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APPENDIX
A
Trends in Support for
Research in the
Behavioral and Social Sciences
FEDERL4L SUPPORT
The major financial support for behavioral and social sciences research comes
from the federal government and the operating budgets of doctorate-granting
universities. In recent years, the financial circumstances of that research have
largely been dominated by dramatic changes in levels of federal support. These
changes in support for behavioral and social sciences are starkly different from
those for other scientific disciplines, as shown in Figures A-1 and A-2.
Federal support for most scientific research has increased substantially in
the past IS years, with the value of regular, annual increases modulated by
variations in the inflation rate. Considered in constant-dollar terms (that is,
adjusting for inflation), the overall level of federal support for scientific re-
search, exclusive of the behavioral and social sciences, was 36 percent higher
in 1987 than in 1972.
Funds for the behavioral and social sciences, in contrast, have followed a
roller-coaster-like track. In constant 1987 dollars, federal support declined
from just over $1 billion in 1972 to $873 million in 1975, increased to a peak
of about $1.1 billion in 1978 and 1979, fell sharply through 1982 to a low of
We are pleased to acknowledge the Division of Science Resources Studies of the National Science
Foundation for providing unpublished data and other timely assistance in completion of this
appendix.
251
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1,100
1,000
gOO
800
700
600
500
400
it_
-
\~t dollarS
Curr nt dollars',
1972 74 76 78 80 82
Year
1 ~ 1 1 1
84 86
Figure A-1 Trends in federal support for behavioral and social sciences
research (constant [19871 dollars). Source: Data from National Science
Foundation, Federal Funds for Research and Development.
18
16
14
8
6
4
-
Current dollar~'
__
Constant dollars
. ~
-
_'
-
.'
-
-
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
86
1972 74 76 78 80 82 84
Year
Figure A-2 Trends in federal support for other research (constant [ 1987]
dollars). Source: Data from National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for
Research and Development.
252
OCR for page 253
Appendix A / 253
$705 million, then rebounded somewhat to the current level of $778 million.
The 1987 level of support was 2S percent lower than the level in 1972.
The $778 million spent in 1987 includes external grants and contracts and
internal research activities; about $270 million was classified as basic research
and $S08 million as applied research. The total is 4.6 percent of all federal
expenditures for basic and applied research (about $16.8 billion). This per-
centage is a decline from a figure of 8 percent in 1972 and about 7 percent
that was maintained (with some year-to-year fluctuations) from 1973 to 1979.
The Diversity of Federal Support
Although these highly aggregated numbers are indicative of overall trends,
some diversity results from differences in missions and administrative practices
among the many federal agencies that support extramural and perform intra-
mural behavioral and social sciences research. This diversity affects the ways
in which changes in funding levels are implemented and research is adminis-
tered.
In federal research and development budgets, psychology is classified sep-
arately from social sciences, and the psychology classification also excludes
neuroscience, which is classified with the life sciences. Basic research and
applied research are classified separately, although the latter distinction is in
many cases more a matter of the agency's mission than some intrinsic aspect
of the research being supported. Figure A-3 shows the source of all federal
funding for fiscal 1987, by agency.
In estimates of fiscal 1987 spending for basic research in psychology, roughly
60 percent (about $80 million) came from the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, 26 percent ($36 million) from the U.S. Department of De-
fense, and 10 percent ($13 million) from the National Science Foundation.
More than 90 percent of support for applied research came from Defense (47
percent, $87 million) and Health and Human Services (44 percent, $81 mil-
lion); S percent ($9 million) came from the Veterans Administration.
In the social science categories, funding for basic research was more diverse:
roughly 28 percent ($39 million) from Health and Human Services, 28 percent
($39 million) from the National Science Foundation, 19 percent ($26 million)
from the Smithsonian Institution, 9 percent ($13 million) from the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture, 4 percent ($6 million) from the U.S. Department of
Education, and 11 percent ($ IS million) from other agencies. For applied social
science research, 26 percent ($82 million) came from Health and Human
Services, 20 percent ($70 million) from Agriculture, 20 percent ($64 million)
from Education, and sizable though smaller amounts from the U.S. Department
of I abor (7 percent, $7 million), independent agencies such as the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (4 percent, $ 11 million), and others (24
percent, $78 million).
