Psychology in an age of ecological crisis: from personal angst to collective action.

Recent technological, geophysical, and societal forces have fundamentally altered the structure and functioning of human environments. Prominent among these forces are the rise of the Internet; rapid rates of global environmental change; and widening rifts among different socioeconomic, racial, religious, and ethnic groups. The present article traces the influence of these conditions on individuals' cognition, behavior, and well-being. New theoretical questions are raised and conceptual frameworks proposed to understand how global conditions are restructuring people's relationships with their everyday environments. New directions for psychological research and practice aimed at reducing global threats to personal and societal well-being are discussed.

The science of team science: overview of the field and introduction to the supplement.

The science of team science encompasses an amalgam of conceptual and methodologic strategies aimed at understanding and enhancing the outcomes of large-scale collaborative research and training programs. This field has emerged rapidly in recent years, largely in response to growing concerns about the cost effectiveness of public- and private-sector investments in team-based science and training initiatives. The distinctive boundaries and substantive concerns of this field, however, have remained difficult to discern. An important challenge for the field is to characterize the science of team science more clearly in terms of its major theoretical, methodologic, and translational concerns. The articles in this supplement address this challenge, especially in the context of designing, implementing, and evaluating cross-disciplinary research initiatives. This introductory article summarizes the major goals and organizing themes of the supplement, draws links between the constituent articles, and identifies new areas of study within the science of team science.

The ecology of team science: understanding contextual influences on transdisciplinary collaboration.

Increased public and private investments in large-scale team science initiatives over the past two decades have underscored the need to better understand how contextual factors influence the effectiveness of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration. Toward that goal, the findings from four distinct areas of research on team performance and collaboration are reviewed: (1) social psychological and management research on the effectiveness of teams in organizational and institutional settings; (2) studies of cyber-infrastructures (i.e., computer-based infrastructures) designed to support transdisciplinary collaboration across remote research sites; (3) investigations of community-based coalitions for health promotion; and (4) studies focusing directly on the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of scientific collaboration within transdisciplinary research centers and training programs. The empirical literature within these four domains reveals several contextual circumstances that either facilitate or hinder team performance and collaboration. A typology of contextual influences on transdisciplinary collaboration is proposed as a basis for deriving practical guidelines for designing, managing, and evaluating successful team science initiatives.

Moving the science of team science forward: collaboration and creativity.

Teams of scientists representing diverse disciplines are often brought together for purposes of better understanding and, ultimately, resolving urgent public health and environmental problems. Likewise, the emerging field of the science of team science draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives to better understand and enhance the processes and outcomes of scientific collaboration. In this supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, leading scholars in the nascent field of team science have come together with a common goal of advancing the field with new models, methods, and measures. This summary article highlights key themes reflected in the supplement and identifies several promising directions for future research organized around the following broad challenges: (1) operationalizing cross-disciplinary team science and training more clearly; (2) conceptualizing the multiple dimensions of readiness for team science; (3) ensuring the sustainability of transdisciplinary team science; (4) developing more effective models and strategies for training transdisciplinary scientists; (5) creating and validating improved models, methods, and measures for evaluating team science; and (6) fostering transdisciplinary cross-sector partnerships. A call to action is made to leaders from the research, funding, and practice sectors to embrace strategies of creativity and innovation in a collective effort to move the field forward, which may not only advance the science of team science but, ultimately, public health science and practice.

Measuring collaboration and transdisciplinary integration in team science.

PURPOSE: As the science of team science evolves, the development of measures that assess important processes related to working in transdisciplinary teams is critical. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present the psychometric properties of scales measuring collaborative processes and transdisciplinary integration. METHODS: Two hundred-sixteen researchers and research staff participating in the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURC) Initiative completed the TTURC researcher survey. Confirmatory-factor analyses were used to verify the hypothesized factor structures. Descriptive data pertinent to these scales and their associations with other constructs were included to further examine the properties of the scales. RESULTS: Overall, the hypothesized-factor structures, with some minor modifications, were validated. A total of four scales were developed, three to assess collaborative processes (satisfaction with the collaboration, impact of collaboration, trust and respect) and one to assess transdisciplinary integration. All scales were found to have adequate internal consistency (i.e., Cronbach alpha's were all >0.70); were correlated with intermediate markers of collaborations (e.g., the collaboration and transdisciplinary-integration scales were positively associated with the perception of a center's making good progress in creating new methods, new science and models, and new interventions); and showed some ability to detect group differences. CONCLUSIONS: This paper provides valid tools that can be utilized to examine the underlying processes of team science--an important step toward advancing the science of team science.

