. You can make your research even stronger by turning to references outside of the internet.

Examples of reliable information sources include: Published books Encyclopedias Magazines Databases Scholarly journals Newspapers Library catalogs

Finding information on the internet. While it can be beneficial to consulate alternative sources, strong internet research skills drive modern-day research.

One of the great things about the internet is how much information it contains, however, this comes with digging through a lot of garbage to get to the facts you need. The ability to efficiently use the vast database of knowledge that is on the internet without getting lost in the junk is very valuable to employers.

Internet research skills include: Source checking Searching relevant questions Exploring deeper than the first options Avoiding distraction Giving credit Organizing findings

Interviewing. Some research endeavors may require a more hands-on approach than just consulting internet sources. Being prepared with strong interviewing skills can be very helpful in the research process.

Interviews can be a useful research tactic to gain first-hand information and being able to manage a successful interview can greatly improve your research skills.

Interviewing skills involves: A plan of action Specific, pointed questions Respectfulness Considering the interview setting Actively Listening Taking notes Gratitude for participation

Report writing. Possessing skills in report writing can assist you in job and scholarly research. The overall purpose of a report in any context is to convey particular information to its audience.

Effective report writing is largely dependent on communication. Your boss, professor , or general reader should walk away completely understanding your findings and conclusions.

Report writing skills involve: Proper format Including a summary Focusing on your initial goal Creating an outline Proofreading Directness

Critical thinking. Critical thinking skills can aid you greatly throughout the research process, and as an employee in general. Critical thinking refers to your data analysis skills. When you’re in the throes of research, you need to be able to analyze your results and make logical decisions about your findings.

Critical thinking skills involve: Observation Analysis Assessing issues Problem-solving Creativity Communication

Planning and scheduling. Research is a work project like any other, and that means it requires a little forethought before starting. Creating a detailed outline map for the points you want to touch on in your research produces more organized results.

It also makes it much easier to manage your time. Planning and scheduling skills are important to employers because they indicate a prepared employee.

Planning and scheduling skills include: Setting objectives Identifying tasks Prioritizing Delegating if needed Vision Communication Clarity Time-management

Note-taking. Research involves sifting through and taking in lots of information. Taking exhaustive notes ensures that you will not neglect any findings later and allows you to communicate these results to your co-workers. Being able to take good notes helps summarize research.

Examples of note-taking skills include: Focus Organization Using short-hand Keeping your objective in mind Neatness Highlighting important points Reviewing notes afterward

Communication skills. Effective research requires being able to understand and process the information you receive, either written or spoken. That means that you need strong reading comprehension and writing skills — two major aspects of communication — as well as excellent listening skills.

Most research also involves showcasing your findings. This can be via a presentation. , report, chart, or Q&A. Whatever the case, you need to be able to communicate your findings in a way that educates your audience.

Communication skills include: Reading comprehension Writing Listening skills Presenting to an audience Creating graphs or charts Explaining in layman’s terms

Time management. We’re, unfortunately, only given 24 measly hours in a day. The ability to effectively manage this time is extremely powerful in a professional context. Hiring managers seek candidates who can accomplish goals in a given timeframe.

Strong time management skills mean that you can organize a plan for how to break down larger tasks in a project and complete them by a deadline. Developing your time management skills can greatly improve the productivity of your research.

Time management skills include: Scheduling Creating task outlines Strategic thinking Stress-management Delegation Communication Utilizing resources Setting realistic expectations Meeting deadlines

Using your network. While this doesn’t seem immediately relevant to research skills, remember that there are a lot of experts out there. Knowing what people’s areas of expertise and asking for help can be tremendously beneficial — especially if it’s a subject you’re unfamiliar with.

Your coworkers are going to have different areas of expertise than you do, and your network of people will as well. You may even know someone who knows someone who’s knowledgeable in the area you’re researching. Most people are happy to share their expertise, as it’s usually also an area of interest to them.

Networking involves: Remembering people’s areas of expertise Being willing to ask for help Communication Returning favors Making use of advice Asking for specific assistance

Attention to detail. Research is inherently precise. That means that you need to be attentive to the details, both in terms of the information you’re gathering, but also in where you got it from. Making errors in statistics can have a major impact on the interpretation of the data, not to mention that it’ll reflect poorly on you.

There are proper procedures for citing sources that you should follow. That means that your sources will be properly credited, preventing accusations of plagiarism. In addition, it means that others can make use of your research by returning to the original sources.

Attention to detail includes: Double checking statistics Taking notes Keeping track of your sources Staying organized Making sure graphs are accurate and representative Properly citing sources

As with many professional skills, research skills serve us in our day to day life. Any time you search for information on the internet, you’re doing research. That means that you’re practicing it outside of work as well. If you want to continue improving your research skills, both for professional and personal use, here are some tips to try.

Differentiate between source quality. A researcher is only as good as their worst source. Start paying attention to the quality of the sources you use, and be suspicious of everything your read until you check out the attributions and works cited.

Be critical and ask yourself about the author’s bias, where the author’s research aligns with the larger body of verified research in the field, and what publication sponsored or published the research.

Use multiple resources. When you can verify information from a multitude of sources, it becomes more and more credible. To bolster your faith in one source, see if you can find another source that agrees with it.

Don’t fall victim to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when a researcher expects a certain outcome and then goes to find data that supports this hypothesis. It can even go so far as disregarding anything that challenges the researcher’s initial hunch. Be prepared for surprising answers and keep an open mind.

Be open to the idea that you might not find a definitive answer. It’s best to be honest and say that you found no definitive answer instead of just confirming what you think your boss or coworkers expect or want to hear. Experts and good researchers are willing to say that they don’t know.

Stay organized. Being able to cite sources accurately and present all your findings is just as important as conducting the research itself. Start practicing good organizational skills , both on your devices and for any physical products you’re using.

Get specific as you go. There’s nothing wrong with starting your research in a general way. After all, it’s important to become familiar with the terminology and basic gist of the researcher’s findings before you dig down into all the minutia.

A job interview is itself a test of your research skills. You can expect questions on what you know about the company, the role, and your field or industry more generally. In order to give expert answers on all these topics, research is crucial.

Start by researching the company . Look into how they communicate with the public through social media, what their mission statement is, and how they describe their culture.

Pay close attention to the tone of their website. Is it hyper professional or more casual and fun-loving? All of these elements will help decide how best to sell yourself at the interview.

Next, research the role. Go beyond the job description and reach out to current employees working at your desired company and in your potential department. If you can find out what specific problems your future team is or will be facing, you’re sure to impress hiring managers and recruiters with your ability to research all the facts.

Finally, take time to research the job responsibilities you’re not as comfortable with. If you’re applying for a job that represents increased difficulty or entirely new tasks, it helps to come into the interview with at least a basic knowledge of what you’ll need to learn.

Research projects require dedication. Being committed is a valuable skill for hiring managers. Whether you’ve had research experience throughout education or a former job, including it properly can boost the success of your resume .

Consider how extensive your research background is. If you’ve worked on multiple, in-depth research projects, it might be best to include it as its own section. If you have less research experience, include it in the skills section .

Focus on your specific role in the research, as opposed to just the research itself. Try to quantify accomplishments to the best of your abilities. If you were put in charge of competitor research, for example, list that as one of the tasks you had in your career.

If it was a particular project, such as tracking the sale of women’s clothing at a tee-shirt company, you can say that you “directed analysis into women’s clothing sales statistics for a market research project.”

Ascertain how directly research skills relate to the job you’re applying for. How strongly you highlight your research skills should depend on the nature of the job the resume is for. If research looks to be a strong component of it, then showcase all of your experience.

If research looks to be tangential, then be sure to mention it — it’s a valuable skill — but don’t put it front and center.

Example #1: Academic Research

Simon Marks 767 Brighton Blvd. | Brooklyn, NY, 27368 | (683)-262-8883 | [email protected] Diligent and hardworking recent graduate seeking a position to develop professional experience and utilize research skills. B.A. in Biological Sciences from New York University. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Lixus Publishing , Brooklyn, NY Office Assistant- September 2018-present Scheduling and updating meetings Managing emails and phone calls Reading entries Worked on a science fiction campaign by researching target demographic Organizing calendars Promoted to office assistant after one year internship Mitch’s Burgers and Fries , Brooklyn, NY Restaurant Manager , June 2014-June 2018 Managed a team of five employees Responsible for coordinating the weekly schedule Hired and trained two employees Kept track of inventory Dealt with vendors Provided customer service Promoted to restaurant manager after two years as a waiter Awarded a $2.00/hr wage increase SKILLS Writing Scientific Research Data analysis Critical thinking Planning Communication RESEARCH Worked on an ecosystem biology project with responsibilities for algae collection and research (2019) Lead a group of freshmen in a research project looking into cell biology (2018) EDUCATION New York University Bachelors in Biological Sciences, September 2016-May 2020

Example #2: Professional Research

Angela Nichols 1111 Keller Dr. | San Francisco, CA | (663)-124-8827 |[email protected] Experienced and enthusiastic marketer with 7 years of professional experience. Seeking a position to apply my marketing and research knowledge. Skills in working on a team and flexibility. EXPERIENCE Apples amp; Oranges Marketing, San Francisco, CA Associate Marketer – April 2017-May 2020 Discuss marketing goals with clients Provide customer service Lead campaigns associated with women’s health Coordinating with a marketing team Quickly solving issues in service and managing conflict Awarded with two raises totaling $10,000 over three years Prestigious Marketing Company, San Francisco, CA Marketer – May 2014-April 2017 Working directly with clients Conducting market research into television streaming preferences Developing marketing campaigns related to television streaming services Report writing Analyzing campaign success statistics Promoted to Marketer from Junior Marketer after the first year Timberlake Public Relations, San Francisco, CA Public Relations Intern – September 2013–May 2014 Working cohesively with a large group of co-workers and supervisors Note-taking during meetings Running errands Managing email accounts Assisting in brainstorming Meeting work deadlines EDUCATION Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA Bachelor of Arts in Marketing with a minor in Communications – September 2009 – May 2013 SKILLS Marketing Market research Record-keeping Teamwork Presentation. Flexibility

What research skills are important?

Goal-setting and data collection are important research skills. Additional important research skills include:

Using different sources to analyze information.

Finding information on the internet.

Interviewing sources.

Writing reports.

Critical thinking.

Planning and scheduling.

Note-taking.

Managing time.

How do you develop good research skills?

You develop good research skills by learning how to find information from multiple high-quality sources, by being wary of confirmation bias, and by starting broad and getting more specific as you go.

When you learn how to tell a reliable source from an unreliable one and get in the habit of finding multiple sources that back up a claim, you’ll have better quality research.

In addition, when you learn how to keep an open mind about what you’ll find, you’ll avoid falling into the trap of confirmation bias, and by staying organized and narrowing your focus as you go (rather than before you start), you’ll be able to gather quality information more efficiently.

What is the importance of research?

The importance of research is that it informs most decisions and strategies in a business. Whether it’s deciding which products to offer or creating a marketing strategy, research should be used in every part of a company.

Because of this, employers want employees who have strong research skills. They know that you’ll be able to put them to work bettering yourself and the organization as a whole.

Should you put research skills on your resume?

Yes, you should include research skills on your resume as they are an important professional skill. Where you include your research skills on your resume will depend on whether you have a lot of experience in research from a previous job or as part of getting your degree, or if you’ve just cultivated them on your own.

If your research skills are based on experience, you could put them down under the tasks you were expected to perform at the job in question. If not, then you should likely list it in your skills section.

University of the People – The Best Research Skills for Success

Association of Internet Research Specialists — What are Research Skills and Why Are They Important?

MasterClass — How to Improve Your Research Skills: 6 Research Tips

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Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.

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Self-Assessment of Research Skills and Barriers to Research Careers among Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows

Meg k. scott.

1 Department of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Andrew J. Goodwin

2 Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Nandita R. Nadig

3 Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

Jillian B. Harvey

4 Department of Healthcare Leadership and Management, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Edward F. Kilb

Associated data.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-mde-10.1177_23821205231184704 for Self-Assessment of Research Skills and Barriers to Research Careers among Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows by Meg K. Scott, Andrew J. Goodwin, Nandita R. Nadig, Jillian B. Harvey and Edward F. Kilb in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-mde-10.1177_23821205231184704 for Self-Assessment of Research Skills and Barriers to Research Careers among Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows by Meg K. Scott, Andrew J. Goodwin, Nandita R. Nadig, Jillian B. Harvey and Edward F. Kilb in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development

Supplemental material, sj-docx-4-mde-10.1177_23821205231184704 for Self-Assessment of Research Skills and Barriers to Research Careers among Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows by Meg K. Scott, Andrew J. Goodwin, Nandita R. Nadig, Jillian B. Harvey and Edward F. Kilb in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development

Supplemental material, sj-docx-5-mde-10.1177_23821205231184704 for Self-Assessment of Research Skills and Barriers to Research Careers among Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellows by Meg K. Scott, Andrew J. Goodwin, Nandita R. Nadig, Jillian B. Harvey and Edward F. Kilb in Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development

Recruitment and retention of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM) trainees into academic research positions remain difficult. Factors influencing graduates, like salary and personal circumstances, remain unchangeable. However, some program-level factors, like research skill acquisition and mentorship, may be modifiable to encourage matriculation into academic research positions.

We aim to identify proficiency in research-specific skills in PCCM trainees and barriers to careers as research-focused academic faculty.

We surveyed PCCM fellows in a nationwide cross-sectional analysis including demographics, research intent, research skills self-assessment, and academic career barriers. The Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors approved and disseminated the survey. Data were collected and stored using the REDCap database. Descriptive statistics were used to assess survey items.

612 fellows received the primary survey with 112 completing the survey for a response rate of 18.3%. A majority were male (56.2%) and training at university-based medical centers (89.2%). Early fellowship trainees (first-/second-year fellows) comprised 66.9% of respondents with 33.1% being late fellowship trainees (third-/fourth-year fellows). Most early trainees (63.2%) indicated they intended to incorporate research into their careers. A chi-square testing of independence was performed to examine the relationship between training level and perceived proficiency. Significant relationships in perceived proficiency were identified between early and late fellowship trainees with an absolute difference of 25.3% (manuscript writing), 18.7% (grant writing), 21.6% (study design), and 19.5% (quantitative/qualitative methodology). The most prevalent barriers were unfamiliarity with grant writing (59.5%) and research funding uncertainty (56.8%).

With an ongoing need for academic research faculty, this study identifies self-perceived gaps in research skills including grant writing, data analytics, and study conception and design. These skills map to fellow-identified barriers to careers in academics. Mentorship and innovative curriculum focusing on the development of key research skills may enhance academic research faculty recruitment.

Introduction

Recruitment and retention of pulmonary and critical care medicine (PCCM) trainees into research-focused academic careers is an ongoing challenge. These potential physician–scientists would fill the gap between clinical science and research skills to advance their fields. 1 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) have recognized the need for more effective retention efforts given the high reported rates of physician–scientist attrition. 2 , 3 An important part of addressing this trend needs to include the recruitment of graduating trainees into academic research careers; however, prior investigation has shown that even research-forward sub-specialty training programs recruit less than half of their graduates to academic positions. 4 Similarly, a recent survey study of program directors (PDs) reported that only 20% of PCCM fellowship graduates pursue academic research careers. 5 To optimize recruitment into research careers, it is critically important to understand and identify the acquisition of key research skills during training and barriers to matriculation into academic research careers from current fellows.

Prior work has suggested that several factors may influence a graduating trainee's decision to remain in an academic research career. Some factors are beyond the scope of a training program such as salary differential, prior exposure to research, and reluctance to rely upon competitive grant funding. 6 , 7 However, several identified risk factors may be addressable by fellowship training infrastructure. For example, graduating PCCM fellows have identified a lack of career development skills and research opportunities as significant factors that contributed to career paths. 8 Similarly, the availability of mentoring and acquisition of research skills during training have also been identified as key needs by trainees to pursue academic research careers. 7 , 9

Here, we sought to better understand how current PCCM fellowship training programs are addressing these important and potentially alterable characteristics as well as capture trainees’ current attitudes toward research careers. There are currently over 700 graduating fellows across over 100 academic PCCM training programs yearly. 3 , 10 Additionally, education on scholarly activity is part of the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) core requirements for PCCM fellowship. 11 We conducted a cross-sectional nationwide survey of these fellows focused on self-assessment of research skills at their current level of training as well as attitudes and perceived barriers to careers in academic PCCM.

Survey development

A literature review focused on factors relating to preparation for, barriers to, and retention in academic research careers was performed. 4 , 6 , 8 Using themes identified in the literature, a 39-question survey, with 37 quantitative items and 2 open-ended qualitative questions, was developed through rigorous discussion and review by a multidisciplinary team, including career academic researchers in the basic and clinical sciences, clinician educators, and fellows in PCCM. Questions were assessed for content, clarity, usefulness, and thoroughness through an iterative review process. 12 The survey was piloted on the PCCM fellows (2% of surveyed population) at the Medical University of South Carolina and underwent internal testing to ensure the branching logic was clear and no errors were encountered.

Demographic data was requested to include gender, race, ethnicity, program type, program size, program geographic region, year in fellowship training, previous experience with research before fellowship training, and current research focus. Respondents were also asked to self-assess their research abilities using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from No Proficiency to Expert Proficiency. Specifically, they were asked to rate their abilities concerning the management of a mentor/mentee relationship, time management, manuscript writing, grant writing, abstract writing, technology-assisted web-based teaching, oral presentations, critical evaluation of research results, ability to develop new research directions, data analysis, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and overall study design. Respondents were further asked to identify perceived barriers to pursuing an academic research career from a pre-populated list using a “select all that apply” format. Open-ended questions regarding barriers were also included to facilitate additional feedback on barriers to academic careers and perceived gaps in academic research training. The survey instrument is available in the data supplement named Appendix E1. Using the MUSC IRB Self-Evaluation Tool, 13 the project was determined to be not human subjects research and, therefore, exempt from IRB approval. An anonymous survey link was sent through national PDs with informed consent implied by initiating the survey.

