Journal Article

Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards

Masimore, Beth, Haak, Laurel L., Schnell, Joshua, Liu, Faye, Ginther, Donna K., Schaffer, Walter T., Kington, Raynard

2011

Overview

We investigated the association between a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 applicant's self-identified race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an award by using data from the NIH IMPAC II grant database, the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, and other sources. Although proposals with strong priority scores were equally likely to be funded regardless of race, we find that Asians are 4 percentage points and black or African-American applicants are 13 percentage points less likely to receive NIH investigator-initiated research funding compared with whites. After controlling for the applicant's educational background, country of origin, training, previous research awards, publication record, and employer characteristics, we find that black applicants remain 10 percentage points less likely than whites to be awarded NIH research funding. Our results suggest some leverage points for policy intervention.

• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science,The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subject: African Americans / Asian People - statistics & numerical data / Asians / Awards / Awards & honors / Biomedical Research / Black or African American - statistics & numerical data / Black People - statistics & numerical data / Citizenship / Cultures and civilizations / Databases, Factual / Education / Education, Graduate / Educational Background / Engineering / Ethnic groups. Acculturation. Cultural identity / Ethnicity / Ethnicity - statistics & numerical data / Fellowships and Scholarships / Financing, Government / Funding / Grants / Hispanic or Latino - statistics & numerical data / Hispanics / honors and awards / Humans / issues and policy / Likelihood Functions / Models, Statistical / National Institutes of Health / National Institutes of Health (U.S.) - economics / Origins / Peer Review, Research / probability / Proposals / Publishing / Race / Racial discrimination / Racial Groups - statistics & numerical data / Receiving / Research grants / Research Personnel - economics / Research Personnel - statistics & numerical data / research support / Research Support as Topic - statistics & numerical data / Sociology / Sociology of knowledge and ethics / Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture / Sociology of science / Training / United States / White people / White People - statistics & numerical data / Whites