Social, behavioral and Economic
Sciences $143,010,000
The FY 2000 Budget Request for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Activity is $143.01 million, an increase of $5.78 million, or 4.2 percent, over the FY 1999 Current Plan of $137.23 million.
(Millions of
Dollars)
SBE is the primary 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 US scientists and engineers.
SBE is focusing on rapidly developing research technologies, especially new
information technologies. In the
Science Resource Studies Subactivity these changing technologies promise higher
quality data, swifter completion of data collection, enhanced data relevance,
new analytical tools, and wider, more flexible access for data users. In the International Cooperative Scientific
Activities Subactivity, new technologies
enable distributed international research collaborations and provide access to unique global research
resources. In the Social and Economic
Sciences Subactivity, web-based databases and the new computational tools to
use them will form the basis for new, large-scale multidisciplinary research
infrastructure partnerships. Finally,
in the Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Subactivity, advances in
instrumentation for fields such as cognitive neuroscience and geographic
information systems will be combined with web access to foster new research
partnerships and new research methods.
These initiatives all focus on the need for greater communication among researchers, whatever their field of science, and in making the scientific discoveries more accessible to users. In accord with the NSF’s GPRA Strategic Plan, all of these improvements will ultimately increase the connections between research discoveries and their use to society.
Nobel
Prize. Of the twenty-two U.S. researchers who have
won the Nobel Prize in Economics, eighteen have been scholars who won early
recognition and support from NSF. In
1998 the Prize was once again presented to an NSF awardee, Amartya Sen, for
fundamental social choice theory, welfare economics, and models of economic
development. Sen found that 20th
century famines have not been caused by any shortage of food, but by a lack of
purchasing power among affected populations.
Sen’s NSF-supported research is helping redefine methods for preventing
and relieving famines worldwide.
In FY 2000, SBE will provide support
for research and education efforts related to three broad, Foundation-wide
efforts, Biocomplexity in the Environment, Information Technologies, and
Educating for the Future.
Biocomplexity in the Environment (BE): SBE will provide $17.33 million for BE. This is a decrease of $510,000 over the FY 1999 level of $17.84 million for activities formerly known as Life and Earth’s Environment. Highlights include:
·
Environment and the Human Dimension: $15.48 million will support socio-economic
aspects of sustainable ecosystems, including sources of ecological stress, land
use issues, common property resources, pollution and climate change, and
development of GIS tools to integrate spatial information and enable
multi-disciplinary research across multiple scales.
·
Global and Environmental Change: $1.2 million will support research on how humans have evolved in
response to environmental change.
Information
Technologies (IT): In FY 2000, SBE
will provide $21.49 million for information based activities. This is an
increase of $2.06 million over the FY 1999 level of $19.43 million for
activities formerly known as Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence. Highlights include: $2.06 million for enhanced support for
digital libraries, the economic, legal and social impacts of IT, and
collaboratories; $12.50 million to continue support for Learning and
Intelligent Systems including fundamental research on science and math
learning; and $1.0 million for expanded use of experimental and computational
methods in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences.
Educating
for the Future (EFF): SBE supports a
range of programs that encourage innovative approaches to educating students
for the 21st century. SBE will provide
$10.62 million, an increase of $30,000 over the FY 1999 level of $10.59
million, for the following activities:
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), Integrative Graduate
Education and Research Training (IGERT), and Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER). Continued support for the
Children’s Research Initiative will provide $2.50 million to increase
understanding of cognitive, social, and biological processes related to
children’s and adolescents’ learning, with implications for educational policy
and the role of new technologies.
SBE supports its ongoing and new
activities through the following key program functions:
(Millions of
Dollars)
1 Includes only
costs charged to the R&RA Appropriation.
Funding for research project support
will increase in FY 2000 by $5.03 million, to $123.23 million total. Resources will be focused upon the following
areas:
·
$3.33 million to
strengthen infrastructure for the social and behavioral sciences, including
increased support for networking of facilities for research on cognitive
neuroscience that allow access to new imaging technologies and sharing data and
analytical methods to build on the developing emphasis area of computational
social science. In the social and economic sciences, the focus will be on
advanced web-based collaboratories where tools are developed for integrating
survey-based data with data from administrative records and new laboratory
experimental methods, and where data are made accessible to distributed
research communities.
·
$2.06 million for
increased research related to IT, including an initiative on Computational
Social Science. This focus will
feature research on social, economic, legal, and ethical implications of
computing and communications technology.
Using a multi-disciplinary approach, it will develop and apply new
computational techniques in the collection, archiving, and analysis of social
science data.
·
SBE will continue to provide $7.0 million support for
research tracing human biological and behavioral changes over time (Human
Origins) and in FY 2000 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 genetic diversity present in
living populations to provide insights into human prehistory.
·
In FY 2000, SBE will
continue its efforts to address Foundation-wide concerns about grant sizes by
increasing the average size and duration of the awards and providing more
support for researchers. In accord with
the Foundation’s FY 2000 Performance Plan, SBE will continue to provide
increased attention to the percentage of competitive research grants going to
new investigators. These efforts 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.
Within the Research Project Support Key Program Function, SBE supports a number of centers:
(Millions of
Dollars)
1 FY 1997 funding for National Consortium for Violence
Research shown on annualized basis and not included in total.
2
The National Center
for Environmental Decision-Making Research has been closed.
SBE funding for centers will decline by
$410,000. Funding for the STC for Cognitive Science is being reduced as part of
the planned phase down of the second class of STCs. The reduction in funding
for the Human Dimensions of Global Change Centers reflects a planned change in
the funding profile of one of the centers.
·
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 Center’s new “magnet labs” provide
state-of-the art facilities to serve researchers from psychology, linguistics,
computer sciences, symbolic logic, and engineering.
·
The National Consortium for Violence Research has three
missions: supporting research on the
causes of violent behavior, encouraging young scientists, especially
minorities, to enter this field of research, and disseminating research results
to research and policy communities.
·
The National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
(NCGIA) conducts research on issues of cognition, analysis, and display.
Although SBE will continue to provide substantial funding for research in this
area, FY 2000 is the last year that SBE will provide support through a formal
center.
·
Two SBE centers conduct research on the Human Dimensions of
Global 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.
(Millions of
Dollars)
Support for Education and Training is
$17.62 million, an increase of $430,000 over the FY 1999 level. Of this amount, $400,000 will be used to
support an expanded competitive research program in the Science Resources
Studies Subactivity aimed at improving indicators of science and engineering,
including indicators of education and employment in science, engineering and
technology, used in the S&E
Indicators publication
series. A research activity is planned
whereby new indicators will be developed, traditional ones will be improved,
and new methods of statistical and graphical presentation will be designed.
The Administration and Management key
program function includes the cost of Intergovernmental Personnel Act
appointments, contractors performing administrative functions, and, in FY 2000,
award-related travel.
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:
In addition, International Cooperative Scientific Activities indirectly support approximately 1,000 U.S. researchers and students for travel to seminars, symposia or workshops, or for participation in international research collaborations.
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.