Survey dissemination

The survey was submitted to the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors (APCCMPD) survey review committee and board of directors who approved the survey for dissemination to PDs nationally. The ACCPMPD membership is comprised of members from 96% of all fellowship programs in Pulmonary Medicine, Critical Care Medicine and combined Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. 14 The APCCMPD disseminated the fellow survey to all PDs via email. Using a convenience network sampling method, 15 the PDs were asked to forward the survey link to all of their current fellows in training. PDs also received a link to a second survey consisting of a single question asking for the number of fellows to whom the survey was distributed to calculate a response rate. The survey request was emailed from the APCCMPD per their guidelines to the PDs every other week for 6 weeks, or three times total, from March 2021 to April 2021. Participation in the survey was voluntary and no compensation was offered for completion of the survey. Survey data were collected using the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) database. 16 , 17

Data analysis

Due to the lower than expected survey response and to improve the chance of statistical significance while still providing meaningful outcomes, Likert scale responses were dichotomized post-survey by the research group to identify current trainee self-assessment of the adequacy of proficiency in skills for a potential research forward career. For Likert scale responses, No proficiency to Emerging proficiency (a score of 1 or 2) were combined as “Inadequate Proficiency” and Moderate proficiency to Expert proficiency (a score of 3, 4, or 5) were combined as “Adequate Proficiency.” Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and stratified by year in training to compare the perceptions of skills and barriers between first-/second-year fellows and third-/fourth-year fellows as we a priori hypothesized that stage in training would be associated with differing perceptions. Chi-square was used to compare differences in self-perceived proficiency across these strata. Descriptive statistics and chi-squared anaylsis were analyzed using the QI Macros function of Microsoft Excel. Logistic regression and functional ANOVA analysis were performed using Stata software 18 to evaluate for significant relationships between independent and dependent variables. Qualitative analysis of open-ended text box responses was performed by two researchers with qualitative training. Analysis was performed by two female analysts trained in qualitative methods 19 , 20 using a general inductive approach and thematic analysis. Comments were read multiple times through an iterative process to identify relevant categories related to the attitudes and barriers to research careers. No software was used. The categories were then compared and contrasted across the four fellowship years to identify emerging themes. 21

Survey dissemination and response data

A total of 82 PDs opened the single-item PD survey and 47 responded with the number of fellows to whom they distributed the primary survey. They indicated that a total of 612 fellows were forwarded the primary survey at least one time. Of these, 194 respondents initiated a survey resulting in 101 fully completed surveys and 11 surveys that were >90% completed with few individual questions left unanswered either intentionally or unintentionally. The remaining 82 respondents opened the survey but did not complete a single section of the survey in full and were excluded from the analysis. The overall response rate was 18.3% (112/612).

Demographic data

Of the 112 survey respondents included in the analysis, 63 (56.2%) were male which is comparable but slightly lower than recent nationwide estimates of the proportion of male pulmonary and critical care fellows (66%) 3 ( Table 1 ). There was broad geographic representation as 36 (32.1%) respondents were training at programs in the Northeast, 24 (21.4%) at programs in the Midwest, 29 (25.9%) at programs in the Southeast, and 23 (20.5%) at programs in the West ( Table 1 ). One hundred (89.2%) respondents described their current training environment as a university-based academic medical center and respondents were reasonably distributed from programs of varying sizes. Fifteen (13.4%) respondents had attained an additional research degree before or during training. Seventy-one (63.4%) respondents had no prior first-author publications, whereas 24 (21.4%) had one, 4 (3.6%) had two, and 13 (11.6%) had three or more prior first-author publications. Among the fellows who responded, the majority indicated they are participating in clinical research, while quality improvement, medical education, and translational science were also frequently selected. Basic science and health services research were the least common types of research selected by respondents. Twelve (15.7%) respondents indicated they are not participating in research and 5 (6.4%) indicated they are not interested in doing research.

Respondent demographics data.

Self-Assessment of research skills

While the majority of first- and second-year fellows self-reported adequate proficiency in all queried skills; several specific skills were associated with higher rates of designated inadequate proficiency ( Figure 1 ). Specifically, skills related to research study initiation including “study design” and “developing new research directions” were both identified as self-perceived areas of low proficiency. Similarly, data processing and analysis skills such as “data analytics,” “critical evaluation of results,” “quantitative methods,” and “qualitative methods” were also identified as areas of low proficiency by early career fellows. Manuscript and grant writing were additionally seen as challenges.

Self-Assessment of proficiency in research skill domains across fellowship—early fellowship trainees, defined as first- and second-year fellows, and late fellowship trainees, defined as third- and fourth-year fellows, self-assessments of skill in several research skill domains. 5-point Likert scoring on a proficiency scale converted to dichotomous adequate versus inadequate proficiency.

Third- and fourth-year fellows self-reported higher levels of proficiency in several skills that were reported as inadequate proficiency by early-stage fellows ( Figure 1 ). Notably, “study design,” “critical evaluation of results,” and “manuscript writing” all demonstrated significantly higher rates of adequate proficiency among later-stage fellows. However, despite these trends, proficiency in several skills was still perceived as inadequate by large proportions of the later-stage respondents. These included “grant writing,” “developing new research directions,” “data analytics,” and “methods.”

A chi-square test of independence was performed to examine the relation between training level and perceived proficiency, and several areas showed significant relationships. Significant relationships in perceived proficiency were identified between early and late fellowship trainees for manuscript and grant writing with absolute differences between late fellowship trainees and early fellowship trainees being 25.3% ( X 2 [1, N = 104] = 6.06, P  = .013) and 18.7% ( X 2 [1, N = 103] = 5.39, P  = .02), respectively. Additionally, significant absolute differences were seen for study design: 21.6%, ( X 2 [1, N = 106] = 4.49, P  = .034) and quantitative/qualitative methodology: difference: 19.5%, ( X 2 [1, N = 106] = 3.85, P  = .049).

Logistic regression and factorial ANOVA testing using Stata software 18 were performed testing multiple independent demographic variables for relationship to research skills. Prior first authorship of a manuscript was a significant factor for a trainee to self-evaluate as having adequate proficiency in “study design,” “qualitative methods,” “quantitative method,” “data analytics,” “developing new research directions,” “critical evaluation of results,” “manuscript writing,” and “management of time.” A level of training later in the fellowship is significant for self-evaluation of adequate proficiency in “study design,” “qualitative methods,” “quantitative methods,” “grant writing,” and “manuscript writing.” Gender was found to be a significant factor with females self-evaluating for inadequate proficiency for “developing new research directions,” “critical evaluation of results,” and “manuscript writing.” There were no significant relationships for “poster presentations,” “oral presentations,” “technology and web-based teaching,” “abstract writing,” and “management of mentor/mentee relationship.”

Attitudes and barriers toward academic careers

Early fellowship trainees were queried on a 5-point Likert scale as to their intent to incorporate research into their careers. Nearly two-thirds responded in the affirmative with 63.2% overall indicating their intention to pursue an academic research career with 42.6% agreeing and 20.6% strongly agreeing with this as a career path while only 14.7% reported no intention of pursuing an academic career. Approximately 20.6% of early training fellows were neutral or undecided ( Figure 2 ).

Intent to incorporate research—query of early fellowship trainees, defined as first and second-year fellows, current intent to incorporate research in long-term career planning.

Late fellowship trainees were further asked to identify personal barriers to continuing a career in academic medicine with a focus on research by selecting from a list of common considerations ( Figure 3 ). Unfamiliarity with grant writing (22, 59.5%), lack of certainty about research funds (21, 56.8%), and difficulty developing sustainable and innovative research ideas (12, 32.4%) were frequently identified as barriers that may be associated with inadequate proficiency in research skills. Lack of mentorship availability (5, 13.5%) and diversity (6, 16.2%), lack of networking with other research-focused physicians (8, 21.6%), concerns about job opportunities (8, 21.6%), and local politics/conflict (3, 8.1%) were potential institutional/cultural-based barriers to careers in academic medicine. Work-life imbalance (13, 35.1%), not being motivated by research (11, 29.7%), financial concerns about staying in academia (10, 27.0%), and personal or family circumstances (3, 8.1%), were identified as potential personal barriers.

Barriers to a career in research—late fellowship trainees’ identification of barriers to pursuing research forward academic careers.

Open-ended responses both corroborated the above findings and identified additional barriers. Across all respondents, COVID-19 was a barrier that consumed time and resources for trainees and mentors. Some respondents elaborated that the pandemic increased the amount of time spent clinically, thus reducing the amount of time available for research. In addition, respondents noted that most conferences and trainings were virtual (or postponed) during the pandemic, which limited opportunities for mentoring, networking, and presentations. Multiple comments across all respondents suggested a lack of mentorship or access to and awareness of resources. This crossed a variety of topics and is represented by comments from respondents that mapped to these several key domains as outlined in Table 2 .

Thematic description of barriers to training with creative solutions.

Column 1: barriers; Column 2: selected quotes; Column 3: creative solutions.

Recruitment of graduating PCCM fellows into academic research positions continues to be challenging. This study surveyed a broadly representative population of fellows in training to characterize their self-perceived proficiency in research skills, compare this proficiency across stages of fellowship training, and identify potential barriers to pursuing an academic research career. Our findings are notable in that they: (a) identify specific research skills that fellows lack proficiency early in fellowship training, (b) identify key research skills that remain inadequate in late fellowship indicating skills that may not be sufficiently addressed during fellowship training, and (c) identify barriers that map to these self-assess deficiencies contributing to a reduction in matriculation to research focused academic faculty. These data may provide targets that training program leadership can use for focused improvement in research career preparation and career development to enhance efforts to recruit graduating trainees into academic research careers ( Table 2 ).

This study evaluated a cross-section of early and late trainees in fellowship to characterize their self-assessment in key research skills. When comparing single time point self-assessment of skill, our results show that late trainees assessed more proficiency than early trainees and this would suggest that fellowship training inherently does improve the self-perception of proficiency in a variety of research skills including study design, quantitative and qualitative methodology, manuscript writing, and grant writing. However, despite this inherent skills gain, the majority of late fellowship trainees still reported not feeling proficient at grant writing, data analytics, or developing new research directions. The extent to which a lack of proficiency in these three skills contributes to low recruitment rates into academic research careers is unclear. However, respondents identified “unfamiliarity with grant writing” as the most common barrier to pursuing a research career. This suggests that low proficiency in this skill could be a significant, yet targetable, contributor to suboptimal recruitment. Fellows also frequently identified “difficulty with developing and sustaining an innovative research career” as a barrier to pursuing a career in research. This may partly stem from the perceived low proficiency in the ability to develop new research directions. Although self-perceived proficiency in several research skills did appear to improve during training, there are still a significant number of fellows with inadequate proficiency in several key skills needed in the transition to early career academic faculty. Research training programs with intentional curricula targeting these skills are a potential strategy for enhancing proficiency and eliminating barriers to recruitment. 22

This study also suggests that PCCM trainees’ interest in pursuing a research career diminishes during fellowship training. Nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of early fellowship trainees surveyed in this study envisioned a career inclusive of research; however, recent work suggests that only 20% of graduating fellows ultimately seek this career path. 5 Although the data collected here do not conclusively identify a cause(s) of this trend, there are observations worth mentioning. First, lack of certainty regarding grant funding was one of the most frequently identified barriers by over half of the respondents. It is possible that early fellowship trainees are not aware of the role that grant funding plays in an academic research career and are subsequently discouraged from pursuing this direction upon learning both grant funding's importance and its competitive nature. Trainees may be unwilling to accept the risk of perceived failure in a competitive funding environment, particularly after investing considerable time and effort into their career training to date. This reluctance may be further exacerbated by fellowship programs’ inability to impart self-perceived proficiency in grant writing to late fellowship trainees. Second, a substantial proportion of respondents also identified both a greater emphasis on clinical skills and growth and a lack of motivation by research. These selections may have been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic; however, they may also reflect an imbalance in training prioritization independent of the pandemic's unique circumstances. Critical assessment of how much time is protected for research and when these opportunities are provided may also represent an opportunity to optimize research engagement during fellowship training.

Aside from lacking adequate skill development, PCCM fellows have been faced with many barriers to choosing careers in academic medicine. Prior studies have theorized that financial considerations and stability are major barriers to academic recruitment and retention. 6 However, late fellowship trainees in our survey identified personal barriers to recruitment into academic positions such as personal/family circumstances (8.1%) and financial concerns (27.0%) less frequently than has been described previously in the literature. Conversely, work-life balance was frequently perceived to be a potential barrier to a career in academic medicine. Career guidance sessions that compare and contrast the work-life balance between academic and nonacademic careers could be important strategies that allow fellows to make informed decisions.

This study has several potential limitations. These include a modest response rate that was likely influenced inherently by known difficulties with physician surveys as well as by unforeseen external factors during the Spring of 2021. 15 , 23 Historically, physician surveys have notoriously low response rates. 24 Subspecialty fellowship trainees can be even more difficult to assess with average response rates between 35% and 50%. 25 – 27 At the time of survey dissemination to PDs and fellows in PCCM, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruptions in PCCM training programs including the invocation of emergency operations in some programs. This unprecedented strain on training programs may have discouraged PDs from forwarding the survey and/or fellows from taking it and resulting in a lower-than-normal response rate. This is also validated by national data showing low survey response rates during the COVID-19 Pandemic. 28 – 30 Secondly, the respondent demographics suggest a potential over-representation of academic training programs possibly due to selection bias. However, this population may represent an ideal target audience for this study as fellow graduates who pursue academic research careers typically train in academic programs. Response bias may also have introduced confounding although we detected no evidence of acquiescence or dissent bias in our results. Lastly, this methodology was a convenience network sampling method of enrollment; therefore, the sample size is fixed to the current fellow population and power analysis was not performed. The authors used the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) guidelines for the reporting in this manuscript. 31

In conclusion, there is an ongoing need for academic pulmonary and critical care physicians with a focus on research that is currently being underfilled. PCCM fellows self-perceive gaps in adequate proficiency for several skills important to research careers including manuscript and grant writing, study conception and design, and data analytic methodology many of which align with the most prevalent perceived barriers to academic medicine research careers. Fellowship curricula focused on addressing and improving competence and confidence in research skills, and divisional and institutional support for early career transitions in research-focused careers may be ways to enhance recruitment of early career faculty into academic research positions.

Supplemental Material

Acknowledgments.

We thank the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors for selecting this survey to disseminate to member Program Directors. This data was previously presented in abstract form at the American Thoracic Society meeting in May 2022. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors disclose that this survey was disseminated anonymously to their current Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine fellows.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported, in part, by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Grant Number UL1 TR001450.

ORCID iD: Meg K. Scott https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7819-1877

Supplemental Material: Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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Table of Contents

• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: The Mixed Impact of Digital Technologies on Student Research
• Part III: The Changing Definition of “Research”
• Part V: Teachers’ Concerns About Broader Impacts of Digital Technologies on Their Students
• Methodology

Given these findings about how students today define “research” and approach the research process, teachers are faced with identifying and teaching middle and high school students the skills they will need to be smart information seekers in the digital age. The data indicate that teachers in this study place tremendous value on research skills, with most reporting assigning a research paper to their students in the 2011-2012 academic year and spending class time teaching various research skills to their students.  These lessons are aimed at addressing deficits they see in today’s students.  Most notable among these is the inability to judge the quality of information, a skill the vast majority of teachers deem “essential” for their students’ future success.

Most teachers in the study assigned a research paper in the 2011-2012 academic year

Among the teachers in the study, the majority assigned at least one research paper to their middle and high school students in the 2011-2012 academic year.  As the graphic below suggests, among this sample of teachers, short essays and journaling are the most commonly assigned writing tasks, with more than half of the sample (58%) having their students write short essays, short responses, or opinion pieces at least once a week and 41% having students journal on a weekly basis.

Research papers—along with multimedia assignments and creative writing in the form of plays or short stories—are not assigned by many teachers on a frequent basis, but are assigned at some point during the academic year by most of the teachers in our sample.  Just over three-quarters of these teachers report having students complete a research paper (77%) or a multimedia project (77%) at some point during the current academic year.  Two-thirds (66%) have students complete a creative writing assignment during the year as well, such as writing poetry, a play, a short story, or piece of fiction.

Some teachers are more likely than others to assign a research paper; not surprising given the different skills and subjects being taught.  Fully 94% of the English teachers in this sample assigned at least one research paper in the past academic year, compared with 83% of history/social studies teachers, 68% of science teachers, and 36% of math teachers.  Almost nine in ten teachers who participated in the NWP Summer Institute (88%) reported assigning a research paper in the 2011-2012 academic year.

Most teachers rate their students “good” or “fair” on a variety of specific research skills

Despite the overall perception that the internet and digital technologies have a “mostly positive” impact on students’ research habits, in most cases the AP and NWP teachers surveyed rate the specific research skills of their students “good” or “fair.”  Very few teachers rate their students “excellent” on any of the research skills asked about in the survey.

Overall, teachers gave students the highest ratings on their ability to use appropriate and effective search terms and understanding how online search results are generated.  Yet even for these top items, only about one-quarter of teachers rated students “excellent” or “very good.”  And in focus groups, many teachers suggested that despite the current generation of middle and high school students being raised in the “digital age,” they are often surprised at how poor their students’ search abilities are.

It kills me to see students typing in whole questions: “What does it mean to leave a digital footprint on today’s society?” into Google. The funny thing is they actually get disappointed when it doesn’t spit back an answer. I have actually found this to be a great lesson on synonyms – helping them to come up with other key words that might be helpful in their search as well. We will also spend some time looking at how advanced searches work.  – National Writing Project teacher

Reflecting teachers’ concerns about the impact of the internet on students’ expectations of “instant information,” the skill they rate students lowest on is “patience and determination in looking for information that is hard to find.”  Fully 43% of the teachers participating in the survey said that overall they would rate their students “poor” in this regard, and another 35% rate their students “fair” when it comes to patiently pursuing information they need.

A majority of survey respondents also described their students as “fair” or “poor” when it comes to:

• Using multiple sources effectively to support an argument
• Assessing the quality and accuracy of information they find online, and
• Recognizing bias in online content

These relatively low ratings (of what are by and large honors and advanced students) may reflect teachers’ expectations of the skill level they would like to help their students reach, yet survey results indicate that teachers see room for students to improve in most, if not all, of these areas.

Two patterns emerge in looking at the ratings teachers give their students on their research skills.  In the case of all but one skill asked about, more teachers of the lowest income students rate their students “poor” than do teachers of higher income students.  The only exception to this pattern is “Patience and determination in looking for information that is hard to find” on which teachers across different socioeconomic levels rate their students equally.

A second consistent pattern that emerges is that teachers with more classroom experience (16 years or more) perceive their students’ skills more positively across the board.  Teachers who have been in the classroom for 15 or fewer years, in contrast, seem to have more negative views of their students’ research skills and more of them rate their students “poor” on every skill asked about.

When it comes to patience and determination finding information, the lowest marks come from English teachers, 50% of whom rate their students “poor” in this regard.  Looking just at National Writing Project teachers, 53% of this group give their students the lowest rating of “poor.”

What research skills should be taught?

Both the survey and focus group asked teachers which research skills, in particular, are critical for the current generation of middle and high school students to learn. In focus groups, the most commonly cited skills were how to evaluate the quality of information, how to recognize what information is and is not relevant to the question at hand, and how to synthesize information from multiple sources into a coherent piece of work.