The collaboration readiness of transdisciplinary research teams and centers findings from the National Cancer Institute's TREC Year-One evaluation study.

Growing interest in promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration among health scientists has prompted several federal agencies, including the NIH, to establish large, multicenter initiatives intended to foster collaborative research and training. In order to assess whether these initiatives are effective in promoting scientific collaboration that ultimately results in public health improvements, it is necessary to develop new strategies for evaluating research processes and products as well as the longer-term societal outcomes associated with these programs. Ideally, evaluative measures should be administered over the entire course of large initiatives, including their near-term and later phases. The present study focuses on the development of new tools for assessing the readiness for collaboration among health scientists at the outset (during the first year) of their participation in the National Cancer Institute's Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (TREC) initiative. Indexes of collaborative readiness, along with additional measures of near-term collaborative processes, were administered as part of the TREC Year-One evaluation survey. Additionally, early progress toward scientific collaboration and integration was assessed, using a protocol for evaluating written research products. Results from the Year-One survey and the ratings of written products provide evidence of cross-disciplinary collaboration among participants during the first year of the initiative, and also reveal opportunities for enhancing collaborative processes and outcomes during subsequent phases of the project. The implications of these findings for future evaluations of team science initiatives are discussed.

Social ecological predictors of prostate-specific antigen blood test and digital rectal examination in black American men.

BACKGROUND: Black American men continue to suffer disproportionately from epidemically higher rates of prostate cancer. We hypothesize that complex reasons for persistently higher death rates of prostate cancer in this group are steeped in social factors associated with health access. METHODS: We utilized data from the It's All About U prostate cancer prevention study among black men to investigate: 1) what social ecological factors were predictive of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing and digital rectal examinations (DRE); 2) if black men were aware of prostate cancer screening and, if screening was available, would they take the PSA and DRE? Quantitative cross-sectional data from a cohort of 276 black men with no diagnosis of prostate cancer were analyzed to identify characteristics, beliefs, practices and attitudes of this group toward prostate cancer screening. We created a social ecological model to examine which social factors (i.e., environmental, personal, person/environment interplay, black culture and institutional policy) were predictive of PSA and DRE, PSA only and DRE only. To reduce data and identify data patterns, factor analyses (tested for reliability by calculating Cronbach alpha scores) were performed. Variables were standardized with Z scores and analyzed with predictive analytic software technology (SPSS, version 12). A multivariate binary logistic regression was conducted to identify predictors of PSA and DRE. RESULTS: A significant predictor of both PSA and DRE was the physician's direct prostate cancer communication message (P<0.010). Significant correlations exist in PSA and DRE outcomes with a physician's engaging communication style (P<0.012), encouragement to screen (P<0.001) and sharing prostate cancer information (P<0.001); as was men understanding the serious risk of prostate cancer (P<0.001), culture (P<0.004), positive interaction with healthcare staff, significant other(s) and providers (P<0.001), and environmental dimensions (P<0.006). A profile of four major self-reported barriers to screening were identified (i.e., fear, internal locus of health, comfort level and external locus of health). Lastly, men who utilized health systems with a prostate cancer screening policy had high percentages of PSA and DRE (63.3%), PSA only (70.9%) and DRE only (81.7%). CONCLUSION: A physician's aggressive, positive engagement in shared decision-making, tailored social influences promoting prostate cancer prevention among black men, as well as institutional screening policy, has the potential to increase early detection and reduce morbidity among this group.

In vivo studies of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration Lessons learned and implications for active living research.

The past 2 decades have witnessed a surge of interest and investment in transdisciplinary research teams and centers. Only recently, however, have efforts been made to evaluate the collaborative processes and scientific and public policy outcomes of these endeavors. This paper offers a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating transdisciplinary research, and describes a large-scale national initiative, the National Institutes of Health Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURCs) program, undertaken to promote cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration in the field of tobacco use science and prevention. A 5-year evaluation of collaborative processes and outcomes observed across multiple TTURC centers conducted during 1999 to 2004 is described. The findings highlight key contextual circumstances faced by participating centers (i.e., the breadth of disciplines and departments represented by each center, the extent to which members had worked together on prior projects, spatial proximity among researchers' offices, and frequency of their face-to-face interaction) that influenced their readiness for collaboration and prompted them to follow different pathways toward transdisciplinary integration. Implications of these findings for developing and evaluating future transdisciplinary research initiatives in the field of active living research are discussed.

