Your Input Matters: Astronomers Needed for Research Study
Timothy Spuck Associated Universities, Inc.
Here's an opportunity to help improve future learning in astronomy by sharing what knowledge, skills, tools and techniques, and habits of thinking you use in the practice of your science.
This is an open invitation to participate in a research study that explores the activities in which astronomers currently engage. The goal of the study is to characterize what it is that you do as a practicing astronomer. The results will provide educators, curriculum developers, and others a valuable tool as they work to create more authentic (real-world) experiences, improving astronomy learning for all.
Participants in the survey must meet the following four requirements:
- have one or more science or science-related degrees, with at least one at the master's level or higher,
- work primarily in one or more of the astronomy subdisciplines listed at the end of this letter,
- be currently engaged in, or have engaged in, at least one astronomy-related research project within the past two years, and
- be an astronomer primarily based in the United States or a US territory, or at a US facility in another country.
This study is being conducted by Tim Spuck, a doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction under the supervision of Dr. James Rye, professor in the West Virginia University College of Education and Human Services. This research is part of a dissertation that is being conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral program at West Virginia University.
Your participation in this study is completely voluntary and consists of completing an online survey, which will take approximately 15 minutes. Your involvement will be kept as confidential as legally possible. It is not necessary for you to provide your name in order to participate in the study, and all data will appear as an aggregate in the final report without any association to participant names. However, at the end of the survey you will be given the option to answer several additional open-ended questions. If you choose to respond to these, you may elect to do so via the online survey, or you may request to respond via a telephone interview. If you choose the latter, you will be asked to provide your name and contact information so that a phone interview can be arranged. Your name and contact information will remain confidential.
Although your response to all questions is encouraged, you may skip any question that you do not wish to answer, and you may discontinue the survey at any time. West Virginia University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) acknowledgment of this project is on file.
Thank you for your willingness to participate. If you have any questions, please email Tim Spuck of call him at 814-758-9527.
Astronomy Subdisciplines for This Survey:
- Archaeoastronomy
- Astrobiology
- Astrochemistry
- Astroengineering
- Astrometry
- Astronomy education
- Astrophysics
- Celestial mechanics
- Computational astronomy
- Physical cosmology
- Extragalactic astronomy
- Galactic astronomy
- Gamma-ray astronomy
- Gravitational-wave astronomy
- Neutrino astronomy
- Observational astronomy
- Planetary science
- Radio astronomy
- Solar astronomy
- Stellar astronomy
- X-ray astronomy