They need to know how to find information and how to judge how appropriate and accurate the material is. They need to be able to assess the biases in their sources. They need to be able to find the material that will help them.  –AP US History teacher

[the most critical skill is]

The Internet is empowering, but it’s empowering everyone’s opinion and everyone wants to get their information out there, and we need to try to teach the students to be more discriminators – have greater discrimination about the quality of the information they’re accessing.  – Teacher at College Board School

I teach tenth grade and twelfth grade Social Studies. It’s becoming much more important that the students – it’s wonderful to have the access to information – but now more than ever, I feel that they need to be smart consumers of information. And I feel students are progressively losing their ability to sort out what’s good information, what’s reliable information, and basically filter…As schools go on and Internet access becomes more prevalent and computers standard in the classroom, teaching is changing from not just teaching you how to process and restate and think about information, but also we’re going to have to teach them the skill to know how to filter this information.  – Teacher at College Board School

Survey findings echo these sentiments.  The vast majority of teachers surveyed feel that “courses or content focusing on digital literacy  must  be incorporated into every school’s curriculum,” indicating just how critical they feel the ability to locate and assess information in the digital world is. About half of the teachers in the study (47%) say they “strongly agree” and another 44% “somewhat agree” with this proposition, meaning that 93% of teachers support this curriculum change.  NWP Summer Institute teachers are particularly likely to take this view, with 59% saying they “strongly agree” that this curriculum change is needed.  Also expressing strong views on this question are teachers of students living below the poverty line, 60% of whom “strongly agree” such courses are needed.

Moreover, asked to place a value on various skills today’s students may need in the future, “judging the quality of information” tops the list, along with “writing effectively.”  These two skills were described as “essential” by 91% of the teachers who participated in the survey.  Other skills relevant to the current digital culture also ranked high, with large majorities of teachers saying that “behaving responsibly online” (85%) and “understanding privacy issues surrounding online and digital content” (78%) are “essential” to their students’ later success in life.

While evaluating the quality of information tops the list of essential skills, 56% of survey participants also feel that “finding information quickly” is essential to success.  Another 40% describe this skill as “important, but not essential,” indicating that while teachers place tremendous value on teaching their students to assess the quality of information, they also appreciate the importance of speed in today’s fast-moving digital world.  Those who have been teaching longer (16 years or more) are slightly more likely than those teaching 15 years or fewer to describe this skill as “essential” (60% of more experienced teachers v. 52% of newer teachers) but otherwise no notable differences exist across subgroups of teachers.

Among the skills included in the survey, those viewed as less essential to students’ success are “presenting themselves effectively in online social networking sites” and “working with audio, video, or graphic content.”  Fewer than one in three teachers saw either of these skills as “essential” to their students’ later success, though substantial percentages do describe each of these skills as “important, but not essential.”

When should these skills be taught, and by whom?

While the AP and NWP teachers in the study generally agreed on what skills are needed and that these skills should be a part of standard curricula, there was less consistency in their opinions of when these skills should be taught and by whom.  Asked at what point in their educational careers students should learn these critical research skills, many focus group participants felt they should be taught in elementary school, and that students should  already possess these skills prior to entering middle school or high school.  Others felt that elementary students may not be ready to learn the nuances of bias, fair use, and salience, and that these more advances skills are better taught later in a student’s career.

The question of who should be mainly responsible for this part of the curriculum was also open to debate in focus groups, with some teachers openly acknowledging that they do not currently feel qualified to teach some of these skills.  Some reported that their school’s English department takes the lead in developing research skills, and that their own role is mainly reinforcing these skills.  Yet others suggested these skills need to be taught by all teachers across the curriculum, and that library staff can be a key part of that process.

The first thing students need to learn is to discern the quality of a source. After that, they need to be able to compile information from various sources and synthesize their own work, in their own words. Students must cite all sources for their work. This should start in the elementary grades, and does in my district.  – AP Chemistry teacher

Credibility, validity, purpose, and reliability are all important aspects to consider when viewing an electronic resource. Also, students need to be aware of how recent web based information is by knowing how to check publishing dates. I think some of these skills can be taught as early as 3rd or 4th grade from the standpoint of ‘how do you know when something is true?’  –AP Biology teacher

Teachers must take the time, and take on the responsibility of teaching students how to search more wisely on the internet. I do not think enough time is devoted to this task because everyone thinks it is someone else’s job to do it…Regardless of what is done, these skills have to be explicitly taught.  – National Writing Project teacher

I find that my students do not have sound research skills in place in the 8th grade…and I’m not so certain that it is the best use of their time to tackle an isolated weighty research project. My instincts tell me to develop ongoing research expectations, in smaller, manageable chunks, so that they receive more guidance on more of the work/research. I’d rather know that my students had a chance to get better at the process of reading and researching for one focused idea than raking them through a project just to rake them through a project. There is less of chance that a student would plagiarize and an even better chance that they would learn what the difference is between work that is plagiarized and that which is not.  – National Writing Project teacher

I demonstrate how to do good research in my class and then I assign projects and papers where they have to research. I do source checks before the projects are due to make sure students are on the right track. I really rely on skills they learned in their English classes.  –AP Biology teacher

I try my best to teach students how to choose credible sources, but I rely on the expertise of others for the ins and outs of this very difficult to navigate lesson. Thank goodness there are so many resources to help me with this, but I admit. I have to do more.  – National Writing Project teacher

Current approaches to teaching critical research skills

Asked about different approaches they use to develop effective research skills in their students, two different tracts emerge—first, spending class time teaching and developing these skills, and second, designing assignments that require students to use new or different approaches.

In terms of devoting class time to this area, fully eight in ten of the AP and NWP teachers who participated in the survey report spending class time discussing how to assess the reliability of online information, and seven in ten spend class time generally discussing how to conduct research online.  Fewer teachers, but still a majority, say they spend class time helping students improve search terms and queries, yet just one-third devote class time to helping students understand how search engines work and how search results are actually generated and ranked.

A second strategy these middle and high school teachers use is intentionally constructing or shaping research assignments in ways that either direct students to the best online resources, or require students to expand the repertoire of sources they use.  Nine in ten survey respondents report directing their students to specific online resources they feel are most appropriate for a particular assignment, and 83% develop research questions or assignments that require students to use a variety of sources, both online and offline.  Substantially fewer teachers, just 29%, assign work to students in which they forbid the use of online sources.

Suggestions in the focus groups that English teachers generally take the lead on teaching these skills were echoed by survey results.  English teachers in this sample are the most likely to report implementing each one of these lessons/approaches, followed closely by history/social studies teachers.  For example, 93% of English teachers in the sample report developing assignments that require students to use a variety of sources, followed by 91% of history/social studies teachers, 77% of science teachers, and 47% of math teachers.  Similarly, when it comes to spending class time discussing how to assess the reliability of information, English teachers take the lead (94%), followed by history/social studies teachers (90%), then science teachers (69%) and math teachers (46%).

The merits of these latter strategies—structuring or shaping assignments in ways that required students to use particular sources or more varied sources—was discussed at length in focus groups.  Many teachers reported requiring students to utilize offline resources in an effort to familiarize them with materials they might not otherwise use.  Others said they stress to their students the importance of paying attention to website domains, and encourage or require them to use .gov, .org or .edu sites.  And many teachers reported banning the use of particular online sources, most commonly those with user-generated content such as Wikipedia, or telling students exactly which online resources are most useful or even permissible for particular assignments.

At the same time, teachers felt that eliminating the use of all online resources or even particular online resources in assignments is unrealistic and can be counterproductive.  Because students are already reliant on these sources when they arrive in middle and high school, and have a comfort level with them, many teachers feel a better approach is to teach students how to use these tools effectively.  Indeed, in student focus groups, teens acknowledged that even when they are “not allowed” to use Wikipedia in their research, it is still often their “first stop” in completing an assignment.  Students feel that Wikipedia’s fairly short encyclopedic entries provide them with a quick “overview” of a topic from which to orient their research process, and some teachers agreed.  Thus, rather than attempt to control which websites students utilize in completing school assignments, or even their very use of online resources, the underlying philosophy for many is teaching their students to be better information consumers in the digital arena.

I’d take the choice out of it. I’d tell them which sources to access, because the bottom line is, I’m so pressed for the time that rather than risk them going out and finding the wrong information, I tell them what sources to access and then you give them five sources and you say, ‘These are the approved sources. Do not go outside this realm.’ And ultimately that’s probably self-defeating because they’re not always going to be given that narrow focus like that, but I don’t teach in a theoretical world.  – Teacher at College Board School

We almost do the opposite in our classroom. I’m a special education teacher and we tell them what sources we don’t like and so now they can tell us what sources we don’t like that they shouldn’t use.  – Teacher at College Board School

I assign work that requires them to use online resources such as JSTOR, EBSCO, Proquest, and other databases to which our school subscribes.  –AP English Language teacher

Credibility and usefulness of sources is a part of every conversation about research/inquiry projects that we undertake. This can take many forms. For some assignments I have mandated that kids solely get research from articles found in one of the databases the school subscribes to. For other projects we discuss this idea of credibility and I walk around and look at where they’re headed for research and if I need to step in and start a conversation about a particular source my student and I have that discussion.  – National Writing Project teacher

Many focus group participants also reported assigning a large research project to be completed over the course of the full academic year, which they can break into smaller steps to help students develop an understanding of the various pieces that go into successful research as well as the time that must be devoted to each.  In designing these research assignments, focus group participants suggested the following elements are particularly important:

• Showing students how to develop a focused research question and a plan of what they should be looking for, to help them “sort through the noise”
• Requiring students to utilize more than online resources
• Teaching students how to properly cite the sources they use, particularly online sources
• Developing a student’s ability to determine the timeliness, relevance, and quality of the online information they find
• Teaching students how to appropriately paraphrase and synthesize information

In all of my classes, we are visiting the library/lab on some kind of regular basis whether it’s for a persuasive essay, speech, research paper, etc. Students mark up the article, find the author’s argument/thesis, create their own, find opposing views, find supporting views, etc. These are all research skills—break it down (analyze) to write it down (synthesize).  –AP English Language teacher

Much of searching for information today is about evaluation of sources. Students often stick to what they know and they often do not expand on utilizing their search skills, so yes, I teach them about it. They tend to stick to Google. I challenge them to use various sources and explore databases. When teaching this I often explore various false sites with them. Sometimes I establish various credibility tests. I find fun material and they have to determine if it is credible or not and why. I pull material from various websites, to tabloids, to internet email hoaxes, to credible sources. They decide if it is credible material or not and how to determine if something is credible. We explore various criteria for exploring if something is credible. I also teach this with visual literacy and we explore doctored images, etc. I love pulling an image of a website that states that something happened to their favorite celebrity. They debate what is true and how to find the truth.  – National Writing Project teacher

At least half of my curriculum is devoted to doing research online. We spend a lot of time noticing differences between sources, but without judgment. Instead of asking about the credibility of sources, we spend a lot more time wondering if a particular source is of value to my writing. A personal reflection in a blog might provide the perfect turn of phrase to quote in your own argument. We also spend a lot of time teaching student how to cite their sources, and in this process we talk about reliability and the need to have more than one source, no matter where it comes from. I could go on for some time about this. It is the heart of my work with students, but it isn’t something that easily fits into a set of lessons. There are slowly evolving critical lenses that I see my students beginning to use when they are immersed in self directed, passion-based projects. The simple ways of determining credibility just don’t make sense. Who is to say that a podcast is less reliable than a Wikipedia page. A lot depends on your purpose, your critical use, and the other sources that surround any one source. It’s too complicated to teach outside of the ongoing practice of doing research.  – National Writing Project teacher

Usually when we are doing some kind of research in my class I will scaffold it enough where students have a pretty good idea where to go, but the issue also becomes what do they do when they get to where they need to be. I read an interesting study about how people read websites, much different based on age and much different than we read print. I usually bring this study up with the kids so we can have conversations about how to best use our time and find the best information.  – National Writing Project teacher

I usually preface a long-range research assignment with a challenge of my own. I’ll remind them of our discussion about “Is Google Making us Stupid?” where they essentially said that their generation is being dismissed too quickly by the pundits who say they can’t think deeply. When I remind them that a lot of people say that their generation wants instant gratification of information, that raises some hackles. If they’re aware of the obstacles of an in-depth assignment, they’re more prepared to challenge those assumptions. I guess I’d say that a big part of my teaching is attuning my students to how we think as we move through the research process. Make those negative assumptions part of the discussion and a lot of the students see that as a call to move past them. My students aren’t shallow, lazy and stupid, and they don’t want to be thought of as such.  – National Writing Project teacher

Challenges to teaching research skills in today’s digital environment

In general, the AP and NWP teachers in the study feel their students are very receptive to learning effective research skills, but point out that teaching these skills is not without challenges.  By far, the most commonly cited challenge is simply a lack of time to devote to developing effective lessons and teaching skills in class.  Teachers repeatedly noted the difficulty in covering these skills in addition to the other content they are required to cover.  They also note that they themselves must become savvy information consumers before they can impart these skills to their students.

Among other challenges teachers report facing are pay walls separating them and their students from the best information online and digital access issues among their students.  Teachers stressed that the best, most credible resources on the internet are often available only by subscription, thus many schools and students do not have access to what is truly the highest quality information in a particular field.  In addition, they point out that for many of their students, research time is restricted by a lack of internet access at home and/or limited library hours.

The biggest challenge in any AP class in my experience is time. The volume and depth of the material is so extensive that finding the time to teach effective research is very difficult.  – AP US History teacher

Time. There is never enough time to get through all of the standards and spend adequate time teaching research skills also. It takes a lot of time to do justice to teaching research skills.  – AP Biology teacher

Time and access to technology are always hurdles to teaching anything. A lot of times we assign a research assignment and turn the students loose into the world to research on their own. Too often, parents do not even know what is going on in regards to this. Maybe we should work harder on getting them involved in this process. Most students are receptive to methods that will speed their research but not with what will make it better. This is another obstacle to overcome.  – AP US History teacher

The other problem is the…limited number of resources that are available for free; most of the primary resources, most of the better resources have to be paid for by subscription.  – Teacher at College Board School

[other teacher]

If we had laptops in every room, we would be able to champion tat cause of ‘this is how you do research’ more, rather than just showing them our laptop….They have to do the research at home and they’re kind of on their own. We give them pointers, but…  – Teacher at College Board School

The survey also indicates that these teachers face a variety of challenges   in effectively incorporating online content and digital tools into their classrooms, some of which may hinder their ability to teach students how best to conduct research online. Virtually all teachers surveyed report working in a school that employs internet filters (97%), formal policies about cell phone use (97%), and acceptable use policies or AUPs (97%).  The degree to which teachers feel these different policies impact their teaching varies, with internet filters cited most often as having a “major impact” on survey participants’ teaching (32%).  One in five teachers (21%) say cell phone policies have a “major” impact on their teaching, and 16% say the same about their school’s AUP.

Looking more closely at subgroups of the teachers surveyed, it becomes clear that those  teaching in urban areas and those teaching the lowest income students are feeling the impact of these types of restrictions more so than those living in other community types and those teaching students from mainly upper and upper middle income households.  In particular, teachers of students living in poverty are at least  twice as likely  as those teaching the most affluent students to report these policies having a “major” impact on their teaching.

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Survey Methodology/Survey Research

FROM STUDY TO SKILLS

Survey Methodology studies sources of error in surveys—the bias and variability that affect the quality of survey data. As a field of knowledge, a profession, and a science, survey methodology seeks to link the principles of survey design, collection, processing, and analysis to an understanding of error.

Survey Methodology is an inherently multidisciplinary field. Achieving high quality survey results requires applying principles from traditional academic disciplines such as statistics and the social sciences. Statistics provides a quantitative foundation while social and cognitive psychology supplies the framework for understanding how human behavior affects accuracy in survey responses. Sociology and anthropology offer theories of social stratification and cultural diversity. Finally, computer science provides principles of database design and human-computer interaction.

Related fields include Statistics, Informatics, Sociology, Psychology, Economics, and Mathematics.

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Every survey involves a number of decisions about design and implementation, and each decision can potentially affect the quality and validity of the results. How will the sample be chosen? What mode will be used to pose questions and collect answers? All surveys involve compromises, and the challenge for the researcher is to determine how best to use the available resources to produce, on balance, the best results.

As a student of survey methodology, you will be developing the following skills and abilities:

Analytical Skills

Applying methods to problems Projecting from data Reasoning critically Categorizing data Developing theories Designing systems for processing data

Quantitative Skills

Computer programming Mathematical modeling Designing questionnaires Developing sample forms Mathematical analysis Applying statistical packages Interpreting data from tables / charts

Problem-Solving Skills

Formulating problems Applying logic to problems Assessing needs Distinguishing relevant / extraneous information Interpreting data Understanding components of complex problems

Research and Communication Skills

Writing reports / publications Evaluating collected data Identifying areas for research Gathering data / processing Presenting alternative explanations Planning / designing project Translating theory into research plans

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

To identify internships or job opportunities, visit Career Center Connector:  www.careercenter.umich.edu/article/career-center-connector

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FROM SKILLS TO CAREER

Graduates at the Masters and PhD levels in Survey Methodology are in high demand in government, academic, and private industry jobs. Government agencies, such as those in the U. S. federal statistical system (e.g., Bureau of the Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics) spend approximately $4 billion annually on economic and social information collection and dissemination and employ 12,000 staff. The commercial sector presents job opportunities in survey research firms and market research, with annual gross revenues of $10-15 billion and more than 45,000 technical staff. Academic survey centers and, recently, survey methodology education programs, seek staff and faculty with specialization in survey methodology.

The following is a selected list of occupations compiled from information about Michigan graduates and from national data.

Economist Policy analyst Census Bureau analyst Interviewer Sales forecaster Operations research analyst Health policy analyst Risk management analyst

Quantitative Techniques

Statistician Survey statistician Program statistician Survey manager Research administrator

Employment specialist Opinion pollster Organizational consultant Hospital Risk Management

Research Assistant / Associate Research Scientist Legislative Researcher Professor Marketing research Lobbyist Media (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Internet)

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ACADEMIC PROGRAMS

Several programs are housed within the Institute for Social Research which train and educate students and professionals in methodology and skills of social science research. Together, these programs offer courses covering most aspects of survey research with a wide variety of methodological and substantive topics.

