SOCIAL, BEHAVIORAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCES $175,140,000
The FY 2001 Budget Request for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
(SBE) Activity is $175.14 million, an increase of $29.0 million, or 19.8
percent, over the FY 2000 Current Plan of $146.14 million.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 1999
Actual
|
FY 2000
Current Plan
|
FY 2001
Request
|
Change
|
Amount
|
Percent
|
Social and Economic Sciences
|
60.13
|
61.08
|
72.06
|
10.98
|
18.0%
|
Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
|
40.45
|
45.38
|
59.29
|
13.91
|
30.7%
|
International Cooperative Scientific Activities
|
27.03
|
24.81
|
26.88
|
2.07
|
8.3%
|
Science Resources Studies
|
14.43
|
14.87
|
16.91
|
2.04
|
13.7%
|
Total, SBE
|
$142.04
|
$146.14
|
$175.14
|
$29.00
|
19.8%
|
New scientific breakthroughs are accelerating progress
in areas of the social and behavioral sciences, including brain imaging,
genome analysis, rigorous laboratory experimentation, Internet-based
data collection, and advances in statistical analysis. At the same time,
existing scientific understanding is challenged by the rapid changes
taking place in society's use of communication technology, patterns
of social interaction, the world economic system, and the political
systems of many nations. The rapid growth of scientific activity outside
the United States requires new international cooperative projects and
training, and the increasing impact of technology demands increased
effort to document and strengthen our nation's scientific resources
and workforce.
SBE is the principal source of federal support for fundamental research
on human social, cognitive, psychological and economic behavior as well
as for research on the intellectual and social contexts that govern the
development and use of science and technology. SBE also is responsible
for providing reliable quantitative information on the science and technology
enterprise, and for promoting international collaborations for research
and education for U.S. scientists and engineers.
SBE focuses its resources on achieving NSF's strategic goals. Support
for the development of "Ideas" is provided through its broad range of
research, with emphasis on areas such as human cognition and neuroscience,
including implications for learning. Research in economics, political
science, and risk analysis is yielding heightened societal benefits in
the form of better public policy and more efficient business management.
Research findings in psychological, cognitive, and language sciences are
yielding a sharper picture of how human language is acquired and how it
is used, both for thought and communication, thus laying the foundation
for progress in many areas of major national importance, from teaching
children how to read to building computers that can talk.
At NSF, placing research and learning hand in hand is our highest priority,
and the people involved in our projects represent both the focus of our
investments and the most important products of them. Across its programs,
SBE provides support for about 4,200 people, including students, researchers,
post-doctorates, and trainees. Support for programs specifically addressing
NSF's Strategic Goal of "People -- A diverse, internationally competitive
and globally-engaged workforce of scientists, engineers and well-prepared
citizens" totals more than $9 million in FY 2001, an increase of
18.4 percent over FY 2000. Support includes increased efforts to strengthen
the global orientation of the nation's science and engineering workforce
by supporting internationally collaborative research as well as research
and training abroad. SBE will also devote more attention to broadening
the participation of minorities, women, and people with disabilities in
certain SBE fields where they are seriously underrepresented. Moreover,
about 34 percent of the funding for research grants -- approximately $45
million in FY 2001-- provides support for researchers and students, including
more than 2,360 post-doctorates, trainees, and graduate and undergraduate
students.
SBE promotes the development of "Tools" by taking advantage of new information
technologies as it directs resources into research-enhancing investments
such as web-based collaboratories, digital libraries, and data bases,
including the science resources data and analysis produced by the Science
Resources Studies Subactivity.
These three goals focus on promoting greater collaboration among researchers
in all fields of science and engineering and on making the scientific
discoveries more accessible to users. These improvements will ultimately
increase the connections between research discoveries and their use by
society.
NSF-supported social and behavioral scientists have been honored with
prestigious scientific awards in recent years. For example, Roger N. Shepard
(Stanford, psychology: research into the nature of human mental processes),
William K. Estes (Harvard, psychology: fundamental theories of cognition
and learning), Paul A. Samuelson (MIT, economics: fundamental contributions
to economic science, education, and policy), and William Julius Wilson
(Harvard, sociology: pioneering methods of interdisciplinary social science
research on the causes of inner-city poverty) all have won the President's
National Medal of Science.