Increasing the health promotive capacity of human environments.

This article offers an integration of two different perspectives on health promotion research and practice: one emphasizing the concept of community capacity for health improvement and the other focusing on the notion of health supportive environments. These two approaches generally have emphasized different kinds of community assets for health promotion. Specifically, community capacity research has focused on the cultivation of human resources (e.g., collaborative coalitions, participatory decision-making, health education strategies) for health promotion, whereas environmentally oriented research has underscored the influence of material resources (e.g., the built environment, natural resources, technological infrastructure) on important health behaviors and outcomes. Combining these two streams of health promotion research yields a broader understanding of the health promotive capacity of human environments and suggests several "best process" guidelines for enhancing health promotion practice.

An integrative framework for community partnering to translate theory into effective health promotion strategy.

INTRODUCTION: Although there is general agreement about the complex interplay among individual-, family-, organizational-, and community-level factors as they influence health outcomes, there is still a gap between health promotion research and practice. The authors suggest that a disjuncture exists between the multiple theories and models of health promotion and the practitioner's need for a more unified set of guidelines for comprehensive planning of programs. Therefore, we put forward in this paper an idea toward closing the gap between research and practice, a case for developing an overarching framework--with several health promotion models that could integrate existing theories--and applying it to comprehensive health promotion strategy. AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK: We outline a theoretical foundation for future health promotion research and practice that integrates four models: the social ecology; the Life Course Health Development; the Predisposing, Reinforcing, and Enabling Constructs in Educational/Environmental Diagnosis and Evaluation-Policy, Regulatory and Organizational Constructs in Educational and Environmental Development; and the community partnering models. The first three models are well developed and complementary. There is little consensus on the latter model, community partnering. However, we suggest that such a model is a vital part of an overall framework, and we present an approach to reconciling theoretical tensions among researchers and practitioners involved in community health promotion. INTEGRATING THE MODELS: THE NEED FOR SYSTEMS THEORY AND THINKING: Systems theory has been relatively ignored both by the health promotion field and, more generally, by the health services. We make a case for greater use of systems theory in the development of an overall framework, both to improve integration and to incorporate key concepts from the diverse systems literatures of other disciplines. VISION FOR HEALTHY COMMUNITIES: (1) Researchers and practitioners understand the complex interplay among individual-, family-, organizational-, and community-level factors as they influence population health; (2) health promotion researchers and practitioners collaborate effectively with others in the community to create integrated strategies that work as a system to address a wide array of health-related factors; (3) The Healthy People Objectives for the Nation includes balanced indicators to reflect health promotion realities and research-measures effects on all levels; (4) the gap between community health promotion "best practices" guidelines and the way things work in the everyday world of health promotion practice has been substantially closed. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: We suggest critical next steps toward closing the gap between health promotion research and practice: investing in networks that promote, support, and sustain ongoing dialogue and sharing of experience; finding common ground in an approach to community partnering; and gaining consensus on the proposed integrating framework.

Physicians' attitudes and practices regarding complementary and alternative medicine.

This article offers a review of the research literature on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and presents the findings from an exploratory survey of the beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors of conventionally trained physicians toward CAM. Earlier studies of CAM focused primarily on patients' attitudes and behaviors rather than those of physicians. Physicians play a crucial role in moderating patients' beliefs about and use of CAM treatments. Accordingly, this study focused on physicians' knowledge of medical efficacy and their impressions of CAM treatments. The findings from a survey mailed to a random sample of California physicians revealed that physicians' use or recommendations of CAM in their practices are limited by concerns about medical professional norms, yet are positively associated with their use of computer technology for self-education and communication with peers. Sixty-one percent of physicians do not feel sufficiently knowledgeable about CAM safety or efficacy, and 81% would like to receive more education on CAM modalities. The findings raise important issues for medical education and patient care.

Psychology and the internet: a social ecological analysis.