The SRC Summer Internship Program offers a paid summer internship for undergraduates who have completed sophomore year (or higher) and graduate students with an interest in social science research. http://www.src.isr.umich.edu/content.aspx?urlid=1039

Program in Survey Methodology offers programs of study at the doctoral, master’s and certificate levels. www.psm.isr.umich.edu , 734-764-0038

Survey Research Center (SRC) Summer Institute in Survey Research Techniques provides rigorous and high quality graduate training in all phases of survey research. It is also open to advanced undergraduates. www.si.isr.umich.edu , 734-764-6585

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Program in Quantitative Methods is recognized throughout the world as the preeminent forum for basic and advanced training in the methodologies and technologies of social science research.  www.icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog , 734-763-7400

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Survey Researcher

Survey researchers design surveys and analyze data. Surveys are used to collect factual data, such as employment and salary information, or to ask questions in order to understand people’s opinions, preferences, beliefs, or desires.

Survey researchers typically do the following:

• Conduct background research on survey topics
• Plan and design surveys, and determine appropriate survey methods
• Test surveys to make sure that people will understand the questions being asked
• Coordinate the work of survey interviewers and data collectors
• Account for and solve problems caused by nonresponse or other sampling issues
• Analyze data, using statistical software and techniques
• Summarize survey data, using tables, graphs, and fact sheets
• Evaluate surveys, the methods underlying them, and their performance to improve future surveys

Survey researchers design and conduct surveys for different research purposes. Surveys for scientific research cover various topics, including government, health, social sciences, and education. For example, a survey researcher may try to capture information about the prevalence of drug use or disease.

Some survey researchers design public opinion surveys, which are intended to gather information about the attitudes and opinions of society or of a certain group. Surveys can cover a wide variety of topics, including politics, culture, the economy, or health.

Other survey researchers design marketing surveys which examine products or services that consumers want, need, or prefer. Researchers who collect and analyze market research data are known as market research analysts.

Survey researchers may conduct surveys in many different formats, such as interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups (in-person, small group sessions led by a facilitator). They use different methods to collect data, including the Internet, mail, and telephone and in-person interviews.

Some researchers use surveys to solicit the opinions of an entire population. The decennial census is an example of such a survey. Others use surveys to target a smaller group, such as a specific demographic group, residents of a particular state, or members of a political party.

Researchers survey a sample of the population and use statistics to make sure that the sample accurately represents the target population group. Researchers use a variety of statistical techniques and analytical software to plan surveys, adjust for errors in the data, and analyze the results.

Survey researchers sometimes supervise interviewers who collect survey data through in-person interviews or by telephone.

Survey researchers held about 10,400 jobs in 2021. The largest employers of survey researchers were as follows:

Survey researchers work in research firms, polling organizations, nonprofits, and corporations.

Survey researchers who conduct interviews have frequent contact with the public. Some may work outside the office, traveling to meet with clients or conducting in-person interviews and focus group sessions. When designing surveys and analyzing data, they usually work alone in an office setting, although some work on teams with other researchers.

Survey researchers typically need at least a master’s degree to enter the occupation. However, a bachelor’s degree may be sufficient for some entry-level positions.

Survey researchers typically need a master’s degree or Ph.D. The master’s degree may be in a variety of fields, including marketing or survey research, statistics, or social sciences. A bachelor’s degree is sufficient for some entry-level positions.

To prepare to enter this occupation, students should take courses in research methods, survey methodology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. Many also may benefit from taking business courses, such as marketing and consumer behavior, and social science courses, such as psychology, sociology, and economics.

Other Experience

Prospective survey researchers can gain experience through internships or fellowships. Many businesses, research and polling firms, and marketing companies offer internships for college students or recent graduates who want to work in market and survey research. These opportunities, which provide valuable experience, can be very helpful toward getting a job.

Licenses, Certifications, and Registrations

Although survey researchers are not required by law to be licensed or certified, certification can show a level of professional competence.

The  Insights Association  offers the Professional Researcher Certification for survey researchers. To qualify, candidates must have at least 3 years of experience working in opinion and marketing research, pass an exam, and be a member of a professional organization. Researchers must complete continuing education courses and apply for renewal every 2 years to maintain their certification.

Survey researchers typically have an interest in the Thinking, Persuading and Organizing interest areas, according to the Holland Code framework. The Thinking interest area indicates a focus on researching, investigating, and increasing the understanding of natural laws. The Persuading interest area indicates a focus on influencing, motivating, and selling to other people. The Organizing interest area indicates a focus on working with information and processes to keep things arranged in orderly systems.

If you are not sure whether you have a Thinking or Persuading or Organizing interest which might fit with a career as a survey researcher, you can take a career test to measure your interests.

Survey researchers should also possess the following specific qualities:

Analytical skills . Survey researchers must be able to apply statistical techniques to large amounts of data and interpret the analysis correctly. They also should be proficient in statistical software to analyze data.

Communication skills . Survey researchers need strong communication skills when conducting surveys and interpreting and presenting results to clients.

Critical-thinking skills . Survey researchers must design or choose a survey and survey method that best captures the information needed. They must also be able to look at the data and analyses and understand what can be learned from the survey.

Detail oriented . Survey researchers must pay attention to details as they work because survey results depend on collecting, analyzing, and reporting the data accurately. 

Problem-solving skills . Survey researchers need problem-solving skills when identifying survey design issues, adjusting data, and interpreting survey results.

The median annual wage for survey researchers was $59,740 in May 2021. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $26,360, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $101,180.

In May 2021, the median annual wages for survey researchers in the top industries in which they worked were as follows:

Employment of survey researchers is projected to grow 6 percent from 2021 to 2031, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

About 1,000 openings for survey researchers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire. 

Survey researchers will be in demand in marketing, research, and polling establishments to plan and design surveys and to analyze data. Continued adoption of data mining—finding trends in large sets of existing data—and collecting information from social media sites are expected to reduce the need for some traditional survey methods, such as telephone and in-person interviews. The use of big data in market research will reduce the demand for survey researchers to gather survey information, although these researchers will continue to be needed to analyze data.

For more information about careers in survey research, visit

American Association for Public Opinion Research

Insights Association

Where does this information come from?

The career information above is taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook . This excellent resource for occupational data is published by the U.S. Department of Labor every two years. Truity periodically updates our site with information from the BLS database.

I would like to cite this page for a report. Who is the author?

There is no published author for this page. Please use citation guidelines for webpages without an author available. 

I think I have found an error or inaccurate information on this page. Who should I contact?

This information is taken directly from the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Truity does not editorialize the information, including changing information that our readers believe is inaccurate, because we consider the BLS to be the authority on occupational information. However, if you would like to correct a typo or other technical error, you can reach us at [email protected] .

I am not sure if this career is right for me. How can I decide?

There are many excellent tools available that will allow you to measure your interests, profile your personality, and match these traits with appropriate careers. On this site, you can take the Career Personality Profiler assessment, the Holland Code assessment, or the Photo Career Quiz .

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The State of Critical Thinking 2018

November 2018, table of contents.

Executive Summary Introduction and Background Methodology and Design Major Findings Conclusion   

Executive Summary

Critical thinking has always been an asset. But in today’s increasingly digital and globalized world, robust forms of thinking have become a necessity.  With more and more information at our fingertips, we have to be far more discerning about our choices and judgments. Just consider that in October 2018 alone, Twitter took down dozens of accounts that falsely posed as lawmakers. (1) But despite the need for more critical thinking, our institutions have not done nearly enough to give students richer thinking tools. In too many schools, critical thinking is not taught to young people. At workplaces, employers don’t do enough to prioritize richer forms of reasoning. This happens despite the fact that strong reasoning skills have become increasingly key to navigating everyday life, and a growing body of research shows that thinking critically runs in lockstep with life outcomes. Researcher Heather Butler recently conducted a study that found “critical thinkers experience fewer bad things in life.” (2)

According to Butler, good critical thinkers are far less likely to foreclose on a home or carry large credit card balances, while those without strong critical thinking skills are more likely to have an extramarital affair and drink while driving. (3) What’s more, there’s plenty of evidence that our democracy is fraying because of a lack of reflective thought. Politicians around the world are taking advantage of new technologies to push a political agenda that divides nations instead of uniting them, and there have been sharp upticks in reports of everything from racism to fascism. (4) The Reboot Foundation is dedicated to promoting richer forms of thought and to better understanding the state of critical thinking today. With that in mind, the foundation recently commissioned a survey, which will be conducted each year in an attempt to better understand shifts in the public’s views on critical thinking and what it means for the future of society. The Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 people using an online platform, and we weighted the results along demographic lines.

Our data uncovers a number of key findings.

While the public believes that critical thinking is crucial, most people believe that schools do not do enough to prepare young people to think more effectively. Across just about every demographic variable, people support more critical thinking, and nearly all respondents (95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world. Still, people worry that our schools do not teach robust forms of thinking, and about 80 percent of respondents say that young people lack the ability to engage in critical thinking. Only 29 percent of respondents say that they definitively studied critical thinking in school themselves. There’s a lack of clarity about when, where, and even how critical thinking should be taught. About 48 percent of parents surveyed say that they (the parents) should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. Another 41 percent believe that educators should be responsible for teaching young people about how to think critically. And still another 22 percent believe that children themselves should be responsible.

While it’s encouraging that many feel critical thinking is a shared responsibility, this lack of consensus helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills: the teaching of the skill seems to simply fall through societal cracks.

While parents say that they know how to teach their kids critical thinking, they don’t generally practice these skills with them. In our survey, 72 percent of parents say that they know how to help their kids gain critical thinking skills, and 96 percent say that critical thinking is an important skill to teach to their children. 

But upon closer examination, we found that, on the whole, parents often fall short of teaching their children basic critical thinking skills. For instance, only 20 percent of parents frequently or daily ask their children to take an opposing view. Only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer. 

Members of the public say they practice critical thinking, but their behaviors often suggest otherwise.The vast majority of respondents report that they have solid critical thinking skills, and about 67 percent of respondents say their reasoning skills have improved over time. But it seems that there’s a reality gap, and people are simply overstating their reasoning skills. Many respondents report engaging in practices that don’t show much critical thinking. For instance, we found that 47 percent of them don’t typically plan where they will obtain information while doing research. And around 27 percent use only one source of information while making a decision. The lack of critical thinking skills is particularly apparent online. For example, we found that over one-third of respondents consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. What’s more, people rely on Wikipedia almost as much as they rely on government websites for factual research, according to our study. Many do not do enough to question the accuracy of social media. People believe the accuracy of more than a third of what they read on Twitter and Facebook, for instance. Respondents are also far more likely to engage with informal, non-vetted sources for information, and just under 40 percent say they regularly read blogs instead of institutional publications like newspapers. The public says they engage opposing views, but they rarely do. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise. But few engage in the practice, and less than a quarter of respondents actually seek out views that challenge their own. For instance, 24 percent of respondents say they avoid people with opposing views. Another 25 percent rarely or never seek out people who have different views than theirs. In other words, many people claim they solicit the views of others. But, in practice, they don’t do nearly enough to “stress test” their opinions, despite the wealth of evidence showing that engaging in opposing views is crucial to richer forms of critical thinking. (5)

What is critical thinking? We define critical thinking broadly, and we believe it is a type of reflective thought that requires reasoning, logic and analysis to make choices and understand problems. Key elements of critical thinking include seeking out opposing viewpoints, using evidence, and engaging in debate.

Introduction and Background

Critical thinking is not new. Nor are claims about its importance. The philosopher Socrates is credited with saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” For Socrates and many other ancient philosophers, reflective thinking was the ultimate human pursuit, the most important endeavor of any meaningful life.

In some ways, things have not changed at all since the time of Socrates. The unexamined life is still not worth living. But at the same time, critical thinking has become far more consequential —  and far more urgent. Today, reasoning is at the center of a 21st century society, the engine of the modern world. Technology is driving much of the need for deeper critical thinking skills. It is the primary force behind our changing economy, in which richer forms of reasoning have become some of the best predictors of economic success. Technology is also driving shifts in our social and political worlds, from the debate over alleged “fake news” to the algorithms that track our every move online. While the Internet has provided many benefits, it has made it harder to figure out fact from fiction. In more traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, there have long been clear demarcations that separate opinion pieces from reported articles. Online, however thoroughly-reported news items, op-eds, and totally unverified information are often promoted in similar ways without much distinction among them. Social media makes this problem far worse. It is now fairly easy to push out maliciously false information online, and many sites and bots aim to spread information with questionable sources. Recently, Facebook removed almost 600 pages that continually posted misleading information. (6)   One of those pages had more than 100,000 followers. (7)

Social media also pushes people to live in an echo chamber. According to Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein, sites like Twitter and Facebook encourage people to engage only with claims that align with their own views, fostering a type of societal myopia. “I wouldn’t say that we are now more isolated from diversity; there’s a lot of diversity out there, in terms of how isolated people are from diversity,” Sunstein once explained. “But many people do like to isolate themselves, and that’s a big problem.”

At the same time, technology has eroded critical thinking. Our devices are making us less able to reflect and rationalize. Patricia Greenfield, a psychology professor and director of the University of California, Los Angeles Children’s Media Center, has found that as our reliance on technology has grown, our critical thinking skills have declined. We read less and consume more visual media, which does not allow for the analysis and reflection required of critical thinking. (9) As if that weren’t enough, the democratization of the media in recent decades has put more and more responsibility on individuals to ferret out truth from fiction. While institutions have taken some steps to limit falsehoods, individuals increasingly must take steps to avoid becoming prey to dishonest information. In this sense, the recent crisis over so-called “fake news” is really a crisis of our own making. Jim VandeHei, co-founder and CEO of the news site Axios, recently wrote, for example, that “each of us is very much to blame” for the phenomenon of fake news. He implored news consumers to think critically online. “Quit sharing stories without even reading them. Spend a few minutes to verify the trustworthiness of what you read,” he wrote. (10) But, too often, people aren’t provided enough training in robust critical thinking to be able to do that. Our schools, in particular, fall short of empowering students with better reasoning skills. This is particularly evident online. One recent Stanford University study revealed that 93 percent of college students did not know that a lobbyist website was one-sided. Fewer than 20 percent of high-schoolers were aware that just one online photo does not prove something took place. (11)

A large chunk of the public is also unskilled in using social media, often passing along “information” they’ve found online without doing their homework — that is, checking the original sources. One recent study, conducted by Columbia University, revealed that close to 60 percent of people share news-related pieces on Twitter that they have not clicked on to read at length. In other words, the headline alone was enough to confirm its legitimacy, then pass it along. (12) Problems of critical thinking are not new, of course. Long before social media, philosophers argued for better ways to challenge the unjustifiably self-assured. The most notable is the Socratic method, a still-popular instructional technique. A recent summary of the method makes its application still highly relevant: “We can consider alternative interpretations of the data and information. We can analyze key concepts and ideas. We can question assumptions being made.” (13) Ancient philosophers, then, offer both a warning and a solution. More exactly, they remind us that we need to do more to question our  assumptions and to consider alternative interpretations. Data must be more at the center of our reasoning, and no doubt, the stakes are higher than ever. To inelegantly paraphrase Socrates, an unexamined society will not survive.

Methodology and Design

As part of our research, we surveyed more than 1,100 adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform from September 19, 2018, to September 25, 2018. A crowdsourcing tool, Mechanical Turk has increasingly been used for surveys and other experiments, and generally researchers praise the use of the platform. “Mturk is a fast and cost-effective way to collect nonprobability samples that are more diverse than those typically used by psychologists,” noted one recent research paper. (14) We used Mturk because of its speed and convenience. The platform also allowed us to include some items on the survey that were experimental in nature, like the “heat map” question related to search results. Mturk-based surveys have limitations, to be sure. Like many online surveys, they provide convenience samples, and people using the Mturk site are younger and whiter than the population at large. (15) To make our findings generalizable, we weighed our sample data with survey weights generated by doing iterative post-stratification on our data so that the marginal sample distributions on gender, income, and age match the corresponding marginal population distributions as reported by the American Community Survey for the year 2017. (16) For the survey questions regarding critical thinking in daily life, we relied on items from the Youth Life Skills Survey. We first uncovered the series of survey items in “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.” (17)  The items were developed by Claudia Mincemoyer, Daniel Perkins, and Catherine Munyua of Penn State. (18) The data on parents came from a subsection of the survey that only asked questions of adults who have children. To examine demographic data, we conducted crosstabs across age, income, and gender. 

Two experts in survey design and implementation provided technical advice. They are Joe McFall of The State University of New York, Fredonia and Srikant Vadali of St. Anselm College. They are not responsible for any of the interpretations of the data contained in this document For the full data results, a copy of the survey instrument or any other survey-related questions, please email Reboot Foundation advisor Ulrich Boser. He can be reached at [email protected] .

Major Findings

The public thinks critical thinking is crucial but believes young people lack such skills. In the study, nearly all respondents (more than 95 percent) say critical thinking skills are necessary in today’s world, and nearly the same percentage believe we should think more critically in our everyday lives. This opinion crossed demographic lines – men and women, rich and poor, old and young. They all agreed that critical thinking is important, and we should do more of it.

But respondents are deeply concerned that schools do not teach critical thinking. Only half of survey respondents say their experience in school gave them strong critical thinking skills. Men are 8 percentage points more likely than women to believe that their schools gave them strong critical thinking skills (50 percent for men vs. 42 percent for women). In addition, more than 80 percent of respondents believe that critical thinking skills are lacking in today’s youth, and in the survey, people point to a range of reasons for the lack of critical thinking. Some 27 percent of respondents believe that modern technology inhibits critical thinking; interestingly, women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault. Another 30 percent believe that society devalues critical thinking skills. Notably, 26 percent of respondents say that critical thinking skills are lacking because of a flawed educational system. Young people are more likely to feel this way than those in older demographics, and in the 18-to-40-year-old category, 41 percent of respondents think schools are to blame. In contrast, just 28 percent of people in the 61-to-81-year-old group believe that schools are culpable. Not surprisingly, older respondents are more likely to blame technology for a lack of critical thinking. Those in the 18-to-40 age range are less critical of modern tools, with only 21 percent saying they are the cause of poor thinking. In contrast, 33 percent of 41-to-60-year-olds blame modern technology on today’s lack of critical thinking skills. There’s a gender gap as well, and women are 12 percent more likely than men to think modern technology is at fault for the crisis in critical thinking. Whatever the demographic differences, though, these findings suggest that there is a growing awareness that the modern world has deeply complicated critical thinking. Across lines of age, gender, and income, people believe that critical thinking is more important than ever. This is good news. After all, when people are aware of a problem, they’re more willing to address it. There’s a lack of clarity about when and where critical thinking should be taught. Despite the public’s enthusiasm for critical thinking skills, respondents are split over what age is appropriate for developing such skills. In our survey, 20 percent say critical thinking skills develop best in early childhood, or ages 5 and under. Another 35 percent say critical thinking is best developed during ages 6 to 12, and another 27 percent think ages 13 to 18 are best. About 13 percent say any age is good for developing critical thinking skills. There are differences along demographics lines. Women are more likely than men to favor teaching critical thinking skills during the early years. For example,  24 percent of our survey’s female respondents believe in teaching critical thinking skills to children 5 and under, whereas just 17 percent of male respondents  share that belief. There are also differences among income groups. Higher-income respondents are more likely to believe that parents should teach critical thinking during the early years. For instance, 29 percent of people in the $100,000-and-above category believe that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age. But just over 15 percent of those making less than $50,000 per year think that critical thinking should be taught to children younger than 6 years of age.

