Goals of the Study & Expected Outcomes
Goals of the Study
The primary goals of this study are three-fold:
- To assess the outcomes of the first four funding cycles of the CA CBCRP postdoctoral fellowship award program;
- To improve the CBCRP postdoctoral fellowship award program; and
- To conduct a pilot study for the larger on-going evaluation of CBCRP's funding efforts.
Expected Outcomes
To guide the evaluation process, the CBCRP staff and Council evaluation committee drafted evaluation models that articulate expected outcomes from CBCRP's funding efforts. Seven models have been developed focusing on each major CBCRP funding activity, including the focus of this study: career development and the need to recruit new investigators and retain experienced investigators in breast cancer research. The other six models will be used to guide future evaluations. These models identify the problems addressed by CBCRP funding efforts; resources needed to address these problems; and expected short, intermediate and long-term outcomes from CBCRP's funding efforts. The evaluation of the postdoctoral fellowship awards was framed by the following expected short and intermediate outcomes:
- High quality researchers from a wide variety of disciplines will submit proposals of relevance to breast cancer;
- CBCRP funding will help to develop the careers of the recipients;
- New researchers will be recruited into the breast cancer field;
- Experienced breast cancer researchers will be retained in the breast cancer field; and
- Promising new avenues of breast cancer research will be created and continued.