This paper proposes a research strategy based on a social ecological analysis of the Internet and its psychological impact as an option to generate original research to answer the follow ing question: What is the psycho-environmental meaning of the Internet? This paper has two objectives: first, to analyze Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) linked to the use of the Internet from a social ecological approach, and second, to propose some relationships among variables from a social ecological perspective, which can help to clarify the variability and magnitude of the psychosocial effect associated with the Internet. This article is divided into three sections. The first briefly describes the origins and development of the Internet. It identifies some technological features and specifies some of the cutting-edge breakthroughs that have facilitated its expansion. The second section proposes a conceptual scheme from the social ecological perspective, which analyzes the subject-environmental binomial associated with the Internet. It identifies the basic assumption, the conceptual richness, and possibilities for research on the Internet, using a social ecological approach. Finally, the last section describes the scope and limitations of this perspective, and discusses its heuristic utility for the development and consolidation of a new area in psychological research: "digital psychology or cyber psychology."

Pioneering the Transdisciplinary Team Science Approach: Lessons Learned from National Cancer Institute Grantees.

The National Cancer Institute has been a leader in supporting transdisciplinary (TD) team science. From 2005-2010, the NCI supported Transdisciplinary Research on Energetic and Cancer I (TREC I), a center initiative fostering the TD integration of social, behavioral, and biological sciences to examine the relationships among obesity, nutrition, physical activity and cancer. In the final year of TREC I, we conducted qualitative in-depth-interviews with 31 participating investigators and trainees to learn more about their experiences with TD team science, including challenges, facilitating factors, strategies for success, and impacts. Five main challenges emerged: (1) limited published guidance for how to engage in TD team science, when TREC I was implemented; (2) conceptual and scientific challenges inherent to efforts to achieve TD integration; (3) discipline-based differences in values, terminology, methods, and work styles; (4) project management challenges involved in TD team science; and (5) traditional incentive and reward systems that do not recognize or reward TD team science. Four main facilitating factors and strategies for success emerged: (1) beneficial attitudes and beliefs about TD research and team science; (2) effective team processes; (3) brokering and bridge-building activities by individuals holding particular roles in a research center; and (4) funding initiative characteristics that support TD team science. Broad impacts of participating in TD team science in the context of TREC I included: (1) new positive attitudes about TD research and team science; (2) new boundary-crossing collaborations; (3) scientific advances related to research approaches, findings, and dissemination; (4) institutional culture change and resource creation in support of TD team science; and (5) career advancement. Funding agencies, academic institutions, and scholarly journals can help to foster TD team science through funding opportunities, institutional policies on extra-departmental and cross-school collaboration, promotion and tenure policies, and publishing opportunities for TD research.

A Four-Phase Model of Transdisciplinary Team-Based Research: Goals, Team Processes, and Strategies.

The complexity of social and public health challenges has led to burgeoning interest and investments in cross-disciplinary team-based research, and particularly in transdisciplinary (TD) team-based research. TD research aims to integrate and ultimately extend beyond discipline-specific concepts, approaches, and methods to accelerate innovations and progress toward solving complex real-world problems. While TD research offers the promise of novel, wide-reaching and important discoveries, it also introduces unique challenges. In particular, today's investigators are generally trained in unidisciplinary approaches, and may have little training in, or exposure to, the scientific skills and team processes necessary to collaborate successfully in teams of colleagues from widely disparate disciplines and fields. Yet these skills are essential to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of TD team-based research. In the current article we propose a model of TD team-based research that includes four relatively distinct phases: development, conceptualization, implementation, and translation. Drawing on the science of team science (SciTS) field, as well as the findings from previous research on group dynamics and organizational behavior, we identify key scientific goals and team processes that occur in each phase and across multiple phases. We then provide real-world exemplars for each phase that highlight strategies for successfully meeting the goals and engaging in the team processes that are hallmarks of that phase. We conclude by discussing the relevance of the model for TD team-based research initiatives, funding to support these initiatives, and future empirical research that aims to better understand the processes and outcomes of TD team-based research.

Influence of a National Cancer Institute transdisciplinary research and training initiative on trainees' transdisciplinary research competencies and scholarly productivity.