There is also a lack of clarity about who should be responsible for teaching critical thinking. About 74 percent of the parents surveyed say educators should be at least partially responsible for teaching young people how to think critically. Another 89 percent say they  — the parents — should be responsible. Perhaps most surprising, 22 percent of respondents believe that children themselves should be responsible for learning how to think critically. The respondents believed this idea despite the fact that most experts argue that parents, educators, and others can help improve critical thinking among young people. (19) When it comes to teaching critical thinking, the public believes that schools should play an important role. About 92 percent of respondents say that K-12 schools should require courses that develop those skills. Another 90 percent of respondents think critical thinking courses should be required in colleges and universities. 

While it is encouraging that many Americans believe that critical thinking is a shared responsibility, the lack of consensus over what inhibits it as well as how and when to teach it helps explain why people often don’t acquire better thinking skills. It is a problem of too many cooks in the critical thinking kitchen: with everyone in charge, no one is in charge.

Parents also do not typically help their children develop other important critical thinking skills. For instance, only a third of parents have their children regularly discuss issues without a right or wrong answer, despite evidence supporting the practice. (20)   What’s more, only 26 percent of parents frequently help their children evaluate evidence, which is a key skill when it comes to better reasoning.

When it comes to parents and critical thinking, there are important differences along gender lines. For instance, women report doing more critical thinking skill development with their children than men do. For instance, women are about 6 percentage points more likely than men to report that they help children evaluate evidence and arguments every day (12 percent for women, 4 percent for men).

This gender split can likely be attributed to the fact that, historically, women have been the primary caregivers of children and are, on average, at home more often. While there is room for improvement for all parents in teaching critical thinking skills, it seems that male parents in particular have the most ground to make up.

While a majority of respondents say that their critical thinking skills have improved over the years, they often don’t engage in robust critical thinking practices. When it comes to critical thinking, there’s a large gap between what people believe and how they behave.   

For instance, 67 percent of our survey respondents say they have improved their reasoning skills since graduating high school. But many respondents also report making use of specific practices that reveal weak critical thinking.

We discovered, for example, that almost 50 percent of people do not typically plan where they will obtain information before engaging in research. Our survey also reveals that around one-third of respondents will use only one source of information when making a decision. 

Again, demographics make a difference. Older people, for instance, are more likely to use more than one source of information before making a decision. Case in point: people older than 60 are 19 percentage points more likely to always use more than one source than people younger than 40 (51 percent for the older group vs. 32 for the younger group). The lack of highly developed critical thinking skills is particularly apparent when people are online. For example, we found that over one-third of people consider Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced website, to be the equivalent of a thoroughly vetted encyclopedia. Income and age have a bearing on the perception of Wikipedia as a modern day encyclopedia. Fifty percent of respondents making $50,000 or less annually say that Wikipedia is a modern version of an encyclopedia. In contrast, just 16 percent of people making $100,000 or more share that belief. Similarly, 48 percent of those 18 to 40 years old think that Wikipedia is a modern day encyclopedia. In contrast, just 25 percent of those in the 41-to-60-year age range think the technology as a robust as an encyclopedia. Social media practices also suggest a lack of critical thinking. For instance, we found that more than 40 percent of people’s online reading is made up of blogs and other informal news sources. The other 60 percent consists of material from institutional sources, like a newspaper or traditional media outlet. Not too astonishing, most younger people are more likely to read blogs. Respondents 18 to 40 years of age, for example, report that about 41 percent of what they read online tend to be blog items, whereas people in the 61-to-81-year range report their blog intake at an average of 11 percentage points less. Our results also showed that people simply don’t look at enough sources while doing online research. According to our survey, only 33 percent of respondents examine more than 5 results during an Internet search. This means that two-thirds of people rely on very limited number of sources while doing online research. 

How Young Is Too Young? At What Age Can Children Start to Engage in Critical Thinking? At first glance it may appear that young children do not have the capacity to think critically. After all, most 3-year-olds struggle to even tie their shoes. But there’s growing evidence showing that very young children have rich thinking skills. One study released this year found that preschoolers can engage in causal reasoning. (21)  Research also shows that children as young as 3 start to realize that some beliefs don’t necessarily jibe with reality. (22) Another study found that between the ages of 3 and 5, children begin to understand that what another person says is not necessarily “true” but is often more a reflection of his or her beliefs. For instance, most young children know that a statement like “the best dessert in the whole world is ice cream” is a belief, not a fact. Recent evidence suggests that different teaching methods can promote more critical thinking in young children, especially when the strategies take advantage of changes in brain development. For instance, prior to age 10, a child’s emotional intelligence takes precedence over the intellectual. So teachers and parents should allow a child to explain how she came to a conclusion without insisting she use facts to support it. This helps build self-esteem and teaches the child, at an early age, that no one person, agency or institution holds the key to the “truth,” according to researchers like Sebastian Dieguez at the University of Fribourg. During later stages, ranging from pre-adolescence to the mid-teens, teaching critical thinking is a bit trickier. Children’s brains are constantly in flux, both physically and in the ways they receive information: in class, from friends, and on social media. At these stages, research says that it is important to equip children with the skills necessary to navigate this constant, often muddied, river of information. 

Giving young people effective thinking strategies can help. For example, one useful metaphor is telling children that possessing knowledge is like being in the driver’s seat of your own car. You, no one else, is in control. Research has also shown that giving young people thorough instruction in better thinking can yield very positive results; it makes for better students and higher grades. (23)

While the public claims that they engage opposing views, they don’t actually engage other views in practice. Nearly 87 percent of respondents say that considering an opposing view is an important and useful exercise.

This is an encouraging finding, given the large body of evidence that shows that considering opposing views improves problem-solving. For instance, Scott Page at the University of Michigan has studied diversity of opinion and concluded that exposure to others’ perspectives leads to better outcomes. In fact, he found that diversity is more important than ability when it comes to problem-solving. (24) But when asked to detail how they engage in such practices in their daily lives, only 25 percent are willing to regularly have debates with people who disagree with them. A surprising 24 percent of respondents say they regularly avoid talking to people with opposing views. In other words, people might say that they want to engage other views in theory, but they rarely do so in practice. Research helps explain this gap. Decades’ worth of studies show that people prefer to socialize with those who have similar backgrounds and beliefs. The scientific term is “homophily,” or, as one study puts it, the principle that “contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people.” (25) 

Because of these homophilic tendencies, many people are uncomfortable engaging with individuals whose views differ significantly from their own. They live in something of a bubble, where they continually reinforce their own beliefs, including incorrect information about people unlike themselves, without being challenged.

The results of homophily are clear in our politics. One recent study found that half of the Republicans and Democrats surveyed found talking politics with their rivals “stressful and frustrating.” (26) And even more (65 percent Republican, 63 percent Democratic) said that, when speaking with their counterparts, they discover they have less in common politically than previously thought. In our study, men in particular are unwilling to engage in critical discussions. They are roughly 20 percentage points more likely than women to avoid people with whom they disagree (33 percent vs. 13 percent). Along income lines, the difference is comparable: respondents in the lowest income bracket are at least 20 percentage points more likely than those in the highest income bracket to do the same (66 percent vs. 54 percent). In the end, our data suggests the public overestimates its willingness to engage views that are different than its own, a crucial part of being a good critical thinker. Without these critical thinking skills, we risk becoming bad choosers. When we don’t consider the available evidence, when we settle for what is ideologically comfortable, we make incomplete decisions and we risk polarization. 

Where do you click?  An experimental approach to measuring critical thinking online.

As part of our research into critical thinking, we relied on a more experimental approach to measuring how people engage with online sources, and we created a simulation of a real-life scenario to see what links people might click on while doing online research.  Specifically, we asked respondents: “Imagine you are helping a child with a school research project about the U.S. Capitol. You have just conducted an online search through a search provider. Where would you click next?”  We used technology to measure people’s clicks similar to a “heat map,” and as shown in the image below, we found that people are almost just as likely to click on Wikipedia as they are to click on the government’s actual website.  On the positive side, respondents avoided the Capitol’s Twitter social media handle, which appears to provide the least relevant as well as least accurate set of results. (Note that the color red in the image below indicates more clicks. Green indicates fewer clicks.)

But without robust approaches to thinking, we risk deepening our own biases. We risk becoming susceptible to “fake news,” conspiracy theories and phishing scams. We risk increasing polarization, partisanship and infighting among the biggest challenges we face as a nation.

(1)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2018.

(2)* Heather A. Butler, Christopher Pentoney., Mabelle P. Bong, “Why Do Smart People Do Foolish Things?” Scientific American, Springer Nature America, Inc., October 3, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-smart-people-do-foolish-things/

(3)* Heather Butler, “Predicting real-world outcomes: Critical thinking ability is a better predictor of life decisions than intelligence,” ScienceDirect, Thinking Skills and Creativity. Volume 25, September 2017, https://www.sciencedirect.com.

(4)* Yuva Noah Harari, “Why Technology Favors Tyranny,” The Atlantic, Oct. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/ (5)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu.

(6)* Sheera Frenkel, “Facebook Tackles Rising Threat: Americans Aping Russian Schemes to Deceive,” New York Times, October 11, 2019 (8)* S Cass Sunstein, “Danger in the Internet Echo Chamber,” Harvard Law Today, March 24, 2017, https://today.law.harvard.edu .

(9)* PM Greenfield “Technology and informal education: what is taught, what is learned,” Science, 323 (5910), (2009): 69-71, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov .

(10)* Jim VandeHei, “4 ways to fix ‘fake news,” Axios Media Inc., October 21 2018, https://www.axios.com .

(11)* Wineburg, Sam and McGrew, Sarah and Breakstone, Joel and Ortega, Teresa. (2016). “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Stanford Digital Repository,”  http://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934

(12)* Maksym Gabielkov et al., “Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?” ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance 2016, (2016), Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France, (2016), https://hal.inria.fr https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01281190

(13)* Richard Paul and Linda Elder, “Socratic Thinking,” The Foundation for Critical Thinking, (1997),  http://www.criticalthinking.org .

(14)* Jesse Chandler and Danielle Shapiro “Conducting Clinical Research Using Crowdsourced Convenience Samples,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 12, (2016): 53-81.   https://www.annualreviews.org . (15)* Ibid., 53-81. (16)* United States Census Bureau, Surveys and Programs, “American Community Survey (ACS),” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov .

(17)* Julie Wade, Natalie Wolanin, and Trisha McGaughey, “A Study of Critical Thinking Skills in the  International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme,” International Baccalaureate, (2015), https://www.ibo.org .

(18)* Human Service Research, “Youthful Life Skills Evaluation,” Human Service Research Inc.,  http://www.humanserviceresearch.com .

(19)* Abrami, Philip C., Robert M. Bernard, Evgueni Borokhovski, Anne Wade, Michael A. Surkes, Rana Tamim,  and Dai Zhang. “Instructional Interventions Affecting Critical Thinking Skills and  Dispositions: A Stage 1 Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research 78, no. 4 (December 2008): 1102– 34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.1102–34. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084. doi:10.3102/0034654308326084.

(20)* Schommer, Marlene. (1990). Effects of Beliefs About the Nature of Knowledge on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology. 82. 498-. 10.1037/0022-0663.82.3.498. (21)* Mariel K. Goddu & Alison Gopnik, “Young Children rationally use evidence to select causally relevant variables for intervention”, (University of California, Berkeley, 2018). (22)* Kuhn, Deanna. “A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking.” Educational Researcher 28, no. 2 (1999): 16-46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1177186 .

(23)* John Perry, David Lundie & Gill Golder “Metacognition in schools: what does the literature suggest about the effectiveness of teaching metacognition in schools?” Educational Review, (2018), DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2018.1441127. (24)* Lu Hong and Scott E. Page “Groups of diverse problem-solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem-solvers,” PNAS, 101, 46 (2004): 16385–16389, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu .

(25)* Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Reviews of Sociology, 27 (2001): 415–44, http://aris.ss.uci.edu .

(26)* Pew Research Center, U.S. Politics “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” Pew Research Center, June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org

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Top 12 Survey Researcher Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's competitive job market, showcasing the right set of skills on your resume can significantly enhance your prospects as a survey researcher. This article highlights the top 12 skills you need to emphasize, reflecting both your expertise in gathering and analyzing data and your ability to translate insights into actionable strategies.

Survey Researcher Skills

• SurveyMonkey

SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is a software tool used by survey researchers for data management, statistical analysis, and visualization of survey data.

Why It's Important

SPSS is crucial for Survey Researchers as it provides powerful tools for data management, statistical analysis, and graphical representation, enabling them to efficiently analyze survey data and derive insightful conclusions to inform decision-making.

How to Improve SPSS Skills

To improve your use of SPSS as a Survey Researcher, follow these concise strategies:

Enhance Your Skills : Take advantage of online tutorials and courses to deepen your understanding of SPSS functionalities. Websites like Coursera and LinkedIn Learning offer comprehensive courses tailored to different skill levels.

Utilize Scripts and Syntax : Automate repetitive tasks and ensure reproducibility of your analyses by learning and using SPSS syntax. The SPSS Syntax Reference Guide provided by IBM is a great resource.

Apply Data Transformation Techniques : Improve your dataset quality by mastering data transformation functions within SPSS. Check the IBM SPSS Transformation Functions Guide for detailed instructions.

Explore Advanced Statistical Techniques : Expand your analytical capabilities by exploring advanced statistical techniques available in SPSS. Refer to the Advanced Statistics documentation by IBM to learn more.

Participate in SPSS Communities : Engage with other SPSS users through forums and communities such as the IBM SPSS Community to exchange knowledge and tips.

By focusing on these areas, you can significantly enhance your proficiency and efficiency in using SPSS for survey research.

How to Display SPSS Skills on Your Resume

2. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a comprehensive online platform that enables survey researchers to design, distribute, and analyze surveys for data collection and insights gathering.

Qualtrics is important for a Survey Researcher because it offers a comprehensive, user-friendly platform for designing, distributing, and analyzing surveys, enabling efficient data collection and insightful research outcomes.

How to Improve Qualtrics Skills

To improve Qualtrics for Survey Research, consider the following concise tips:

Utilize Logic Features : Enhance survey flow by using Skip Logic and Display Logic to tailor the respondent experience and increase relevancy.

Optimize for Mobile : Ensure surveys are mobile-friendly by testing with the Mobile Preview tool, catering to respondents on various devices.

Leverage Pre-built Templates : Use Qualtrics Library for a variety of professionally designed survey templates that can save time and enhance design.

Apply Advanced Question Types : Incorporate Matrix Tables and Slider Questions for more interactive and detailed responses.

Utilize Embedded Data : Embedded Data can customize the survey experience further by using information known about respondents to tailor questions or content.

Implement Randomization : Use Question Randomization to reduce bias and order effects, ensuring more reliable data.

Explore Integrations : Integrate with other tools and platforms like CRM systems or data analysis software to streamline workflows and enhance data utilization.

Analyze Text Responses : Leverage Text IQ for advanced text analysis, identifying trends and sentiments in open-ended responses.

Ensure Accessibility : Follow best practices for creating accessible surveys to include all potential respondents, regardless of disability.

Continuously Learn : Stay updated with the latest features and best practices by regularly visiting the Qualtrics Resource Library and participating in Qualtrics XM Community .

By implementing these strategies, Survey Researchers can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their surveys on the Qualtrics platform.

How to Display Qualtrics Skills on Your Resume

R is a programming language and software environment used for statistical computing and graphics, widely utilized by survey researchers for data analysis, manipulation, and visualization.

R is important for Survey Researchers due to its powerful statistical analysis capabilities, extensive libraries for data manipulation and visualization, and its ability to efficiently handle and analyze large datasets, facilitating insightful survey data interpretation.

How to Improve R Skills

Improving your R skills as a Survey Researcher involves a multifaceted approach, focusing on data manipulation, visualization, and statistical analysis specific to survey data. Here are concise steps with resources:

Master the Basics: Ensure a strong foundation in R basics. DataCamp's Introduction to R is a great starting point.

Learn Data Manipulation: Master data manipulation packages like dplyr and data.table . The R for Data Science book by Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund focuses on tidyverse packages, including dplyr .

Understand Survey Data Analysis: Grasp the specific challenges and methods for survey data. The survey package in R and its accompanying vignette are crucial.

Improve Visualization Skills: Enhance data visualization skills using ggplot2 . The Data Visualization guide by R Kabacoff is a practical resource.

Learn Reporting: Leverage R Markdown for reporting. The R Markdown: The Definitive Guide helps in creating dynamic analysis documents.

Practice with Real Datasets: Practice on actual survey datasets. The UCLA IDRE offers tutorials and examples on various statistical analysis using R.

Engage with the Community: Join forums like Stack Overflow and RStudio Community to ask questions, share knowledge and stay updated on best practices.

Attend Workshops/Meetups: Participate in workshops or meetups. Websites like Meetup can help find local or virtual R user groups.

Consistent practice, coupled with engagement in the R community, will significantly enhance your proficiency and application of R in survey research.

How to Display R Skills on Your Resume

Python is a versatile and widely-used programming language that is especially valuable for survey researchers due to its simplicity, powerful libraries for data analysis and visualization (e.g., pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib), and capabilities for automating and enhancing research workflows.

For a Survey Researcher, Python is important because it streamlines data collection, processing, and analysis, offering powerful libraries (like pandas for data manipulation, matplotlib for visualization, and SciPy for statistical analysis) that facilitate efficient survey data management and insights extraction.

How to Improve Python Skills

To improve Python skills as a Survey Researcher, focus on the following concise steps:

Understand the Basics : Ensure you have a strong foundation in Python syntax and data structures. Python Official Documentation is a great starting point.

Learn Data Analysis Libraries : Dive into libraries like Pandas for data manipulation and NumPy for numerical data processing.

Study Statistics and Data Visualization : Gain knowledge in statistical analysis using SciPy and create insights through visualizations with Matplotlib and Seaborn .

Practice with Real Datasets : Apply your knowledge on datasets from platforms like Kaggle or UCI Machine Learning Repository for hands-on experience.

