Student Affect During an HBCU Summer Research Program.

The popularity and effectiveness of intensive summer research programs to increase student self-efficacy is known. The Summer Research Institute (SRI) training experience, as part of undergraduate student training in Morgan State University's NIH BUILD program, uses an entrepreneurial approach to prepare students for careers in health-related research. Bandura's self-efficacy theory's (1977) four antecedents are represented in the SRI curriculum, which provides multiple opportunities for mastery experiences and for moments of roused feelings. These occurrences are accompanied by extensive multilayered mentoring, where the mentors provide verbal encouragement, and facilitate various modes of academic, psychosocial and institutional support. To our knowledge, student affect over time has not been tested to assess impact or program effectiveness in a summer research training program. This study is based on the qualitative assessment of bi-weekly journals of 28 students in the SRI. The practice of students consistently writing journals is aligned with the scaffolded knowledge integration framework proposed by Linn (1995). The journals were reviewed for their cumulative affective content and change over time. The students responded as expected with positive and negative affect throughout the program and ended with overwhelmingly positive affect with their concluding presentations. Using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC), a text analysis program, we matched the fluctuations in affect to activities during the program and interpreted the changes for program assessment. This type of analysis opens a window into student affective responses to training components that, to our knowledge, have not been widely used for research training programs of this kind.