In addition to increasing funding to the science disciplines traditionally
supported by SBE, in FY 2001, SBE will provide support for research and
education efforts related to two broad, Foundation-wide initiatives: Information
Technology Research and 21 st Century
Workforce.
Information Technology Research (ITR): In FY 2001, SBE will provide
a total of $5.81 million for ITR. These funds will support research to
develop and carry out demonstration tests of new Internet-based research
techniques, such as online interviews, online surveys, and online laboratory
experiments. They will also support expanded research on societal impacts
of information technology. Support will be provided for developing and
employing digital libraries, especially those that benefit from international
collaborations, and for multi-disciplinary computational social science
work to develop and apply new computational techniques in the collection,
archiving and analysis of social-science data, and in methods such as
computer simulation that develop formal theories.
21 st Century Workforce:
SBE supports a range of programs that encourage innovative approaches
to educating students for the 21 st century,
including fundamental research on science and mathematics learning, the
human-computer interface, and promoting a diverse workforce. SBE will
provide $5.40 million, an increase of $900,000 over the FY 2000 level
for these programs. Of this, $2.5 million will provide continued support
for the Children's Research Initiative which addresses how children learn
and the environments and technologies that enhance learning; $2.0 million
will support the NSF-wide Interagency Education Research Initiative; $500,000
will fund Science of Learning research on social and behavioral factors
contributing to human growth and development; and $400,000 will promote
participation of underrepresented groups in SBE fields (e.g. cognitive
science, research methods, some subfields of economics) where they are
seriously underrepresented. Support for these activities will be provided
under existing NSF programs, such as the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority
Participation.
STRATEGIC GOALS
SBE's support for its ongoing and new activities contributes to NSF's
efforts to achieve its strategic goals, as well as to the administration
and management activities necessary to achieve those goals.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 2000
Estimate
|
FY 2001
Estimate
|
Percent
Change
|
Ideas
|
110.52
|
132.38
|
19.8%
|
People
|
7.62
|
9.02
|
18.4%
|
Tools
|
25.84
|
28.88
|
11.8%
|
Administration and Management 1
|
2.16
|
4.86
|
125.0%
|
Total, SBE
|
$146.14
|
$175.14
|
19.8%
|
1
Includes only costs charged to the R&RA Appropriation.
Ideas
Support for discovery at and across the frontier of science and engineering
and connections to their use in service to society extends over SBE's
entire portfolio. Three-fourths of the SBE increase for FY 2001 will support
Ideas. Funding for research in this category will increase in FY 2001
by $21.86 million, to $132.38 million. Resources will be focused upon
several areas including:
-
New breakthroughs in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience are
opening exciting opportunities for uncovering how it is that the human
brain accomplishes basic cognitive and perceptual activities. The
growing and multidisciplinary field of cognitive neuroscience brings
together expertise from psychology, cognitive science, biological
science, engineering, computer science, and other fields in an effort
to understand the relationship between mind and brain. An investment
of $10.0 million that builds on past funding in this area will have
wide-ranging scientific and societal impacts. For example, basic research
on cognitive processing and brain function will produce new insight
into learning and education from infancy through adulthood; on human
and machine performance in complex tasks; on future developments in
artificial intelligence; and on social attitudes/stereotypes, social
perceptions, and social interaction. Support for these lines of research
are encouraging interest in a new social cognitive neuroscience "paradigm."
-
Additional funding for research on innovation and adaptation to
innovation will provide $5.0 million for research on the processes
of scientific discovery, technological innovation, knowledge accumulation,
skill diffusion, and social adaptation to technological change. Research
will involve scientific cooperation across the SBE sciences, and among
those disciplines and other branches of science, engineering, and
education. Results will inform scientific issues for policy makers
and assist private sector organizations in improving their ability
to respond to technological change.
-
An investment of $2.0 million will be provided for collaborations
with statisticians focusing on new models and methods for understanding
social and behavioral phenomena. Moreover, the statistical sciences
would benefit from such collaborations, which are related to new developments
in cognitive science and visualization techniques for understanding
massive amounts of data.