Advance with Survey-Specific Packages : Explore packages tailored for survey research, such as PySurveyAnalysis for chi-squared automatic interaction detection.

Engage with the Community : Join Python forums and communities like Stack Overflow or Reddit’s r/learnpython to stay updated and get help.

Continuous Learning : Keep up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in Python and survey research methodologies through online courses from platforms like Coursera or edX .

By following these steps and actively engaging in learning and applying Python in your survey research projects, you'll significantly enhance your capabilities in data analysis and research methodologies.

How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume

Tableau is a powerful data visualization tool used by Survey Researchers to analyze, visualize, and share survey data through interactive dashboards and reports, enabling insightful and accessible presentation of research findings.

Tableau is important for a Survey Researcher because it enables efficient data visualization and analysis, transforming complex survey data into insightful, interactive, and accessible charts and graphs, facilitating better decision-making and reporting.

How to Improve Tableau Skills

To enhance Tableau skills as a Survey Researcher, focus on the following short, concise steps:

Master the Basics : Familiarize yourself with Tableau fundamentals through Tableau's Training Videos .

Learn Data Preparation : Understand how to prepare and clean your survey data. Consider Tableau Prep for efficient data preparation.

Advanced Visualizations : Explore advanced visualization techniques appropriate for survey data. The Tableau Gallery offers inspiration and examples.

Utilize Tableau Public : Practice your skills and get feedback by sharing your work on Tableau Public .

Participate in Community Forums : Engage with the Tableau Community through Tableau Community Forums for tips, tricks, and troubleshooting.

Continuous Learning : Stay updated with the latest trends and features in Tableau through Tableau Blog .

By following these steps, you can significantly improve your Tableau skills in the context of survey research.

How to Display Tableau Skills on Your Resume

SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is a software suite used by survey researchers for advanced analytics, multivariate analyses, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics. It facilitates data entry, retrieval, management, and mining, report writing and graphics, statistical analysis, and project management in survey research.

For a Survey Researcher, SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is crucial as it provides powerful tools for data analysis, manipulation, and visualization, enabling the efficient handling of large survey datasets and the extraction of insightful information to guide decision-making and research findings.

How to Improve SAS Skills

Improving your SAS skills, especially as a Survey Researcher, involves a mix of strengthening your foundational knowledge, practicing coding, and staying updated with the latest SAS developments. Here are concise tips to enhance your SAS proficiency:

Master the Basics : Ensure you have a solid understanding of SAS basics. The SAS Programming 1: Essentials course is a great start.

Practice Regularly : Apply what you've learned by working on real survey data. Use platforms like Kaggle for datasets and challenges.

Learn Advanced Techniques : Delve into advanced topics relevant to survey research, such as data manipulation, statistical analysis, and macro programming. The SAS Programming 2: Data Manipulation Techniques course can be beneficial.

Stay Updated : SAS evolves, so keep abreast of the latest features and updates through the SAS Support Communities .

Network and Collaborate : Join SAS user groups or forums to learn from and share knowledge with peers.

Utilize SAS Resources : Explore the vast range of tutorials, webinars, and documentation available on the SAS Users YouTube Channel and the SAS Documentation site.

By following these steps and consistently applying yourself, you'll see significant improvement in your SAS skills applicable to survey research.

How to Display SAS Skills on Your Resume

7. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is an online survey development tool that enables researchers to design, distribute, and analyze surveys for various research purposes.

SurveyMonkey is important for a Survey Researcher because it provides a user-friendly platform for designing, distributing, and analyzing surveys, enabling efficient data collection and insights gathering from a wide audience.

How to Improve SurveyMonkey Skills

To improve SurveyMonkey for a Survey Researcher, consider the following concise strategies:

Utilize Advanced Question Types : Incorporate diverse question types (e.g., matrix questions, slider questions) to enrich data quality. Learn more from SurveyMonkey’s Question Types.

Implement Logic Features : Use skip logic and question randomization to enhance survey relevance and reduce respondent bias. Explore these options at SurveyMonkey’s Logic Features.

Leverage Custom Branding : Customize your surveys with your branding to increase response rates by creating a more trustworthy appearance. Tips on customization can be found at SurveyMonkey’s Custom Branding guide.

Optimize for Mobile Devices : Ensure your surveys are mobile-friendly to accommodate respondents across all devices, boosting completion rates. Guidance is available through SurveyMonkey’s Creating Mobile-Friendly Surveys.

Enhance Data Analysis Tools : Utilize SurveyMonkey’s advanced analytics features for deeper insights, such as text analysis and cross-tabulation. Discover more at SurveyMonkey’s Analyze Your Results.

Integrate with Other Tools : Use SurveyMonkey’s integrations with tools like Salesforce, Tableau, and Microsoft Teams to streamline data collection and analysis. Find out how at SurveyMonkey’s Integrations.

Implementing these strategies can significantly enhance the functionality and effectiveness of SurveyMonkey for survey research purposes.

How to Display SurveyMonkey Skills on Your Resume

Excel is a spreadsheet software developed by Microsoft, used for organizing, analyzing, and visually presenting data, making it a valuable tool for survey researchers to manage and interpret survey data efficiently.

Excel is crucial for Survey Researchers because it offers powerful tools for organizing, analyzing, and visualizing large datasets, enabling efficient data management, trend identification, and result interpretation.

How to Improve Excel Skills

To enhance Excel skills for Survey Research, focus on the following concise steps:

Master Excel Formulas and Functions : Deepen your understanding of Excel's formulas and functions, especially those related to data analysis like VLOOKUP , INDEX(MATCH) , and statistical functions. ExcelJet is a great resource for learning.

Learn PivotTables : PivotTables are powerful for summarizing, analyzing, exploring, and presenting your data. Microsoft's PivotTable Guide offers a comprehensive walkthrough.

Understand Data Visualization : Improve your ability to visualize data effectively with Excel's charting tools. Chandoo's Charting Tips can help you create more impactful presentations of your data.

Automate Repetitive Tasks with Macros : Learn to write simple macros in VBA to automate repetitive tasks, saving you time. Excel Easy provides a beginner-friendly introduction to VBA.

Explore Excel Add-ins for Survey Analysis : Utilize Excel add-ins designed for survey analysis to extend Excel’s functionality. XLSTAT and QI Macros are examples of tools that can handle complex statistical analysis.

Stay Updated with Excel Blogs and Forums : Engage with Excel communities like MrExcel and Excel Forum to stay updated on new features, tips, and tricks.

By focusing on these areas, you'll significantly enhance your Excel skills, making data analysis more efficient and insightful in your role as a Survey Researcher.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

Stata is a powerful statistical software package used by survey researchers for data management, visualization, and analysis, including complex statistical modeling and survey data analysis.

Stata is important for a Survey Researcher because it provides comprehensive tools for data management, statistical analysis, and graphical representation, facilitating efficient handling, analysis, and interpretation of survey data.

How to Improve Stata Skills

Improving your Stata skills as a Survey Researcher involves enhancing efficiency in data management, analysis, and visualization. Follow these concise steps:

Master Data Management : Understand how to import, clean, and reshape datasets efficiently. The Stata Data Management Reference Manual is an essential guide.

Learn Advanced Survey Commands : Deepen your knowledge in Stata's survey commands like svyset and svy: mean . The Survey Data Reference Manual provides comprehensive insights.

Utilize Macros and Loops for Efficiency : Automate repetitive tasks with macros and loops to save time. Refer to the Programming Reference Manual for guidance.

Explore Statistical Analysis Techniques : Enhance your analytical skills by exploring various statistical methods relevant to survey research. The Stata Statistical Analysis Reference Manual is valuable.

Improve Visualization Skills : Leverage Stata's graphing capabilities to produce high-quality visualizations for your data. The Graphics Reference Manual can help.

Stay Updated and Network : Join the Stata community through forums like Statalist for the latest tips, tricks, and advice.

Attend Workshops and Webinars : Participate in Stata's official workshops and webinars for hands-on learning and updates on new features.

Practice Regularly : Finally, the key to mastering Stata is regular practice with real datasets, experimenting with different commands, and challenging yourself with new analyses.

By following these steps and utilizing the resources provided, you’ll significantly improve your Stata skills, making your survey research more efficient and impactful.

How to Display Stata Skills on Your Resume

GIS (Geographic Information System) is a digital tool that captures, stores, analyzes, and presents spatial or geographical data, enabling survey researchers to visualize, interpret, and analyze data in relation to physical locations.

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is crucial for a Survey Researcher as it enables the visualization, analysis, and interpretation of spatial data, allowing for more informed decision-making and precise results in survey research.

How to Improve GIS Skills

Improving GIS for a Survey Researcher involves enhancing data accuracy, updating GIS software skills, integrating advanced technologies, and fostering collaboration. Here's a concise guide:

Data Accuracy : Ensure data accuracy by regularly validating and cross-checking GIS datasets against reliable sources. USGS provides guidelines and tools for data validation.

Software Proficiency : Stay updated with the latest GIS software advancements. Undertake training for new features and capabilities. Esri Training offers courses on the latest GIS technologies.

Technology Integration : Integrate GIS with other technologies like GPS, remote sensing, and drones for enhanced data collection and analysis. The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) has resources on the latest in remote sensing.

Collaboration and Sharing : Foster collaboration with other GIS professionals and participate in knowledge-sharing platforms. GeoNet by Esri is a community for GIS and geospatial professionals.

By focusing on these areas, a Survey Researcher can significantly improve their GIS expertise and application in research projects.

How to Display GIS Skills on Your Resume

MATLAB is a high-level programming and numeric computing environment used for data analysis, algorithm development, and visualization, particularly useful for survey researchers in processing and interpreting large datasets.

MATLAB is important for Survey Researchers because it provides powerful tools for data analysis and visualization, enabling efficient handling of large datasets, sophisticated statistical analyses, and the creation of clear, compelling graphical representations of survey results.

How to Improve MATLAB Skills

Improving your MATLAB skills, especially as a Survey Researcher, involves focusing on data analysis, visualization, and automation capabilities. Here are concise steps with resources:

Learn Basics Thoroughly : Understand MATLAB's environment, syntax, and basic operations. MATLAB's Getting Started page is a great place to begin.

Master Data Analysis Techniques : As a Survey Researcher, delve into statistical analysis, handling large datasets, and using MATLAB for survey data analysis. The Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox provides functions and apps to describe, analyze, and model data.

Enhance Data Visualization Skills : Good visualization communicates complex data insights. Explore MATLAB's plotting functions to create compelling visualizations. Check out the Graphics and Data Visualization page for techniques and examples.

Automate Your Analysis : Learn to write scripts and functions to automate your data processing and analysis tasks. The MATLAB Programming Fundamentals guide can help you start automating your workflows.

Stay Updated : MATLAB evolves, so keep up with the latest features and best practices through the MATLAB Blog and MATLAB Central , a community and forum for users to exchange ideas.

Apply Advanced Survey Analysis Techniques : Explore advanced topics relevant to your field, like factor analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling, through targeted tutorials or courses. The MathWorks training courses cover a broad range of topics, including advanced data analysis techniques.

Practice Regularly : Apply what you've learned in real-world scenarios. Practice is key to mastering MATLAB. Try to automate and improve your existing survey analysis processes using MATLAB.

By focusing on these areas and utilizing the resources provided, you can significantly improve your MATLAB skills, making your survey research more efficient and impactful.

How to Display MATLAB Skills on Your Resume

NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software used by survey researchers to organize, analyze, and find insights in unstructured or qualitative data such as open-ended survey responses, interviews, and social media content.

NVivo is important for a Survey Researcher because it provides powerful tools for organizing, analyzing, and finding insights in qualitative data, enabling deeper understanding of survey responses and facilitating evidence-based conclusions.

How to Improve NVivo Skills

To improve your use of NVivo as a Survey Researcher, consider these concise strategies:

• Enhance Data Organization : Organize your survey data into themes or nodes within NVivo early on. This helps in analyzing patterns or trends across your data more efficiently.
• Utilize Coding Stripes : Leverage coding stripes to visually track coded data segments, making it easier to identify and analyze responses aligned with specific themes.
• Employ Queries Effectively : Use NVivo’s query functions to explore your data deeply. Matrix coding queries can be particularly useful for cross-tabulating data, helping to uncover relationships between different survey questions or demographic variables.
• Leverage Text Analysis Tools : Take advantage of NVivo’s text analysis tools, such as word frequency or text search queries, to identify prevalent themes or concepts within open-ended responses.
• Integrate with Statistical Software : For advanced statistical analysis, export coded data to SPSS or other statistical software, allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of quantitative data alongside qualitative insights.
• Continuous Learning : Stay updated with NVivo’s latest features and best practices by accessing resources and tutorials on the NVivo Resource Center.

By implementing these strategies, you can significantly enhance the efficiency and depth of your survey analysis using NVivo.

How to Display NVivo Skills on Your Resume

Related Career Skills

• Survey Project Manager
• Survey Technician
• Market Researcher
• Clinical Researcher
• User Experience Researcher

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How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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WSSA Survey Identifies Gap Between Research Priorities and Skillsets

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May 15, 2024, 08:00 ET

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Technical competencies among weed scientists will likely need to expand quickly to accomplish future research priorities, according to recent results from a Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) online survey. The survey asked U.S. and Canadian leaders in weed science to identify pertinent weed research topics for the next five to 10 years. The survey also asked these leaders to identify expertise and funding gaps that are currently lacking to address the newly identified research priorities. Survey respondents identified one particular concern related to skillsets needed for precision weed management and robotics.

WESTMINSTER, Colo. , May 15, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Technical competencies among weed scientists will likely need to expand quickly to accomplish future research priorities, according to recent results from a Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) online survey. The survey asked U.S. and Canadian leaders in weed science to identify pertinent weed research topics for the next five to 10 years. The survey also asked these leaders to identify expertise and funding gaps that are currently lacking to address the newly identified research priorities.

Survey respondents identified one particular concern related to skillsets needed for precision weed management and robotics. Precision weed management combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with ground robotics and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies to map and identify weeds and implement management solutions for farmers.

"We see gaps in expertise in these areas," says Vijay Singh , Ph.D., Virginia Tech Weed Science Assistant Professor, whose research team uses machine learning systems to generate weed databases. "That's especially true with UAV-based herbicide applications, which require specific licenses and training, and data analytics expertise," he emphasizes. "We do not find many people who possess these attributes. A similar challenge is finding engineering graduates—who have knowledge in areas such as AI and machine learning and are ready to work on interdisciplinary research."

Survey Findings Singh's concerns reflect WSSA's online survey findings , which garnered 475 responses in nine research areas. According to the survey results, herbicides have greatly decreased as a research priority since WSSA last surveyed weed scientists in 2007, when herbicides far surpassed any other weed management research area in priority. This time, herbicides ranked third in priority among respondents (52%) behind cultural and preventative weed management (68%) and precision weed management and robotics (53%).

In contrast, most recent survey respondents (63%) reported expertise in herbicide discovery and development. Yet, just 8% identified technologies such as robotics and AI as an expertise area.

This gap in technology expertise among current weed science leaders runs counter to the promise that utilizing such advanced systems have for future weed control success, says Singh, whose team works on standardizing UAV-based herbicide applications in vegetables and row-crops. He points to a recent Virginia Tech research finding that shows UAV-based herbicide applications provide greater efficacy at postemergence stages compared with conventional application systems. This is just one example that highlights the need for greater precision weed management expertise to conduct further research on adjuvants, nozzles, drift issues and machine vision to bring automation to agriculture.

Moving Forward The WSSA survey also asked weed science leaders about research project funding. Respondents reported that public funding has declined since the last survey in 2007. Many also reported a concern that some important research areas—such as using cover crops and crop rotation that prevent weeds from emerging in the first place—might not attract private research dollars. Thus, the survey concluded weed scientists must stress the need for public money.

"We need more public funding for integrated weed management research, both fundamental and applied investigations," says Muthu Bagavathiannan, Ph.D., Weed Ecology & Management Professor, Texas A&M University , who has conducted multiple pioneering research projects to foster precision integrated weed management. "More funding to accelerate the development and application of AI and machine learning technologies to improve the precision and efficacy of integrated weed management is particularly imperative."

For more information on how to help the discipline of Weed Science move forward, consider joining WSSA as a member or contributing to its endowment fund .

About the Weed Science Society of America The Weed Science Society of America, a nonprofit scientific society, was founded in 1956 to encourage and promote the development of knowledge concerning weeds and their impact on the environment. The Society promotes research, education and extension outreach activities related to weeds, provides science-based information to the public and policy makers, fosters awareness of weeds and their impact on managed and natural ecosystems, and promotes cooperation among weed science organizations across the nation and around the world. For more information, visit http://www.wssa.net .

Media Contact

Lee Van Wychen , National & Regional Weed Science Societies, 202-746-4686, [email protected] , https://www.wssa.net/

SOURCE Weed Science Society of America

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European talent is ready to walk out the door. How should companies respond?

How do companies keep their current workforces happy while drawing the best people to join them? Talent leaders have been asking that question forever, of course, but the answers have grown much more complex since the COVID-19 pandemic set off an employee exodus that has shaken organizations across the globe.

McKinsey has analyzed this Great Attrition  talent trend in depth, showing why people began quitting in droves and how companies, caught unaware, could respond. 1 Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger, “ ‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours ,” McKinsey Quarterly , September 8, 2021. We updated our research earlier this year, finding that workers were not only still quitting but also switching roles and industries, in what we dubbed the Great Renegotiation . 2 Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Bryan Hancock, and Bill Schaninger, “ The Great Attrition is making hiring harder. Are you searching the right talent pools? ,” McKinsey Quarterly , July 13, 2022. We offered ideas for how organizations could look to different employee groups to help fill jobs.

Now, we turn to Europe, where the destabilizing war in Ukraine , rising inflation , and growing fears of hiring freezes and job losses have created a difficult set of conditions for companies. We wanted to know if the talent trends  we’ve followed for the past two years in the United States and other countries are having a similar effect in Europe. The answer is a resounding yes. Companies can’t get the people they need, and they are losing the workers they already have, while falling behind in areas such as technology and innovation that affect the region’s long-term competitiveness . 3 Between 2014 and 2019, large European companies were 20 percent less profitable, grew revenues 40 percent more slowly, invested 8 percent less, and spent 40 percent less on R&D than other companies, according to a sample of more than 2,000 European and US companies with revenue of more than $1 billion. For more, see “Securing Europe’s competitiveness: Addressing its technology gap,” McKinsey Global Institute, September 22, 2022.