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All over agencl" 3.3%
NSF
9.8%
DHHS~JIH
19.7%
/
\<
Defense \
26.4% \
-/ DHHS/ADAMHA /
40.8%
BASIC PSYCHOLOGY
S134.3 MIlllon
All over articles 3.~%
VA 4.9% ~
~~
By\
16.4% ~
.
\ DHHS/ADAMHA
\ 27.4%
\
-
\
Defense 47.4%
-
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
S184.1 Mlillon
ADAMHA Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration
DHHS U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
HCFA Health Care Financing Administration
HUD U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
ITC International Trade Commission
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NIH National Institutes of Health
NSF National Science Foundation
SSA Social Security Administration
VA Veterans Administration
2S4
OCR for page 255
All other aasncles 4 39` ,
Education 4.1%
~ ~~~ ~ ~ Agriculture9.3%
EPA3.2%
Labor 3.3% my\ \
DHHS/NIH 3.4% am\\ \
Analogs 11.396
;~
~ 19.2% 1
rDHHS/
\ Secretary,
~ /
BASIC SOCIAL SCIENCES
NSF 28.59` /
$137.5 Mlillon
All other
,\;C~o\ agencl"
^,..-
W;!
DHHS/SSA 3.7%
DHHS/Other 2.3%
/
Education \
19.8% \
/\
/
APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES
$322.7 MIllion
Figure A-3 Estimated federal expenditures in fiscal 1987 for basic and
applied research in psychology and social sciences, by federal agency. Source:
Data from National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Research and
Development, Fiscal Years 1985, 1986, and 1987.
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256 / Appendix A
In short, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense ac-
count for nine-tenths of federal research funding in psychology, while social
science support is more diversified, although Health and Human Services pro-
vides one-fourth of all federal funds.
The National Science Foundation, with its specific mandate for nonmission-
oriented research, has traditionally held a flagship role with respect to the social
sciences, and the National Institute of Mental Health (now housed under the
Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration) has shared this role
with respect to psychology. But there is a strong presence in support of be-
havioral and social sciences research in other agencies, including national in-
stitutes devoted to aging, alcoholism and alcohol abuse, child health and human
development, drug abuse, education, and justice; the Office of Naval Research,
the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Army Research Institute for
the Behavioral and Social Sciences; the Cooperative State Research Service and
Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture; the Social Se-
curity Administration, Health Care Financing Administration, and the Office
of the Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services; the Em-
ployment and Training Administration in the Department of Labor; the Vet-
erans Administration; and the Smithsonian Institution. Also of great importance
are federal agencies whose data collection activities are a foundation for work
discussed in this report, especially the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analyses, the Bureau of Justice Sta-
tistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Center for
Education Statistics. The diversity of departmental support and the prepon-
derance of support for applied research testify to the payoffs gained from earlier
investments.
National Science Foundation Support
The role of the National Science Foundation in federally funded research in
universities and colleges is more pronounced than the overall figures cited
above suggest, amounting to 25 percent of federal support for psychology and
social sciences research on campuses and about 40 percent in the social sciences
alone. Thus, changes in the nature and level of program support, while not
strictly representative of government-wide action, have a major effect on aca-
demic research.
At the National Science Foundation, there are presently two divisions rele-
vant to behavioral and social sciences research: Social and Economic Science,
and Behavioral and Neural Sciences. (A division of Information Science and
Technology was transferred in 1985 to the new Directorate for Computer and
Information Science and Engineering and was renamed Information, Robotics,
and Intelligent Systems; see discussion in Chapter 6.) As the following figures
indicate, changes in the real-dollar budget for the Behavioral and Neural Sci-
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Appendix A / 2S7
ences Division (BNS) have affected about equally the overall number of awards
given and their average size. But in the Social and Economic Science Division
(SES), much sharper changes in the budget have led to much more radical
shifts in the size of grants awarded, with surprisingly small effects on the total
number of grants. Because grant sizes have been reduced so drastically in SES,
in several fields it has become very difficult to initiate new empirical studies.
Instead, funds have been concentrated on sustaining relatively long-standing
lines of theoretical work and extending a few longitudinal data sets.
