Using quasi-experimental design and the curriculum vitae to evaluate impacts of earmarked center funding on faculty productivity, collaboration, and grant activity

Academic research conducted within multidisciplinary science centers developed rapidly during the 1980s in response to several federal initiatives in the United States. In this study, we examine the effect of a Congressionally-mandated multidisciplinary center program on the careers of affiliated scientists. Important to the research evaluation design, we incorporate a control group of researchers who are not affiliated with these centers, but who work in the same scientific area. We collect curricula vitae from both groups, a data source that has been demonstrated to provide valid and reliable longitudinal data about academic productivity. We discuss the sampling and data collection methodology in detail, concluding that our sampling methodology worked well, while our initial attempt to collect CVs via the internet was not effective. Ultimately, we concluded that internet-based collection of CVs is not feasible; therefore we collected CVs directly from respondents via mail and email requests. In the analysis, we evaluate the impact of center affiliation on publication productivity, collaboration, and grants activity. We find that center affiliation tends to promote lower grant velocity, but greater levels of collaboration. These higher levels of collaboration increase publication productivity, but gains may be offset by the lower grants velocity. Overall, we find that centers-consistent with policy objectivestend to foster funding stability and to increase collaborative interactions in the field.