About the research

To better understand the current state of the European labor market, we surveyed 16,246 respondents in Austria (n = 1,444), Belgium (n = 1,901), France (n = 1,924), Germany (n = 1,968), Italy (n = 1,944), Poland (n = 2,012), Portugal (n = 1,958), Spain (n = 1,944), and Switzerland (n = 1,151). The survey data, collected in September 2022, included people of working age across 16 industries.

Our new analysis, which includes a survey of more than 16,000 respondents in nine European countries, shows that fully one-third of respondents say that they expect to quit their jobs in the next three to six months (see sidebar, “About the research”). While that slice of the workforce is lower than the 40 percent in our global survey from April, 4 The six countries surveyed were Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. it is a remarkably high churn rate for Europe, where labor protections and cultural factors—not to mention a likely economic slowdown —tend to favor remaining in a job. Companies that believe attrition is a problem limited to the United States should understand that one in three of their workers may quit over the near term.

Yet high attrition is just one of the challenges facing European employers. The job vacancy rate has almost doubled, to 3 percent in June 2022, from 1.6 percent in June 2020, 5 Although the percentage of people who started a new job in the past three to six months is increasing, the job vacancy rate is still well above normal. For more, see “Job vacancy statistics,” Eurostat, September 2022. making it harder for companies to fill open positions. Organizations also face a skills gap across industries, as well as a high number of retirees who are unlikely to return to the workforce.

At the same time, European employers have an opportunity to sharpen their value proposition. They can use this moment to address chronic, systemic talent issues by offering adequate compensation, career advancement, and caring leaders, while also focusing on more recent employee needs born of the pandemic. In this article, we analyze our new data to show how companies can retain those who are considering leaving, provide support to turn “quiet quitters” into more engaged employees, and recruit top talent more effectively to build a productive workforce that can deliver in times of radical uncertainty.

The European talent landscape: Top reasons for leaving reflect shifting employee values

Our survey revealed a consistent rate of attrition, at about a third of respondents. The outlier was Poland, where half the people say that they are at least somewhat likely to leave their jobs in the next three to six months (Exhibit 1). 6 That higher number for Poland can be attributed in part to the impact of higher inflation and a refugee crisis from the war in Ukraine, along Poland’s eastern border.

That this many workers are considering leaving revealed a dramatic level of attrition for Europe, where labor protections are more extensive than in other countries. Retirement, too, is often a milestone to look forward to because of pensions and a robust social safety net. Our survey showed that 24 percent of Europeans have retired (early or of natural age) in the past seven years. In contrast with the United States, retirees in Europe aren’t as interested in returning to work for the right offer. When they do retire, they’re more likely to be gone for good 7 Only 5 percent of those who retired, early or of natural age, are planning to return to the workplace sometime in the future, our research showed. For more, see Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, and Bill Schaninger, “ Gone for now, or gone for good? How to play the new talent game and win back workers ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 9, 2022. —reducing the pool of potential workers for European employers.

This large number of people eyeing the exits is not much lower than the 40 percent in our earlier sample of six countries. In fact, when comparing vastly different labor markets and staggered time frames—April for the global data and September for Europe—and factoring in worsening economic conditions, we see similar attrition rates. That’s not a favorable environment for European companies looking to keep and attract workers.

Despite the structural and perceived differences in the European labor market, we unexpectedly found that the top three reasons Europeans give for leaving their jobs are similar to those of our global sample: inadequate compensation, lack of career development and advancement, and uncaring and uninspiring leaders (Exhibit 2).

Fair compensation and having a clear career path are perennial top motivators for workers in any job. We consider compensation table stakes because it’s enough to buy you a seat at the table but not enough to give you a winning hand. A lack of caring leaders, also a consistent reason for why people across countries quit their jobs, has grown in importance since the pandemic began. The similarities in top quitting factors across regions and time periods show that the pandemic has normalized these employee attitudes across segments of workers.

People across age groups and experience levels are putting more emphasis on whether these factors in combination are enough to make them want to stay at an organization for the long term. They need tangible and consistent proof that they have a positive future—in other words, the whole package: compensation, caring leaders, advancement. The fact that a large number of Europeans are saying, “I need a job, but I don’t need your job,” is a clear sign of this new emphasis.

Meanwhile, other factors have grown in importance for European respondents since the pandemic began, particularly those related to unreliable and unsupportive people at work, as well as a noninclusive and unwelcoming community.

The emphasis on these relational “people factors” marks a notable mindset shift among European workers. More than ever, employees say that they need to feel engaged and supported in an inclusive and welcoming environment. Unsustainable work expectations and a lack of support for employee well-being in particular align with rates of employee burnout that McKinsey research shows are at all-time highs . 8 “ Addressing employee burnout: Are you solving the right problem? ,” McKinsey, May 27, 2022.

We also found that the reasons employees are considering changing jobs are remarkably consistent across European countries. The top two factors in every country are inadequate compensation and insufficient career advancement. But relational factors also rank highly, including having uncaring and uninspiring leaders and unsupportive coworkers.

Focus on the whole workforce (the happy, the unhappy, and the in-between)

Most Europeans in our sample say that they intend to stay on the job, and their motivations shade differently than those of their exiting counterparts. Compensation is a top reason here as well, but it is more of a hygiene factor than anything else. Motivators include flexibility, meaningful work, and supportive coworkers—once again, an endorsement of factors that have grown in importance for Europeans during the pandemic.

People stay in a job for the opposite reasons than they leave it: because they are rewarded adequately, their needs for advancement and skill building are met, and they see a future for themselves. What sets Europeans apart, though, is the degree to which they prize a safe workplace environment; that factor is in the top three for Europeans, while it is eighth overall for the global group (Exhibit 3). Reasons for that include the fact that many COVID-19 restrictions ended over the summer, leading employees to worry about how safe they would be back in the office and whether they wanted to be back at all.

Companies must continue to deliver on flexibility if they want to retain people who have not yet indicated a willingness to leave. Throughout the pandemic, employees—ranging from working parents  to younger folks just starting out to workers nearing retirement age—all say that they want more control over their working hours so that they can better balance life and career . 9 “ To slow down attrition, pay closer attention to what workers really need ,” McKinsey, September 22, 2022.

This raises a crucial point: in crafting an alluring employee experience, European organizations have to avoid falling into the trap of focusing solely on the workers who are unhappy enough to quit over the short term. Of course, it’s essential to retain them, but companies also need to be sure that the majority who aren’t indicating that they are leaving don’t move into that category.

In other words, leaders have to care about retaining talent before they can start to think about those who are walking out the door. Making the organization sticky, which we discuss below, is part of that active investment in the entire workforce.

The sound of ‘quiet quitting’

To help assess all their workers, companies can group their employees in four broad categories—those who are happy with their job but are considering better options, those leaving because they dislike their job, those staying because they’re happy, and those who are passively staying but who don’t really want to be there. This last group consists of “quiet quitters,” or members of the employed-yet-disengaged workforce. 10 This group does not include individuals who continue to be engaged in their roles but who have sought to reduce their workloads to a more manageable level to prevent burnout.

European employers, like organizations everywhere now, face the problem of workers who leave—and workers who stay but who might act like they have already left. Our research shows that in Europe, the majority (79 percent) of those reporting low levels of engagement or support factors are likely to leave. However, a small but significant portion (21 percent) of those reporting low levels of engagement or support factors are planning to stay at their jobs. Although these employees aren’t quitting, they are likely to become disengaged from their work, which could manifest as withdrawal from or neglect of their duties.

If we do the math, with one-third leaving and one-fifth of those who remain falling into the ranks of those not necessarily working to pace, that adds up to about 44 percent of the workforce. Clearly, that number of dissatisfied employees is not sustainable in a healthy organization.

Some employers believe that quiet quitting is just a phase, but there are two reasons to discount that. One is that despite the trendy name, quiet quitters have been around forever—as people whose level of engagement is below what managers might want. The other is that in a predicted economic downturn, when companies are often forced to turn to hiring freezes or job cuts, they will need the workforce that remains to be that much more productive.

Quiet quitting is not just an individual problem, it’s a mutual responsibility between the employee who is disengaged and the organization that isn’t offering enough support. Both higher engagement and higher support are needed to solve this problem.

An overwhelming majority of employees who report high levels of engagement factors (such as finding meaning in their work) and support factors (such as reliable and supportive people at work) are likely to stay at their jobs and be productive in them (Exhibit 4).

The (new) value system: Emphasize personal development and recognition to reward workers

Europe’s labor market is unique, with stronger worker protections, more extensive pension offerings, and longer parental leaves, to name but a few examples that benefit employees—and society writ large. Culturally, workers in this region don’t leave their jobs as often as those in the United States and other countries do.

However, with an aging population and a darkening economic picture, European employers face a complex environment in which to operate. This calls for more creative solutions. Companies can draw inspiration from the way other organizations, even those in other regions, are attempting to solve the problem that attrition brings. They can find novel ways to attract younger people to jobs and keep the workers they have feeling more engaged and productive.

Here are five ways that European companies can be proactive about retention, reinforce a healthy working environment, and look beyond traditional recruitment pools.

Address the attrition

The first step is to turn inward. Companies should take stock of the attrition they have already experienced and move to reduce further quitting by addressing what is motivating their employees. Our European data shows that the reasons people have left a job and why they plan to leave are the same, so companies can get ahead of the next wave of attrition by understanding why others have already left. Employers should consider doubling down on providing adequate total compensation packages, investing in employees’ development, and providing meaningful advancement opportunities, while showing more caring and inspiring day-to-day and strategic leadership .

Don’t overlook ‘the others’

When companies focus mostly on attrition and attraction, they tend to overlook the need to actively support workers who are staying. Sticky companies anticipate and address employees’ concerns . They ask people what they need to be successful in their roles—and they listen to the answers. They push people to grow in their jobs and encourage a growth mindset throughout the organization. Based on feedback, these companies might innovate jobs, teams, or hiring practices. They are not afraid to provide the flexibility that employees need to create a work–life balance that helps keep workers engaged and productive. These cultural factors help make a company more attractive to join and, ideally, provide more incentives for employees to stay and remain engaged. They can also reengage those who are quietly quitting.

Reward loyalty by building capabilities

Career advancement is a top priority for European workers. A company that rewards its employees by investing in their development reduces their incentive to look elsewhere while also increasing overall engagement. With that in mind, leaders can start by rewarding those who are already inside the company with career development and advancement opportunities. This investment in the workforce is based on gratitude and trust, highlighting that past work is valued and that the company believes in their employees’ ability to deliver the future work that builds value. Then, leaders can look outside the company to deliberately find the talent that they still need. In the broader context, Europe is experiencing a widening gap in technology, innovation, and corporate performance  compared with other regions. With recent headlines of job losses in the technology sector, companies that need to expand their tech expertise could look to those who are newly available. However, companies should also focus on using the right levers to prevent those potential hires from going to a nontraditional job, or worse, to the competition.

Rethink the corporate culture

Since the start of the pandemic, organizations have been striving to help employees who are burned out. However, it’s crucial to focus on affirmative behaviors so that burnout  doesn’t become a problem to begin with. Once it takes hold, even the most well-intentioned remediation efforts (or yoga classes) won’t fix the problem. As our survey data shows, European workers now emphasize other factors when it comes to a satisfying employee experience. They want more workplace flexibility and a physically and psychologically safe workplace . 11 “ Psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and leadership in a time of flux ,” McKinsey Quarterly , July 2, 2020. McKinsey research shows that caring managers can also make a huge difference in engagement by reaching out more frequently and honing in on what excites employees and gives them a sense of purpose.

Think outside the (recruitment) box

The existing talent pools of traditional workers in an aging market are not sufficient to replenish those who have retired. European organizations will need to go after those who have left the traditional workforce, including people who are self-employed, those in the gig economy or not currently in full-time corporate jobs, younger people just entering the workforce, and those who are considering retirement. Because these groups emphasize different factors (with older workers wanting more caring leaders and younger people valuing strong support networks), companies must target these groups differently. And while these pools of workers may be smaller in Europe than they are in the United States, for example, they’re out there, and companies can go get them.

The European workforce is not immune to the attrition trend we’ve seen sweep across countries over the past several years. The mindsets of European employees have changed since the pandemic began, and many are no longer willing to stay at organizations that don’t value their contributions or offer a future that excites them. Now more than ever, companies should demonstrate a commitment that is both widespread and targeted to individuals—a commitment that is core to their health and future growth.

Vincent Bérubé is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Montréal office, Dana Maor is a senior partner in the Tel Aviv office, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi is a research science expert in the New York office, and Angelika Reich is a partner in the Vienna office.

The authors wish to thank Nancy Busellato, Pawel Poplawski, Mukhunth Raghavan, and Bill Schaninger for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barbara Tierney, a senior editor in the New York office.

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Leveraging collective action and environmental literacy to address complex sustainability challenges

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Developing and enhancing societal capacity to understand, debate elements of, and take actionable steps toward a sustainable future at a scale beyond the individual are critical when addressing sustainability challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, and zoonotic disease. Although mounting evidence exists for how to facilitate individual action to address sustainability challenges, there is less understanding of how to foster collective action in this realm. To support research and practice promoting collective action to address sustainability issues, we define the term “collective environmental literacy” by delineating four key potent aspects: scale, dynamic processes, shared resources, and synergy. Building on existing collective constructs and thought, we highlight areas where researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can support individuals and communities as they come together to identify, develop, and implement solutions to wicked problems. We close by discussing limitations of this work and future directions in studying collective environmental literacy.

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Introduction

For socio-ecologically intertwined issues—such as climate change, land conversion, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, and zoonotic diseases—and their associated multi-decadal timeframes, individual action is necessary, yet not sufficient, for systemic, sustained change (Amel et al. 2017 ; Bodin 2017 ; Niemiec et al. 2020 ; Spitzer and Fraser 2020 ). Instead, collective action, or individuals working together toward a common good, is essential for achieving the scope and scale of solutions to current sustainability challenges. To support communities as they engage in policy and action for socio-environmental change, communicators, land managers, policymakers, and other practitioners need an understanding of how communities coalesce and leverage their shared knowledge, skills, connections, and experiences.

Engagement efforts, such as those grounded in behavior-change approaches or community-based social marketing initiatives, that address socio-environmental issues have often emphasized individuals as the pathway to change. Such efforts address a range of domains including, but not limited to, residential energy use, personal transportation choices, and workplace recycling efforts, often doing so in a stepwise fashion, envisioning each setting or suite of behaviors as discrete spheres of action and influence (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008 ; McKenzie-Mohr 2011 ). In this way, specific actions are treated incrementally and linearly, considering first the individual barriers to be removed and then the motivations to be activated (and, sometimes, sustained; Monroe 2003 ; Gifford et al. 2011 ). Once each behavior is successfully instantiated, the next barrier is then addressed. Proceeding methodically from one action to the next, such initiatives often quite successfully alter a series of actions or group of related behaviors (at least initially) by addressing them incrementally, one at a time (Byerly et al. 2018 ). Following this aspirational logic chain, many resources have been channeled into such programs under the assumption that, by raising awareness and knowledge, such information, communication, and educational outreach efforts will shift attitudes and behaviors to an extent that, ultimately, mass-scale change will follow. (See discussion in Wals et al. 2014 .)

Numerous studies have demonstrated, however, that challenges arise with these stepwise approaches, particularly with regard to their ability to address complex issues and persist over time (Heimlich and Ardoin 2008 ; Wals et al. 2014 ). Such approaches place a tremendous—and unrealistic—burden on individuals, ignoring key aspects not only of behavioral science but also of social science more broadly, including the view that humans exist nested within socio-ecological systems and, thus, are most successful at achieving lasting change when it is meaningful, relevant, and undertaken within a supportive context (Swim et al. 2011 ; Feola 2015 ). Individualized approaches often require multiple steps or nudges (Byerly et al. 2018 ), or ongoing reminders to retain their salience (Stern et al. 2008 ). Because of the emphasis on decontextualized action, such approaches can miss, ignore, obfuscate, or minimize the importance of the bigger picture, which includes the sociocultural, biophysical, and political economic contexts (Ardoin 2006 ; Amel et al. 2017 ). Although the tightly trained focus on small, actionable steps and reliance on individual willpower may help in initially achieving success with initial habit formation (Carden and Wood 2018 ), it becomes questionable in terms of bringing about a wave of transformation on larger scales in the longer term. For those decontextualized actions to persist, they require continued prompting, constancy, and support in the social and biophysical context (Schultz 2014 ; Manfredo et al. 2016 ; Wood and Rünger 2016 ).

Less common in practice are theoretically based initiatives that embrace the holistic nature of the human experience, which occurs within complex systems spanning time and space in a multidimensional, weblike fashion (Bronfenbrenner 1979 ; Rogoff 2003 ; Barron 2006 ; DeCaro and Stokes 2008 ; Gould et al. 2019 ; Hovardas 2020 ). These systems-thinking approaches, while varying across disciplines and epistemological perspectives, envision human experiences, including learning and behavior, as occurring within a milieu that include the social, political, cultural, and historical contexts (Rogoff 2003 ; Roth and Lee 2007 ; Swim et al. 2011 ; Gordon 2019 ). In such a view, people’s everyday practices continuously reflect and grow out of past learning and experiences, not only at the individual, but also at the collective level (Lave 1991 ; Gutiérrez and Rogoff 2003 ; Nasir et al. 2020 ; Ardoin and Heimlich 2021 ). The multidimensional context in which we exist—including the broader temporal and spatial ecosystem—both facilitates and constrains our actions.

Scholars across diverse areas of study discuss the need for and power of collective thought and action, using various conceptual frames, models, and terms, such as collective action, behavior, impact, and intelligence; collaborative governance; communities of practice; crowdsourcing; and social movement theory; among many others (Table 1 ). These scholars acknowledge and explore the influence of our multidimensional context on collective thought and action. In this paper, we explore the elements and processes that constitute collective environmental literacy . We draw on the vast, relevant literature and, in so doing, we attempt to invoke the power of the collective: by reviewing and synthesizing ideas from a variety of fields, we strive to leverage existing constructs and perspectives that explore notions of the “collective” (see Table 1 for a summary of constructs and theories reviewed to develop our working definition of collective environmental literacy). A primary goal of this paper is to dialogue with other researchers and practitioners working in this arena who are eager to uncover and further explore related avenues.

First, we present a formal definition of collective environmental literacy. Next, we briefly review the dominant view of environmental literacy at the individual level and, in support of a collective take on environmental literacy, we examine various collective constructs. We then delve more deeply into the definition of collective environmental literacy by outlining four key aspects: scale, dynamic processes, shared resources, and synergy. We conclude by providing suggestions for future directions in studying collective environmental literacy.

