NSF SBE Directorate Releases Dear Colleague Letter on Robust and Reliable Research, Invites Proposal Submissions
On September 20, Dr. Fay Lomax Cook, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF), released a Dear Colleague Letter on “Robust and Reliable Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences”. The letter announces the SBE Directorate’s interest in stimulating research to enhance the reliability and robustness of research in these areas of science. To accomplish this goal, the SBE Directorate has invited proposals on a variety of topics to its standing programs including:
- “Research to determine the extent of, causes of, or remedies for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences that is neither replicable, reproducible, nor generalizable;
- Methodological development to improve the robustness/reliability of research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences (e.g., improvements in study design, data-sharing techniques, analytic techniques);
- Outreach/training/workshops designed to enhance the robustness and reliability of research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, including increasing acceptability of explicit research in this area; and
- Reproductions, replications, or generalizations of seminal or pivotal studies that have served a demonstrably critical role in conceptual or empirical progress in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, including generalizations that demonstrate validity in atypical or nontraditional populations and samples. Reproduction, replication, or generalization projects require clear justification of the fundamental role of the seminal or pivotal studies in the scientific advance of social, behavioral, or economic sciences.”
Proposals are to be submitted to the most relevant SBE program.