Title of Study: Crossing Boundaries

Principal Investigator: Jeanette Joyce, Veronica Cavera, Kevin Crouse

Faculty Advisor: Drew Gitomer

Focus: Professional, scholarly interactions between research faculty

Brief Description: We are investigating professional interactions, including those between researchers that do not share the same research focus or specializations. We believe such interactions are critical components of public research. The National Research Council states that it is "intellectual debate [that] provides the means by which scientific knowledge is refined and accepted," and interactions across specializations are critical for this process.

Please do not confuse these interactions with research collaborations. Interactions amongst collaborators on a grant or that co-author papers are vastly important, but our definition of interaction expands beyond these.

A full study prospectus, including methods and research questions, is available here.

The consent form approved by the Rutgers Institutional Review Board (IRB) is here.

We have multiple protocols to ensure confidentiality. Details about data security is here.


We invite you to participate in this research study, which is being conducted by doctoral students at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. The purpose of this research is to understand characteristics of interactions between research faculty. We have undertaken this as an independent research project due to our interest in the research communities that we are joining. No faculty will have access to identifying information about you or the people you describe. The research team for this project is :

Your participation in this study is voluntary; you may decline to participate without penalty. If you decide to participate, you may withdraw from the study at any time. Enter your private key below to indicate your consent and begin the survey. If you do not have a private key or you have technical difficulties with the site, please email Kevin Crouse at kevin.crouse@gse.rutgers.edu for assistance.

Confidentiality statement: We take great strides to ensure that no identifying information is linked to you, and no information about your identity, position, or discipline will be disclosed. Your participant key is separate from the network key that identifies you to other participants, and both of these are translated into untraceable identifies in the data analysis process. Further, even the primary investigators cannot identify you in the course of data analysis; the only map between your identity and the analysis dataset is stored in a separate, encrypted location. Finally, we do not specify the discipline in the final data set, only the general disciplinary field (e.g. Social Sciences, Humanities).

You may print this document or the IRB consent linked to above for your records by using the print function on your browser.


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