-
SBE will increase support for research tracing human biological
and behavioral changes over time (Human Origins) by $2.0 million and
in FY 2001 will focus on integrating different research streams. This
research will merge the results of field research by integrated teams
of paleoanthropologists, geologists, paleontologists and others to
recover hominid fossils and to reconstruct the environments in which
they evolved. The most advanced methods from molecular biology will
be used for research on cultural and genome diversity present in living
populations to provide insights into human prehistory.
-
SBE will increase support by $1.0 million for research opportunities
that take advantage of research expertise and facilities in other
nations, via partnerships and collaborations, particularly in East
Asian nations that are expanding their national research systems.
-
SBE will continue efforts to increase the average size and duration
of the awards, thus enabling scientists to devote a greater portion
of their time to actual research. This will contribute to increasing
the efficiency of the Foundation's merit review process and achieve
greater cost-effectiveness for both NSF and the university community.
Also in accord with the Foundation's FY 2001 Performance Plan, SBE
will provide increased attention to the percentage of competitive
research grants going to new investigators.
-
An additional $500,000 will be allocated to funding Science of Learning
research on social and behavioral factors that contribute to children's
growth and development.
In support of the Ideas goal, SBE funds the following centers:
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 2000
Estimate
|
FY 2001
Estimate
|
Percent
Change
|
Long Term Ecological Research sites
|
0.30
|
0.30
|
0.0%
|
STC for Cognitive Science 1
|
1.05
|
0.84
|
-20.0%
|
National Consortium for Violence Research 2
|
[2.0]
|
2.00
|
N/A
|
Research Centers on the Human Dimensions of Global Change
|
3.32
|
3.40
|
2.4%
|
Total, SBE
|
$4.67
|
$6.54
|
40.0%
|
1
The reduction of support for STCs reflects the planned phase-out
of the second class in FY 2000 and FY 2001.
2 FY 2000 funding was on an annualized basis from the
previous year and is not included in the total. |
-
The STC for Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania,
funded jointly by SBE and the Computer and Information Science and
Engineering Activity, facilitates collaborations among academic and
industrial researchers and students from a variety of disciplines.
By investigating language acquisition, perception-action processing,
and computation in humans and machines, the Center provides a basis
for advances in machine intelligence, human learning, and human perception
of computer-generated information.
-
The National Consortium for Violence Research has three missions:
supporting research on the causes of violent behavior, encouraging
young scientists, especially underrepresented minorities, to enter
this field of research, and disseminating research results to research
and policy communities. New scientific findings with important societal
implications and widely accessible integrated data archives are emerging
from this consortium, now in its fourth year.
-
Two SBE centers conduct research on the Human Dimensions of Global
Change. The Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and
Environmental Change (CIPEC) at Indiana University focuses on how
humans and institutions affect deforestation and replacement. CIPEC
also trains doctorate-level environmental social scientists. The Carnegie
Mellon Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global
Change conducts research on global change issues and promotes worldwide
discourse among researchers and the public on global change.
People
Support for People is $9.02 million, an increase of $1.40 million over
the FY 2000 level. SBE's activities will support the development of a
diverse and internationally competitive workforce of scientists, engineers,
and well-prepared citizens. SBE programs support dissertations, summer
programs, workshops, and minority scholar development.
SBE's International Cooperative Scientific Activities (INT) is the Foundation's
focal point for the international component of this goal.
-
An increment of $1.0 million will develop international research
and training experiences for US researchers in both developed and
developing nations. The rapid globalization of science and technology
challenges traditional assumptions about how we prepare our scientists,
engineers, and educators to succeed. Training must include an understanding
of the global environment--the technologically advanced countries
of Europe and Japan, as well as others. A unique opportunity exists
in the dynamic newer economies of East Asia, which invest heavily
in scientific research and are rapidly developing knowledge-intensive
economies. This increase would support the addition of international
components to existing NSF activities, such as the Integrative Graduate
Education and Research Training program, Research Experiences for
Undergraduates, and other training programs.
