Appendix C

Process for Panel’s Interviews

This appendix details how the committee carried out the interviews reported in Chapter 4. The committee designed the general method, and it was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies).

INTERVIEW APPROACH AND INTERVIEWERS

Interviews were conducted on Zoom, using both audio and video. The audio was transcribed, and those transcripts are confidential and have been de-identified.

The interviews were conducted by five project research assistants. Because identities inform perceptions, their positional identifications are included below. From the perspective of the interviewees, all five would be visually identified as young Black women; they introduced themselves as recent Princeton graduates who completed senior theses with Susan Fiske, co-chair of the committee.

• Ogechi Adele identifies as Black (100% Nigerian), age 22, cisgender straight woman, from Atlanta and New York, attending Columbia Law School.
• Yolore Airewele identifies as African American (Nigerian), age 23, from upstate New York, cisgender straight woman, working as research staff at Princeton University.

• Jessica Brice identifies as Black/African American, age 22, cisgender woman, from New Jersey, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Washington.
• Dana Harris identifies as an African American, age 23, cisgender queer woman, from Cleveland, Ohio, currently living in New Haven, Connecticut, working as a research analyst with ThinkNow.
• Leezet Matos, M.A., identifies as a Black Afro-Latinx (Haitian-Dominican/Puerto Rican), age 26, cisgender queer woman from Dallas, Texas, currently living in Los Angeles, California, attending the University of California at Los Angeles.

The selection of the quotations in Chapter 4 was made by these interviewers, committee staff member André Porter, and committee co-chair Susan Fiske. Because their identities likely inform their perceptions, their positional statements follow:

• André Porter, identifies as a Black/African American, age 34, cisgender man from Washington, D.C.
• Susan T. Fiske identifies as White (25% German Jewish, 75% British Isles), age 70, mobility challenged, cisgender straight woman, from Chicago and New England, teaching at Princeton University.

The interviewers uploaded their audio interviews to a secure storage site, and the audio files were then transcribed by either an agency or an automated transcription site. A research assistant then removed any identifying information in the transcripts before uploading the documents onto the secure storage site for later use. Finally, committee and staff informally coded the information by interview questions.

The quotations that appear throughout the report were vetted by the entire committee and approved by the individual interviewee.

INTERVIEW SCRIPT

Committee members and the five interviewers developed a structured interview. The rest of this section reproduces that script. (Note that the National Academies are referred to as NASEM in the script.)

“I am [name], working as research staff with the NASEM committee on Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM. Just for context, I have a B.A. in Psychology from Princeton, having completed a senior thesis on [topic] in Susan Fiske’s lab. So I have human subjects

training. I will follow an interview script, developed by a subcommittee of committee on Racism, Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Careers, as approved by the NASEM IRB.

I am so grateful for your time today. This should take about half an hour. In case it looks like we might run over, do you have a hard stop afterwards? [Respect their time.]

I’m going to ask some questions about your lived experience as a [scientist, engineer, medical professional]. As the letter from Dr. Barabino and Dr. Fiske [the committee co-chairs] noted, the research staff will aggregate most of the data for the committee’s report, so in those cases, you would be anonymous. If we want to use any direct quotations, we would ask you, and your identity will still be confidential; although I know who you are, the quote would be attributed generically (e.g., Black member of NAM [National Academy of Medicine]). The whole process has NASEM IRB approval.

Would you mind if we audio record this, so I can concentrate on listening to you? You can ask me to turn off the Zoom audio recording or the video picture at any time. You can also skip any question. When I turn on the recording, your participation implies your consent to be recorded.

After we are done, a transcription service will transcribe your interview. We will keep the recording and transcript in secure NASEM storage and destroy it 12 months after the committee releases its report. Is it okay for me to turn on the audio recording? And thanks again for your time.

Could you tell me how you identify your NASEM field? And what is your racial identity?

So, tell me about being a [race and specialty]. What’s your experience? [After a few backchannels—uh huh, I see, wow, great—try “anything else?” Elicit concrete details: “Tell me more about that.”]

I’d appreciate if you could say more. For example: Did you feel like you belonged—or not?

How much did you feel supported—or not?

What were the sources of your own resilience?

Now I’d like to home in on these questions at different career stages, regarding experiences of belonging or not, being supported or not, and resilience.

How did you experience training in your college STEMM major?

How about graduate school? What was that like?

Time in lab or research team?

First job?

Promotion?

Lately?

Overall, what lessons have you learned from the journey over your career?

If you have a little more time, what advice would you give someone just starting out?

What advice would you give the NASEM panel assembling this report?

What else should I be asking you?

And finally, a little more about you. Please note that your answers will be kept separately from your transcript. We simply want to describe generally the kinds of people who gave us interviews: In what year did you get your highest degree?

How do you identify your gender? [Or, if it seems too awkward:] I’ll record your gender as [m/f], if that’s OK, unless you prefer a nonbinary identity.

Where were you born?

Where were your parents born? [If they ask, this records immigration history.]

Thank you for giving your time to this important project. The report should be coming out by early fall.”

RECRUITMENT AND DEMOGRAPHICS

To recruit participants, the committee emailed the 33 members of the Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine who identify as Black or African American. Additionally, to increase the number of interviews with Black elites in STEMM careers, the committee sent a recruitment email to 30 randomly selected members of the National Academies who identify as Black or African American; a second round of recruitment following the same procedure yielded 30 more

National Academies’ members, for a total number of 60 members of the National Academies. The final recruitment effort was directed at members of the committee itself. The rate of response from the roundtable was 51.5 percent (17 members), from the membership of the National Academies, 13.3 percent (eight members), and from the committee, 57.1 percent (four members). Thus, the total number of interviewees was 29.

Of the 29 interviewees 12 identified as female (41.4%) and 17 identified as male (58.6%); 21 of the interviewees were born in the United States (72.4%) and three were second-generation immigrants (10.3%).

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