Along with shifts to smaller grants—substantially smaller in the case of SES—
there has been a change in the nature of the research personnel supported.
Support for graduate students on research grants has decreased significantly,
and faculty scientists receiving salary support through SES and ENS programs
in 198S were at salary levels roughly 30 percent higher, even after adjustment
for inflation, than the faculty investigators on grants awarded just 3 years earlier.
While some above-inflation rise in all faculty salaries has occurred, much of
this increase represents a shift toward more research support for higher ranking
faculty- or less to lower-ranking faculty than previously.
The reduction in average grant sizes has occurred at the same time as major
changes have taken place in the capabilities and costs of research equipment.
Both the BNS and SES divisions participate in a multiuser equipment program,
but the program has not been effective in meeting the overall equipment needs
of researchers, partly due to specialized program requirements, partly due to
the tendency of review panels to down-rate general-use equipment proposals
in favor of individual-investigator proposals, and, as a reaction to these factors,
partly due to limited numbers of proposals. The program also does not provide
funds for the maintenance and operation of equipment or for hiring and train-
ing technical staff.
In addition to the reduction in the average grant size, the duration of awards
has been shortened, presumably to enable administrators in some programs to
maintain a relatively stable number of investigators in the face of declining
budgets. But this change has a cost in research productivity because investi-
gators more frequently have to write new proposals. This problem is by no
means confined to behavioral and social sciences researchers, but it is especially
acute for them. There are sound arguments for reversing this trend and moving
to increase the duration of awards by 3 to S years, a direction in which some
agencies, including the institutes of the Public Health Service, are now moving
(see Chapter 65.
PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS
An important source of funding for the behavioral and social sciences is
private foundations. The total of all private foundation support for behavioral
OCR for page 258
1,000
800
~ 600
o
Q 400
Ad
200
-
-
SES _
_ _ _
-
1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986
Year
Figure A-4 Number of grants awarded for the Behavioral and Neural
Sciences (BNS) and Social and Economic Science (SES) divisions of the
National Science Foundation, 1978-1986. Source: Data from National Sci-
ence Foundation, unpublished tabulations.
100,000
90,000
us
Do
- 80,000
a'
-
o
(, 70,000
ID
In
~ 60,000
50,000 _
40,000 1
1978 1979 1980 1981
\
~\~_\
1982 1983 1984 1985 1986
Year
Figure A-S Average grant size for the Behavioral and Neural Sciences
(BNS) and Social and Economic Science (SES) divisions of the National
Science Foundation, 197~1986. Source: Data from National Science Foun-
dation, unpublished tabulations.
258
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Appendix A / 259
50
45
us
so
40
as
o
~ 35
o
-
-
E 30
25
20
15 1 1 1
1978 1979 1980 1981
7/
/\
\
SES ~
/
-
-
-
-
1982 1983 1984 1985 1986
Year
Figure A-6 Total grant funding for the Behavioral and Neural Sciences
(BNS) and Social and Economic Science (SES) divisions of the National
Science Foundation, 1978- 986. Source: Data from National Science Foun-
dation, unpublished tabulations.
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260/Appendix A
and social sciences research is now about $60 million, or 8 percent of the
amount received from the federal government. From the early 1920s until about
1960, private foundations were central in supporting behavioral and social
sciences research; indeed, they were the principal providers of funds prior to
the rapid growth of the federal presence beginning in the late l9SOs. But private
foundations were made subject to federal taxes during the 1960s, and sub-
stantial reductions occurred in the value of the awards they were able to give.
Additionally, several very large foundations decided in the late l950s and early
1960s to withdraw substantially from the support of basic research in favor of
applied research and program development.
The role of the private sector thus changed from being an across-the-board
presence in the behavioral and social sciences to providing limited support
along selective program lines. Particularly notable are the Russell Sage Foun-
dation (recently specializing in research on gender, legal processes, risk per-
ception and management, and behavioral economics), the Sloan Foundation
(cognitive science, economics), the Rockefeller Foundation (population, de-
velopment), and the MacArthur Foundation (health and behavior). Although
private foundations provide short-term selective program funding that injects
significant resources for limited periods, they do not provide long-term com-
mitment for the range of resource requirements needed to address many be-
havioral and social sciences research problems.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
economic science