Over the past several decades, there has been burgeoning interest and investment in large transdisciplinary (TD) team science initiatives that aim to address complex societal problems. Despite this trend, TD training opportunities in the health sciences remain limited, and evaluations of these opportunities are even more uncommon due to funding constraints. We had the unique opportunity to conduct an exploratory study to examine the potential outcomes and impacts of TD training in a National Cancer Institute-supported initiative for TD research and training-the Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer I (TREC I) initiative. This study used a retrospective mixed-methods approach leveraging secondary analysis of existing data sources to learn about TREC trainees' experiences with TREC training, TD research competencies, changes in scholarly productivity, and the associations among these domains. Results indicated that, on average, TREC trainees were satisfied with their TREC mentoring experiences and believed that TREC training processes were effective, in general. Participation in TREC training was associated with TD research competencies, including TD research orientation, positive general attitude toward TD training, development of scientific skills for TD research, and intrapersonal/interpersonal competencies for collaboration. There was also a significant increase in trainees' scholarly productivity from before to after starting in TREC training, as indicated by average annual number of publications and presentations and average number of coauthors per publication. Perceived effectiveness of TREC training was positively correlated with change in average annual number of research presentations from before to after starting in TREC training (r = 0.65, p < 0.05, N = 12), as well as TD research orientation (r = 0.36, p < 0.05), general attitude toward TD training (0.39, p < 0.05), scientific skills for TD research (r = 0.45-0.48, p < 0.05), and perceived collaborative productivity at one's TREC center (r = 0.47, p < 0.01). Finally, a significant positive correlation was observed between multi-mentoring experiences and both TD research orientation (r = 0.58, p < 0.05) and perceived collaborative productivity at one's TREC center (r = 0.44, p < 0.05). This exploratory study had methodological constraints including the absence of a comparison group and cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data related to TD research competencies. Despite these limitations, the study provided an opportunity to use existing data sources to explore potential outcomes and impacts of TD training and inform development of future rigorous evaluations of TD training. Overall, findings suggest that TD training in the context of a TD research initiative can provide satisfying training opportunities that support the development of TD research competencies and promote scholarly productivity.

Assessing the value of team science: a study comparing center- and investigator-initiated grants.

BACKGROUND: Large cross-disciplinary scientific teams are becoming increasingly prominent in the conduct of research. PURPOSE: This paper reports on a quasi-experimental longitudinal study conducted to compare bibliometric indicators of scientific collaboration, productivity, and impact of center-based transdisciplinary team science initiatives and traditional investigator-initiated grants in the same field. METHODS: All grants began between 1994 and 2004 and up to 10 years of publication data were collected for each grant. Publication information was compiled and analyzed during the spring and summer of 2010. RESULTS: Following an initial lag period, the transdisciplinary research center grants had higher overall publication rates than the investigator-initiated R01 (NIH Research Project Grant Program) grants. There were relatively uniform publication rates across the research center grants compared to dramatically dispersed publication rates among the R01 grants. On average, publications produced by the research center grants had greater numbers of coauthors but similar journal impact factors compared with publications produced by the R01 grants. CONCLUSIONS: The lag in productivity among the transdisciplinary center grants was offset by their overall higher publication rates and average number of coauthors per publication, relative to investigator-initiated grants, over the 10-year comparison period. The findings suggest that transdisciplinary center grants create benefits for both scientific productivity and collaboration.

Mapping a research agenda for the science of team science.

An increase in cross-disciplinary, collaborative team science initiatives over the last few decades has spurred interest by multiple stakeholder groups in empirical research on scientific teams, giving rise to an emergent field referred to as the science of team science (SciTS). This study employed a collaborative team science concept-mapping evaluation methodology to develop a comprehensive research agenda for the SciTS field. Its integrative mixed-methods approach combined group process with statistical analysis to derive a conceptual framework that identifies research areas of team science and their relative importance to the emerging SciTS field. The findings from this concept-mapping project constitute a lever for moving SciTS forward at theoretical, empirical, and translational levels.

A multi-level systems perspective for the science of team science.

This Commentary describes recent research progress and professional developments in the study of scientific teamwork, an area of inquiry termed the "science of team science" (SciTS, pronounced "sahyts"). It proposes a systems perspective that incorporates a mixed-methods approach to SciTS that is commensurate with the conceptual, methodological, and translational complexities addressed within the SciTS field. The theoretically grounded and practically useful framework is intended to integrate existing and future lines of SciTS research to facilitate the field's evolution as it addresses key challenges spanning macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis.

Advancing the science of team science.

The First Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference was held in Chicago, IL April 22-24, 2010. This article presents a summary of the Conference proceedings.