United States Federal Agency Response to the National Academies Workshop on Graduate Training in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

With support from federal agency members of the United States National Science and Technology Council’s Social and Behavioral Science subcommittee (SBS), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) held a workshop in June, 2017 (NASEM, 2017) on Graduate Training in the Social and Behavioral Sciences to identify how SBS graduate education could be adapted to changing workforce needs. Key points from this workshop included greater training in interdisciplinary team science, communicating science, and quantitative skills as well as increasing diversity of SBS trainees and graduates. In response to this workshop, the SBS subcommittee describes the relevance of the key points from the workshop on the social and behavioral science workforce needs in the United States (US) federal government and the efforts of the various federal agencies to augment graduate training to address important research, practice, policy and administrative needs of the government.