Examining and Evaluating Team Science Competencies Through Sensemaking

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The goal of this evaluation is to assess the value added by offering a CTSA-funded Translational Science Leadership Academy (TSLA) for faculty research leaders. We aim to disseminate lessons learned to help inform best practices for other CTSA hubs promoting team science, specifically research team leadership. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Atrium Health Wake Forest CTSI Team Science Program has completed 3 iterations of the TSLA, offered to all faculty leading research teams. Academies were attended by 16 (2020 cohort), 17 (2021) and 18 (2022) research faculty. For the 2022 Academy, the CTSI Evaluation Program, in collaboration with the Team Science Program, implemented a pre-post assessments for all cohort participants. These assessments tracked self-rated competencies changes, satisfaction with the program, and any recommendations for program improvement. All future cohorts will receive these assessments as well. Results will be presented from 15 semi-structured interviews with participants. We will incorporate continuous improvement cycles to gather future feedback, track recommendations and identify future directions for content. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Faculty from all ranks (Assistant, Associate, Full Professor, Department Chair) participated. Leadership competencies were assessed through a pre-post comparison, each self-rated by Academy participants. The 2022 cohort showed an increase in every competency at the time of post-assessment. When asked how they would rate the overall quality of their team leadership, cohort average increased from 4.3 to 5.5 (+1.2 on a 7-point scale) from pre- to post-assessment. Additionally, 80% of post-assessment respondents plan to make (or have already made) changes in their team leadership practices. Through the qualitative evaluation, we expect to gain insight into individual experiences, changes made after participation in the Academy, and what needs still exist for research leaders. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Competent team leadership is key to realizing our clinical and research mission. The CTSI Translational Research Leadership Academy is an important way to bolster study team productivity, engagement and satisfaction among research teams. This project provides insight for CTSA hubs interested in promoting team science best practices.

Team leadership is a critical skill for emergency medicine physicians that directly affects team performance and the quality of patient care. There exists a robust body of team science research supporting team leadership conceptual models and behavioral skill sets. However, to date, this work has not been widely incorporated into health care team leadership education. This narrative review has 3 aims: (1) to synthesize the team science literature and to translate important concepts and models to health care team leadership; (2) to describe how team leadership is currently represented in the health care literature and in the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Milestones for emergency medicine; and (3) to propose a novel, evidence-based framework for the assessment of team leadership in emergency medicine. We conducted a narrative review of the team science and health care literature. We summarized our findings and identified a list of team leadership behaviors that were then used to create a framework for team leadership assessment. Current health care team leadership measurement tools do not incorporate evidence-based models of leadership concepts from other established domains. The emergency medicine milestones include several team leadership behaviors as part of a larger resident evaluation program. However, they do not offer a comprehensive or cohesive representation of the team leadership construct. Despite the importance of team leadership to patient care, there is no standardized approach to team leadership assessment in emergency medicine. Based on the results of our review, we propose a novel team leadership assessment framework that is supported by the team science literature.

Proposal for Life Course Intervention Researcher Core Competencies.

How to give full play to the positive function of constructive conflicts (task conflicts and process conflicts) in the science and technology innovation team, give appropriate stimulation, mobilize the enthusiasm...

Using a team survey to improve team communication for enhanced delivery of agro-climate decision support tools

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: A barrier to the proliferation of team science is that academicians are often trained in disciplinary silos where “independent” research contributions are lauded. To tackle some of the most pressing scientific challenges, dismantling silos and increasing team science training efforts that focus on early career investigators is a must. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: A team science training workshop for early career investigators from varied disciplinary backgrounds was informed by a 20-item needs assessment that addressed essential team science competencies and was completed by early career investigators participating in federally funded professional development programs on our campus. During the workshop, the benefits of cross-disciplinary teaming was discussed. Strategies including team formation, team effectiveness and/or dysfunction, diagnosing team strengths and weaknesses, and teaming in community settings were discussed. Instructional methods included short presentations, video clips, case studies, group discussions, pair and share activities, and panel discussions with expert role models encouraged active learning. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The impact and value of the workshop series to participant’s professional development and knowledge of team science concepts will be evaluated before and after the workshop. Multiple Likert-scale items focused on team science competencies (e.g., confidence in your ability to carry out responsibilities specific to your role on a team, recognize when the team is not functioning well; engage team science practices in on-going research), and open-ended questions (e.g., importance of engaging community partners in academic research teams, vision of what factors contribute to an effective team science collaboration) will be completed by program participants before and after completing the workshop. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Effective collaboration among scientists with expertise in different disciplines is needed to address and solve complex scientific problems. We believe our interactive approach to team competency training sessions would work in a variety of settings and improve team skills.