-
As part of the 21 st Century Workforce
initiative, an additional $400,000 will be provided to promote diversity
within SBE fields where minorities, women, and persons with disabilities
are underrepresented.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
FY 2000
Estimate
|
FY 2001
Estimate
|
Percent
Change
|
Undergraduate
|
1.92
|
2.62
|
36.5%
|
Graduate and Professional
|
5.70
|
6.40
|
12.3%
|
Total, SBE
|
$7.62
|
$9.02
|
18.4%
|
Tools
A total of $28.88 million in FY 2001, an increase of $3.04 million over
FY 2000, will support the development of tools that are required to support
research and education in several ways:
-
An investment of $14.63 million, $1.0 million over the FY 2000 level,
will support expanded development of shared research databases, web-based
collaboratories, and advanced research approaches that provide fundamental
infrastructure for large, diverse scientific communities. These projects
are essential components of the research agenda of the social and
behavioral sciences. Created to take advantage of new computational
and communications technology, these products and approaches will
collect and integrate economic, cultural, cognitive, psychological,
social, political and geographic data and will provide more powerful
tools for analysis and dissemination. Some will achieve greater scientific
gains from existing data, and others will extend new methodologies
from the narrow areas where they are being developed to broader studies
and multiple research sites. New science and technology databases
will illuminate research on critical issues like globalization, the
development of new industries, and factors that shape the scientific
workforce.
-
An increase of $2.04 million for the Science Resources Studies Subactivity,
will help the Foundation fulfill its mandate to produce data and analysis
on the scientific and engineering enterprise. This funding will enable
SBE to provide an even higher quality, comprehensive, and integrated
information base that is easy to access and use, and that will provide
a sounder basis for decision making about science and technology issues.
Administration and Management
Administration and Management provides for administrative activities
necessary to enable NSF to achieve its strategic goals. This includes
the cost of Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointments, contractors
performing administrative functions, and, in FY 2001, travel for staff
in the program offices.
BUDGET PRESENTATION
NSF has previously organized its budget presentation around four key
program functions - Research Project Support, Research Facilities, Education
and Training, and Administration and Management. In order to link the
FY 2001 Budget Request to the NSF Strategic Plan, we have organized the
FY 2001 Budget Request around the strategic outcome goals of Ideas, People
and Tools, as well as the Administration and Management activities necessary
to achieve these goals.
The table below provides an FY 2001 crosswalk for Social, Behavioral
and Economic Sciences between funding for the strategic goals and the
key program functions.
(Millions of Dollars)
|
Ideas
|
People
|
Tools
|
A&M
|
Total, SBE
|
Research Project Support
|
132.38
|
5.00
|
14.63
|
|
$152.01
|
Facilities
|
|
|
|
|
$0.00
|
Education & Training
|
|
4.02
|
14.25
|
|
$18.27
|
Administration & Management
|
|
|
|
4.86
|
$4.86
|
Total, SBE
|
$132.38
|
$9.02
|
$28.88
|
$4.86
|
$175.14
|
Number of People Involved in SBE Activities
The number of individuals supported by the Social and Economic Sciences
and Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Subactivities is shown below:
|
FY 1999
Actual
|
FY 2000
Estimate
|
FY 2001
Estimate
|
Senior Researchers
|
1,415
|
1,450
|
1,580
|
Other Professionals
|
235
|
240
|
260
|
Postdoctorates
|
80
|
80
|
80
|
Graduate Students
|
1,108
|
1,200
|
1,350
|
Undergraduate Students
|
860
|
880
|
930
|
Total Number of People
|
3,698
|
3,850
|
4,200
|
In addition, International Cooperative Scientific Activities
indirectly support approximately 1,000 US researchers and students for
travel to seminars, symposia or workshops, or for participation in international
research collaborations.
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Funding Profile
|
FY 1999
Actual
|
FY 2000
Estimate
|
FY 2001
Estimate
|
Number of Requests for Funding
|
4,256
|
4,700
|
5,150
|
Dollars Requested (in thousands)
|
$1,191,272
|
$1,375,000
|
$151,000,000
|
Total Number of Awards
|
1,777
|
1,900
|
2,050
|
Statistics for Competitive Awards:
|
Number
|
1,190
|
1,250
|
1,400
|
Funding Rate
|
30%
|
30%
|
32%
|
Median Annualized Award Size 1,2
|
$53,337
|
$55,100
|
$59,000
|
Average Annualized Award Size 1,2
|
$65,442
|
$66,700
|
$72,500
|
Average Duration (yrs.) 1
|
2.2
|
2.2
|
2.3
|
1
Statistics for award size and duration are for Research Grants only.
2 Statistics for award size are reported for the SES
and BCS Subactivities. This provides a measure of award activity
comparable to the other research Activities. |
|