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Triological Society Research Career Development Award Recipients Achieve Disproportionately High Academic Success

by Linda Kossoff •

What does an evaluation of Triological Society Research Career Development Award (CDA) recipients’ academic outcomes, including an appraisal of gender differences in outcome, reveal about a CDA’s impact?

BOTTOM LINE: CDA awardees achieve higher academic success than academic otolaryngologists in general, but female CDA recipients lag behind their male colleagues.

BACKGROUND: The number of surgeon-scientists in the otolaryngology–head and neck surgery field has been declining. To mitigate this, the Triological Society awards $40,000 CDAs to assistant and associate professors who have completed graduate training within the past seven years to develop research projects and pursue long-term research goals.

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study.

SETTING: Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

SYNOPSIS: Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study of 70 CDA recipients at 47 institutions who received their CDAs from 2004-2019. Authors categorized practice settings, academic rank, and department leadership titles. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and the h-index, which is based on number of publications and citations, were used to measure scholarly impact. Of all CDA recipients, 96% remained in academic practice, affording them access to protected research time, mentors, collaborators, and university resources. After receiving a CDA, 40% of awardees obtained NIH funding, which was not associated with an MD/PhD degree. Mean h-index was significantly higher among CDA recipients in assistant and associate professor categories than among academic otolaryngologists at these ranks in general. This was not seen at the full-professor rank. In examining gender disparities, women in the cohort were as likely to be full professors as men but were significantly less likely to have acquired NIH funding. They also had lower h-indices than men. Study limitations included the inability to ascribe academic success specifically to the CDA and reliance on potentially incorrect or outdated information.

CITATION: Dorismond C, Prince AC, Farzal Z, Zanation AM. Long-term academic outcomes of Triological Society Research Career Development Award recipients [published online ahead of print May 5, 2020]. Laryngoscope. doi:10.1002/lary.28714.