ABSTRACTTeam-based work structures have become prevalent in science. Scientific teams, however, are characterized by competing individual-level and team-level needs (i.e., by mixed-motive situations). This makes leading scientific teams particularly challenging: Balancing competing individual-level goals and common team-level goals requires a specific type of leadership that simultaneously considers both satisfying individual-level needs as well as team-level needs. The current study addresses this issue by combining the dual-focused model of transformational leadership with person-environment fit theory. Specifically, we investigated needs-supplies fit, person-supervisor fit, and team fit as mediators of the relationship between transformational leadership and scientific team members’ job satisfaction and work-related strain. In doing so, we provide a new perspective on leadership in scientific teams by explicitly differentiating individual-level and team-level effects of transformational leadership. We tested our hypotheses using a three-wave design with a sample of 134 members of 42 scientific teams. The relationships between individual-focused transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and work-related strain were mediated by needs-supplies fit and person-supervisor fit. Team-focused transformational leadership was positively related to job satisfaction and negatively related to work-related strain. Our findings contribute to further clarifying the mechanisms underlying the relationship between transformational leadership and members’ well-being in scientific teams.

Integrating community expertise into scientific teams and research endeavors can holistically address complex health challenges and grand societal problems. An in-depth understanding of the integration of team science and community engagement principles is needed. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify how and where team science and community engagement approaches are being used simultaneously in research. We followed Levac's enhancement of Arksey and O'Malley's Scoping Review Framework and systematically searched PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, ERIC, and Embase for team science and community engagement terms through January 2024. Sixty-seven articles were reviewed. Publications describing integrated team science and community-engaged research have increased exponentially since 2004. Over half were conducted outside of the U.S., utilized qualitative methods, included community-researcher co-development of research question and study design, and described team partnership goals, roles, and management. Fewer studies evaluated partnership, built community capacity, described financial compensation to communities, or described team dynamics facilitation. As researchers continue to integrate community engagement and team science, common criteria and strategies for integrating the approaches are needed. We provide 19 recommendations for research teams, research institutions, journals, and funding bodies in service of advancing the science and practice of this integration.

This paper examines the disruptiveness of research produced by scientific teams with an emphasis on understanding how a team’s gender composition and team leader’s interdisciplinarity focus influence the way in which the research consolidates and destabilizes the knowledge trajectories to which they contribute. Drawing on new indicators of disruptiveness and transaction-level research expenditures data, I test disruptiveness effects using an expansive definition of a research team that considers all individuals who were paid on a grant associated with the principal investigator (PI). Insights from the sociology of science and prospect theory support the female-favoring-prospecting perspective. The female-favoring-prospecting perspective suggests that female PIs will be more likely to pursue exploratory projects that have greater potential to disrupt existing research streams. I test the study’s hypotheses using a sample of 3,758 scientific research teams in biomedicine that produced 32,655 papers between 2002-2013. UMETRICS data (Universities Measuring the EffecTs of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science) on the PIs and their teams, WoS (Web of Science) on scientific research publications and citations, and Scimago journal classifications are used. The analyses demonstrate female dominated teams had highest likelihood of disruption, while gender parity teams had lowest odds of disruption. Further, PIs with stronger histories of interdisciplinary research produced increasingly disruptive research when their teams were female dominated. The findings provide significant contribution to science of science and innovation policy.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of shared leadership on team members’ innovative behavior.Design/methodology/approachPaired questionnaires were collected from 89 scientific research teams in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China at two-time points with a time lag of 4 months. Then multilevel structural equation model method was applied to analyze the multiple mediating effects.FindingsThis study finds that: the form of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities; shared leadership has a positive impact on team members’ innovative behavior; there are multiple mediations in the relationship including synchronization and sequence of creative self-efficacy and achievement motivation.Originality/valueAccording to the “stimulus-organism-response” model, this paper has constructed a multi-level theoretical model that shared leadership influences individual innovation behavior and reveals the “black box” from the perspective of psychological mechanism. It not only verifies that “can-do” shapes “willing to do” but also makes up for the gap of an empirical test of the effectiveness of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities. Besides, the formal scale of shared leadership in the Chinese situation is revised, which can provide a reference for future empirical research on shared leadership. The research conclusions provide new ideas for improving the management of scientific research teams in universities.

