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Evaluating scientific impact: a comparative look at funding using the NSF CAREER award
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Evaluating scientific impact: a comparative look at funding using the NSF CAREER award

Ian F. Olivant
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Aug 2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011552
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Abstract

Information science
In this work, we investigate the effect of a large National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant on the impact of research output of physics faculty. Using 169 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awardees in physics as a sample group, and a set of 351 associate professors at R1 institutions in physics as our comparison group, we calculated the mean Network-Normalized Citation Index (Ĉ) for all papers from each group published since 1995. Using a single-covariate propensity score matching technique, we matched mean Ĉ scores across awardee-comparison pairs of faculty in the five years prior to award reception to establish a baseline. We assessed the impact of research output post-award by comparing mean Ĉ in our pairs in the five years post-award. With 153 pairs in the full matched sample and 82 in a robust sample, we used bootstrap analysis to generate histograms of Ĉ that can be used to ascertain statistical significance. While our groups are likely not similar enough to make any broad claims about the effect of funding, our results show no statistically significant difference in Ĉ between the awardees and the comparison faculty (mean difference of 0.052±0.12 for the robust sample). We hope that an ongoing study alongside the Moore Foundation will help to remove group differences, increase our sample size, and confirm or reject this finding.

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