Defining collective environmental literacy

Decades of research in political science, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and the learning sciences, among other fields (Chawla and Cushing 2007 ; Ostrom 2009 ; Sawyer 2014 ; Bamberg et al. 2015 ; Chan 2016 ; Jost et al. 2017 ) repeatedly demonstrates the effectiveness, and indeed necessity of, collective action when addressing problems that are inherently social in nature. Yet theoretical frameworks and empirical documentation emphasize that such collective activities rarely arise spontaneously and, when they do, are a result of preconditions that have sown fertile ground (van Zomeren et al. 2008 ; Duncan 2018 ). Persistent and effective collective action then requires scaffolding in the form of institutional, sociocultural, and political economic structure that provides ongoing support. To facilitate discussions of how to effectively support collective action around sustainability issues, we suggest the concept of “collective environmental literacy.” We conceptualize collective environmental literacy as more than collective action; rather, we suggest that the term encapsulates action along with its various supporting structures and resources. Additionally, we employ the word “literacy” as it connotes learning, intention, and the idea that knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors can be enhanced iteratively over time. By using “literacy,” we strive to highlight the efforts, often unseen, that lead to effective collective action in communities. We draw on scholarship in science and health education, areas that have begun over the past two decades to theorize about related areas of collective science literacy (Roth and Lee 2002 , 2004 ; Lee and Roth 2003 ; Feinstein 2018 ) and health literacy (Freedman et al. 2009 ; Papen 2009 ; Chinn 2011 ; Guzys et al. 2015 ). Although these evolving constructs lack consensus definitions, they illuminate affordances and constraints that exist when conceptualizing collective environmental literacy (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM] 2016 ).

Some of the key necessary—but not sufficient—conditions that facilitate aligned, collective actions include a common body of decision-making information; shared attitudes, values, and beliefs toward a motivating issue or concern; and efficacy skills that facilitate change-making (Sturmer and Simon 2004 ; van Zomeren et al. 2008 ; Jagers et al. 2020 ). In addition, other contextual factors are essential, such as trust, reciprocity, collective efficacy, and communication among group members and societal-level facilitators, such as social norms, institutions, and technology (Bandura 2000 ; Ostrom 2010 ; McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; Jagers et al. 2020 ). Taken together, we term this body of knowledge, dispositions, skills, and the context in which they flourish collective environmental literacy . More formally, we define collective environmental literacy as: a dynamic, synergistic process that occurs as group members develop and leverage shared resources to undertake individual and aggregate actions over time to address sustainability issues within the multi-scalar context of a socio-environmental system (Fig.  1 ).

Key elements of collective environmental literacy

Environmental literacy: Historically individual, increasingly collective

Over the past five decades, the term “environmental literacy” has come into increasingly frequent use. Breaking from the traditional association of “literacy” with reading and writing in formal school contexts, environmental literacy emphasizes associations with character and behavior, often in the form of responsible environmental stewardship (Roth 1992 ). Footnote 1 Such perspectives define the concept as including affective (attitudinal), cognitive (knowledge-based), and behavioral domains, emphasizing that environmental literacy is both a process and outcome that develops, builds, and morphs over time (Hollweg et al. 2011 ; Wheaton et al. 2018 ; Clark et al. 2020 ).

The emphasis on defining, measuring, and developing interventions to bring about environmental literacy has primarily remained at the individual scale, as evidenced by frequent descriptions of an environmentally literate person (Roth 1992 ; Hollweg et al. 2011 among others) rather than community or community member. In most understandings, discussions, and manifestations of environmental literacy, the implicit assumption remains that the unit of action, intervention, and therefore analysis occurs at the individual level. Yet instinctively and perhaps by nature, community members often seek information and, as a result, take action collectively, sharing what some scholars call “the hive mind” or “group mind,” relying on each other for distributed knowledge, expertise, motivation, and support (Surowiecki 2005 ; Sunstein 2008 ; Sloman and Fernbach 2017 ; Paul 2021 ).

As with the proverbial elephant (Saxe, n.d.), each person, household, or neighborhood group may understand or “see” a different part of an issue or challenge, bring a novel understanding to the table, and have a certain perspective or skill to contribute. Although some environmental literacy discussions allude to a collective lens (e.g., Hollweg et al. 2011 ; Ardoin et al. 2013 ; Wheaton et al. 2018 ; Bey et al. 2020 ), defining, developing frameworks, and creating measures to assess the efficacy of such collective-scale sustainability-related endeavors has remained elusive. Footnote 2 Looking to related fields and disciplines—such as ecosystem theory, epidemiology and public health, sociology, network theory, and urban planning, among others—can provide insight, theoretical frames, and empirical examples to assist in such conceptualizations (McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; National Research Council 2015 ) (See Table 1 for an overview of some of the many areas of study that informed our conceptualization of collective environmental literacy).

Seeking the essence of the collective: Looking to and learning from others

The social sciences have long focused on “the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people” (Turner et al. 2020 , para. 1) and addressed various collective constructs, such as collective behavior, action, intelligence, and memory (Table 1 ). Although related constructs in both the social and natural sciences—such as communities of practice (Wenger and Snyder 2000 ), collaborative governance (Ansell and Gash 2008 ; Emerson et al. 2012 ), and the collaboration–coordination continuum (Sadoff and Grey 2005 ; Prager 2015 ), as well as those from social movement theory and related areas (McAdam and Boudet 2012 ; de Moor and Wahlström 2019 )—lack the word “collective” in name, they too leverage the benefits of collectivity. A central tenet connects all of these areas: powerful processes, actions, and outcomes can arise when individuals coalesce around a common purpose or cause. This notion of a dynamic, potent force transcending the individual to enhance the efficacy of outcomes motivates the application of a collective lens to the environmental literacy concept.

Dating to the 1800s, discussions of collective behavior have explored connections to social order, structures, and norms (Park 1927 ; Smelser 2011 /1962; Turner and Killian 1987 ). Initially, the focus emphasized spontaneous, often violent crowd behaviors, such as riots, mobs, and rebellions. More contemporarily, sociologists, political scientists, and others who study social movements and collective behaviors acknowledge that such phenomena may take many forms, including those occurring in natural ecosystems, such as ant colonies, bird flocks, and even the human brain (Gordon 2019 ). In sociology, collective action represents a paradigm shift highlighting coordinated, purposeful pro-social movements, while de-emphasizing aroused emotions and crowd behavior (Miller 2014 ). In political science, Ostrom’s ( 1990 , 2000 , 2010 ) theory of collective action in the context of the management of shared resources extends the concept’s reach to economics and other fields. In education and the learning sciences, social learning and sociocultural theories tap into the idea of learning as a social-cognitive-cultural endeavor (Vygotsky 1980 ; Lave and Wenger 1991 ; Tudge and Winterhoff 1993 ; Rogoff 2003 ; Reed et al. 2010 ).

Collective action, specifically, and collective constructs, generally, have found their way into the research and practice in the fields of conservation, natural resources, and environmental management. Collective action theory has been applied in a range of settings and scenarios, including agriculture (Mills et al. 2011 ), invasive species management (Marshall et al. 2016 ; Sullivan et al. 2017 ; Lubeck et al. 2019 ; Clarke et al. 2021 ), fire management (Canadas et al. 2016 ; Charnley et al. 2020 ), habitat conservation (Raymond 2006 ; Niemiec et al. 2020 ), and water governance (Lopez-Gunn 2003 ; Baldwin et al. 2018 ), among others. Frameworks and methods that emphasize other collective-related ideas—like collaboration, co-production, and group learning—are also ubiquitous in natural resource and environmental management. These constructs include community-based conservation (DeCaro and Stokes 2008 ; Niemiec et al. 2016 ), community natural resource management (Kellert et al. 2000 ; Dale et al. 2020 ), collaboration/coordination (Sadoff and Grey 2005 ; Prager 2015 ), polycentricity (Galaz et al. 2012 ; Heikkila et al. 2018 ), knowledge co-production (Armitage et al. 2011 ; Singh et al. 2021 ), and social learning (Reed et al. 2010 ; Hovardas 2020 ). Many writings on collective efforts in the social sciences broadly, and applied in the area of environment specifically, provide insights into collective action’s necessary preconditions, which prove invaluable to further defining and later operationalizing collective environmental literacy.

Unpacking the definition of collective environmental literacy: Anchoring principles

As described, we propose the following working definition of collective environmental literacy drawing on our analysis of related literatures and informed by scholarly and professional experience in the sustainability and conservation fields: a dynamic, synergistic process that occurs as group members develop and leverage shared resources to undertake individual and aggregate actions over time to address sustainability issues within the multi-scalar context of a socio-environmental system (Fig.  1 ). This definition centers on four core, intertwined ideas: the scale of the group involved; the dynamic nature of the process; shared resources brought by, available to, and needed by the group; and the synergy that arises from group interaction.

Multi-scalar

When transitioning from the focus on individual to collective actions—and, herein, principles of environmental literacy—the most obvious and primary requisite shift is one of scale. Yet, moving to a collective scale does not mean abandoning action at the individual scale; rather, success at the collective level is intrinsically tied to what occurs at an individual level. Such collective-scale impacts leverage the power of the hive, harnessing people’s willingness, ability, and motivation to take action alongside others, share their ideas and resources to build collective ideas and resources, contribute to making a difference in an impactful way, and participate communally in pro-social activities.

Collective environmental literacy is likely dynamic in its orientation to scale, incorporating place-based notions, such as ecoregional or community-level environmental literacy (with an emphasis on geographic boundaries). On the other hand, it may encapsulate environmental literacy of a group or organization united by a common identity (e.g., organizational membership) or cause (e.g., old-growth forests, coastal protection), rather than solely or even primarily by geography. Although shifting scales can make measuring collective environmental literacy more difficult, dynamic levels may be a benefit when addressing planetary boundary issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and ocean acidification (Galaz et al. 2012 ). Some scholars have called for a polycentric approach to these large-scale issues in response to a perceived failure of global-wide, top-down solutions (Ostrom 2010 , 2012 ; Jordan et al. 2018 ). Conceptualizing and consequently supporting collective environmental literacy at multiple scales can facilitate such desired polycentricity.

Rather than representing a static outcome, environmental literacy is a dynamic process that is fluctuating and complex, reflective of iterative interactions among community members, whose discussions and negotiations reflect the changing context of sustainability issues. Footnote 3 Such open-minded processes allow for, and indeed welcome, adaptation in a way that builds social-ecological resilience (Berkes and Jolly 2002 ; Adger et al. 2005 ; Berkes 2007 ). Additionally, this dynamism allows for collective development and maturation, supporting community growth in collective knowledge, attitudes, skills, and actions via new experiences, interactions, and efforts (Berkman et al. 2010 ). With this mindset, and within a sociocultural perspective, collective environmental literacy evolves through drawing on and contributing to the community’s funds of knowledge (González et al. 2006 ). Movement and actions within and among groups impact collective literacy, as members share knowledge and other resources, shifting individuals and the group in the course of their shared practices (Samerski 2019 ).

In a collective mode, effectiveness is heightened as shared resources are streamlined, waste is minimized, and innovation maximized. Rather than each group member developing individual expertise in every matter of concern, the shared knowledge, skills, and behaviors can be distributed, pursued, and amplified among group members efficiently and effectively, with collective literacy emerging from the process of pooling diverse forms of capital and aggregating resources. This perspective builds on ideas of social capital as a collective good (Ostrom 1990 ; Putnam 2020 ), wherein relationships of trust and reciprocity are both inputs and outcomes (Pretty and Ward 2001 ). The shared resources then catalyze and sustain action as they are reassembled and coalesced at the group level for collective impact.

The pooled resources—likely vast—may include, but are not limited to, physical and human resources, funding, time, energy, and space and place (physical or digital). Shared resources may also include forms of theorized capital, such as intellectual and social (Putnam 2020 ). Also of note is the recognition that these resources extend far beyond information and knowledge. Of particular interest when building collective environmental literacy are resources previously ignored or overlooked by those in power in prior sustainability efforts. For example, collective environmental literacy can draw strength from shared resources unique to the community or even subgroups within the larger community. Discussions of Indigenous knowledge (Gadgil et al. 1993 ) and funds of knowledge (González et al. 2006 ; Cruz et al. 2018 ) suggest critical, shared resources that highlight strengths of an individual community and its members. Another dimension of shared resources relates to the strength of institutional connections, such as the benefits that accrue from leveraging the collective knowledge, expertise, and resources of organizational collaborators working in adjacent areas to further and amplify each other’s impact (Wojcik et al. 2021 ).

Synergistic

Finally, given the inherent complexities related to defining, deploying, implementing, and measuring these dynamic, at-times ephemeral processes, resources, and outcomes at a collective scale, working in such a manner must be clearly advantageous to pressing sustainability issues at hand. Numerous related constructs and approaches from a range of fields emphasize the benefits of diverse collaboration to collective thought and action, including improved solutions, more effective and fair processes, and more socioculturally just outcomes (Klein 1990 ; Jörg 2011 ; Wenger and Snyder 2000 ; Djenontin and Meadow 2018 ). These benefits go beyond efficient aggregation and distribution of resources, invoking an almost magical quality that defines synergy, resulting in robust processes and outcomes that are more than the sum of the parts.

This synergy relies on the diversity of a group across various dimensions, bringing power, strength, and insight to a decision-making process (Bear and Woolley 2011 ; Curşeu and Pluut 2013 ; Freeman and Huang 2015 ; Lu et al. 2017 ; Bendor and Page 2019 ). Individuals are limited not only to singular knowledge-perspectives and skillsets, but also to their own experiences, which influence their self-affirming viewpoints and tendencies to seek out confirmatory information for existing beliefs (Kahan et al. 2011 ). Although the coming together of those from different racial, cultural, social, and economic backgrounds facilitates a collective literacy process that draws on a wider range of resources and equips a gestalt, it also sets up the need to consider issues of power, privilege, voice, and representation (Bäckstrand 2006 ) and the role of social capital, leading to questions related to trust and reciprocity in effective collectives (Pretty and Ward 2001 ; Folke et al. 2005 ).

Leveraging the ‘Hive’: Proceeding with collective environmental literacy

This paper presents one conceptualization of collective environmental literacy, with the understanding that numerous ways exist to envision its definition, formation, deployment, and measurement. Characterized by a collective effort, such literacies at scale offer a way to imagine, measure, and support the synergy that occurs when the emphasis moves from an individual to a larger whole. By expanding the scale and focusing on shared responsibility among actors at the systems level, opportunities arise for inspiring and enabling a broader contribution to a sustainable future. These evolving notions serve to invite ongoing conversation, both in research and practice, about how to enact our collective responsibility toward, as well as vision of, a thriving future.

Emerging from the many discussions of shared and collaborative efforts to address socio-environmental issues, our conceptualization of collective environmental literacy is a first step toward supporting communities as they work to identify, address, and solve sustainability problems. We urge continued discussions on this topic, with the goal of understanding the concept of collective environmental literacy, how to measure it, and the implications of this work for practitioners. The conceptual roots of collective environmental literacy reach into countless fields of study and, as such, a transdisciplinary approach, which includes an eye toward practice, is necessary to fully capture and maximize the tremendous amount of knowledge, wisdom, and experience around this topic. Specifically, next steps to evolve the concept include engaging sustainability researchers and practitioners in discussions of the saliency of the presented definition of collective environmental literacy. These discussions include verifying the completeness of the definition and ensuring a thorough review of relevant research: Are parts of the definition missing or unclear? What are the “blank, blind, bald, and bright spots” in the literature (Reid 2019 p. 158)? Additionally, recognizing and leveraging literacy at a collective scale most certainly is not unique to environmental work, nor is adopting literacy-related language to conceptualize and measure process outcomes, although the former has consistently proven more challenging. Moreover, although we (the authors) appreciate the connotations and structures gained by using a literacy framework, we struggle with whether “environmental literacy” is the most appropriate and useful term for the conceptualizations as described herein; we, thus, welcome lively discussions about the need for new terminology.

Even at this early stage of conceptualization, this work has implications for practitioners. For scientists, communicators, policymakers, land managers, and other professionals desiring to work with communities to address sustainability issues, a primary take-away message concerns the holistic nature of what is needed for effective collective action in the environmental realm. Many previous efforts have focused on conveying information and, while a lack of knowledge and awareness may be a barrier to action in some cases, the need for a more holistic lens is increasingly clear. This move beyond an individually focused, information-deficit model is essential for effective impact (Bolderdijk et al. 2013 ; van der Linden 2014 ; Geiger et al. 2019 ). The concept of collective environmental literacy suggests a role for developing shared resources that can foster effective collective action. When working with communities, a critical early step includes some form of needs assessment—a systematic, in-depth process that allows for meaningfully gauging gaps in shared resources required to tackle sustainability issues (Braus 2011). Following this initial, evaluative step, an understanding of the components of collective environmental literacy, as outlined in this paper, can be used to guide the development of interventions to support communities in their efforts to address those issues.

Growing discussion of collective literacy constructs, and related areas, suggests researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working in pro-social areas recognize and value collective efforts, despite the need for clearer definitions and effective measures. This definitional and measurement work, in both research and practice, is not easy. The ever-changing, dynamic contexts in which collective environmental literacy exists make defining the concept a moving target, compounded by a need to draw upon work in countless, often distinct academic fields of study. Furthermore, the hard-to-see, inner workings of collective constructs make measurement difficult. Yet, the “power of the hive” is intriguing, as the synergism that arises from communities working in an aligned manner toward a unified vision suggests a potency and wave of motivated action essential to coalescing and leveraging individual goodwill, harnessing its power and potential toward effective sustainability solutions.

See Stables and Bishop’s ( 2001 ) idea of defining environmental literacy by viewing the environment as “text.”

The climate change education literature also includes a nascent, but growing, discussion of collective-lens thinking and literacy. See, for example, Waldron et al. ( 2019 ), Mochizuki and Bryan ( 2015 ), and Kopnina ( 2016 ).

This conceptualization is similar to how some scholars describe collective health literacy (Berkman et al., 2010 ; Mårtensson and Hensing, 2012 ).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Maria DiGiano, Anna Lee, and Becca Shareff for their feedback and contributions to early drafts of this paper. We appreciate the research and writing assistance supporting this paper provided by various members of the Stanford Social Ecology Lab, especially: Brennecke Gale, Pari Ghorbani, Regina Kong, Naomi Ray, and Austin Stack.

This work was supported by a grant from the Pisces Foundation.

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Ardoin, N.M., Bowers, A.W. & Wheaton, M. Leveraging collective action and environmental literacy to address complex sustainability challenges. Ambio 52 , 30–44 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01764-6

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Received : 11 July 2021

Revised : 11 January 2022

Accepted : 22 June 2022

Published : 09 August 2022

Issue Date : January 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01764-6

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