Team science, defined as collaborative research efforts that leverage the expertise of diverse disciplines, is recognised as a critical means to address complex healthcare challenges, but the practical implementation of team science can be difficult. Our objective is to describe the barriers, solutions and lessons learned from our team science experience as applied to the complex and growing challenge of multiple chronic conditions (MCC). MCC is the presence of two or more chronic conditions that have a collective adverse effect on health status, function or quality of life, and that require complex healthcare management, decision-making or coordination. Due to the increasing impact on the United States society, MCC research has been identified as a high priority research area by multiple federal agencies. In response to this need, two national research entities, the Healthcare Systems Research Network (HCSRN) and the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Centers (OAIC), formed the Advancing Geriatrics Infrastructure and Network Growth (AGING) Initiative to build nationwide capacity for MCC team science. This article describes the structure, lessons learned and initial outcomes of the AGING Initiative. We call for funding mechanisms to sustain infrastructures that have demonstrated success in fostering team science and innovation in translating findings to policy change necessary to solve complex problems in healthcare.

Journal Article Confessions of a team science funder Get access Robert T. Croyle, Ph.D. Robert T. Croyle, Ph.D. 1Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, 6130 Executive Blvd., Room 6138, 20892-7338, Bethesda, MD, USA acroyler@mail.nih.gov Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Translational Behavioral Medicine, Volume 2, Issue 4, December 2012, Pages 531–534, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13142-012-0179-7 Published: 21 November 2012

Increasingly emphasized by leaders in family medicine and primary care research, team science is an approach to research that requires clear documentation for replicability. Here, we report the approach to documenting team science in 2 US family medicine research journals. Our interdisciplinary team, composed of MDs and PhDs from family medicine and other disciplines, established a definition of the "team science" construct, which included the utilization of interdisciplinary partnerships and/or collaboration with community-based organizations. Two team members reviewed every original research article published in 2023 in the Annals of Family Medicine (AFM) and the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). Data extraction identified the use of the term "team science" or the presence of elements of the construct as defined by the team, as well as the funding source(s). Of the 107 articles reviewed, none explicitly mentioned the term "team science." However, 19 (17.8%) described interdisciplinary partnerships. Seventeen (15.9%) described the disciplines of the contributors, and 5 (4.7%) described community collaborators. Most articles (80.4%) were funded studies, with 70.9% supported by national governmental or nongovernmental entities. In this sample of articles, team science was either not reported at all or it was described in a limited way. The authors recommend that editors encourage discussions of interdisciplinarity and team science research practices in manuscripts, including descriptions of the strengths each disciplinary representative brings to the team.

Multiple theories of problem-solving hypothesize that there are distinct qualitative phases exhibited during effective problem-solving. However, limited research has attempted to identify when transitions between phases occur. We integrate theory on collaborative problem-solving (CPS) with dynamical systems theory suggesting that when a system is undergoing a phase transition it should exhibit a peak in entropy and that entropy levels should also relate to team performance. Communications from 40 teams that collaborated on a complex problem were coded for occurrence of problem-solving processes. We applied a sliding window entropy technique to each team's communications and specified criteria for (a) identifying data points that qualify as peaks and (b) determining which peaks were robust. We used multilevel modeling, and provide a qualitative example, to evaluate whether phases exhibit distinct distributions of communication processes. We also tested whether there was a relationship between entropy values at transition points and CPS performance. We found that a proportion of entropy peaks was robust and that the relative occurrence of communication codes varied significantly across phases. Peaks in entropy thus corresponded to qualitative shifts in teams' CPS communications, providing empirical evidence that teams exhibit phase transitions during CPS. Also, lower average levels of entropy at the phase transition points predicted better CPS performance. We specify future directions to improve understanding of phase transitions during CPS, and collaborative cognition, more broadly.

Solving complex problems requires input from stakeholders with different disciplinary expertise. Each stakeholder contributes to solution finding and generation by bringing a different set of skills to approaching the problem. Teamwork is crucial for performing most design tasks as these different roles and perspectives can complement each other, far beyond the scope of a single individual. Proper communication between team members is required to reap the benefits of teamwork. Communication in teams has been shown to be influenced by the relationship between team members, hierarchies present within teams and team diversity. Communicative acts have also been shown to represent team processes. However, research on the relationship between team member communication and its impact on team outcomes, team performance and team decision making is limited. Even more limited are studies that identify when communication is most important during design and the impact of functional boundaries within the team. Using the DTRS11 data, we studied the influence of communication on team design decisions made and the communication patterns that emerge to create different decisions, focusing on the influence of the presence of functional boundaries.We found that roles and positions influence design decisions made and in a well-integrated crossfunctional team, the presence of multiple functional groups can reduce this effect. Having a cross-functional team led to increased input on decisions made, following an integrative approach, than in a team with a single functional group.