**The application period is now closed.**
About Heterodox Academy
Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to improve the quality of research and education by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning.
Grant Background
To further its mission, HxA is developing a set of empirically valid tools that college administrators, faculty, and students can use to promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement on their campuses. HxA has already identified several individual characteristics related to these aspects of campus culture that this toolkit can target: empathy and perspective-taking, intellectual humility, curiosity, open-minded cognition, and self-censorship; we have also selected measures of these individual characteristics. HxA now seeks to complete this toolkit by launching its Increasing Open Inquiry on College Campuses Research Grant, which will fund research identifying interventions that affect these key individual characteristics.
Grant Information
HxA’s Increasing Open Inquiry on College Campuses Research Grant specifically funds studies of interventions that may increase college students’ empathy and perspective-taking, intellectual humility, curiosity, or open-minded cognition, or decrease their self-censorship. Each applicant or team of applicants proposes an intervention (virtual or in-person) that arguably achieves at least one of these effects, along with at least one study to determine if the intervention has its target effect(s) using corresponding measures that HxA selected to operationalize these outcomes.* Five proposals will receive $30,000 each to support their respective research projects, which will take place between August 2021 and May 2022. Interventions that these studies determine to be effective, with their supplementary materials, will become part of HxA’s publicly available toolkit.
*Target outcomes and their corresponding measures are below:
- empathy and perspective-taking (Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern subscales; Davis, 1980, 1983)
- intellectual humility (Intellectual Humility Scale; Leary et al., 2017)
- curiosity (Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised; Kashdan et al., 2020)
- open-minded cognition (Open-Minded Cognition Scale; Price, Ottati, Wilson, & Kim, 2015)
- self-censorship (Willingness to Self-Censor Scale; Hayes, Glynn, & Shanahan, 2005)
Eligibility
- Principal Investigators
- need to be professors at an accredited, 501(c)(3) or 170(c)(1) U.S. college or university
- need to have theoretical and research expertise on at least one of the target outcomes above
- Interventions
- need to arguably increase students’ empathy and perspective-taking, intellectual humility, curiosity, or open-minded cognition, or arguably decrease self-censorship
- need to be free of any license, copyright, or other restrictions that could prevent them from becoming part of HxA’s publicly available toolkit
- may be virtual or in-person
- Studies
- need to examine the effect of an intervention that meets the above criteria on at least one of the target outcomes above, using the corresponding measures that HxA selected to operationalize these outcomes
- need to use a sample of U.S. undergraduate students and take place in an academic setting (in-person or virtual)
- may include measures of researchers’ choosing in addition to those target outcome measures that HxA selected
Summary of Application Requirements
- Propose an intervention that arguably achieves at least one current target effect: Describe its theoretical and empirical background in relation to the requisite outcome or outcomes under study
- Propose a study to test this intervention: Describe its methodology and data analysis
- Describe the research team’s expertise on the proposed intervention and the requisite outcome or outcomes under study
- Present the study’s timeline and budget breakdown
- Upload the CV of each research team member
