A Case Study of 2020 COVID-19 Specific Federal Grant Recipients_参考网 (2023)

Haorui Wu · Adele Mansour

Abstract COVID-19 has triggered a plethora of independent and collaborative Rapid Response Disaster Research (QDRR) initiatives around the world. associated social influences. This study aims to portray the landscape of this emerging QRDR workforce in the social sciences through the first round of COVID-19 specific federal grantees. A case study approach was used to examine 337 social science projects with 1,119 associated researchers and to analyze the demographic structure of these social science researchers driven by COVID-19 and the characteristics of their research projects. Thus, the findings are presented in the following two streams: (1) From a researcher's point of view, this case study describes the researcher's typology, geographic location, training and educational background, highlighting the diversity of researchers from social sciences and the uneven development of research across Canada.(2) From a research project perspective, this case study identifies and summarizes Canadian themes, themes, collaborations, and specificities of research projects, emphasizing the need to encourage collaboration and focus on in unique Canadian contexts. The case study illustrates challenges related to data maintenance that are barriers to developing a nuanced understanding of the COVID-19 research landscape for the Canadian social science community. Consequently, the case study develops three recommendations for improving QRDR development in Canada: promoting transparency, dissemination and updating of information; Improve the evaluation of employees in the research of hazards and disasters; and enhancing multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Schlüsselwörter Canadian Federal Giving Agencies · COVID-19 · Disaster Rapid Response Research · Research Projects · Research Staff · Social Sciences

1. Introduction

COVID-19 has triggered remarkable independent and collaborative global Rapid Response Disaster Research (QDRR) initiatives (Nature 2020). QRDR provides time-sensitive information about the impact of disasters, collecting "perishable" or "ephemeral" data "before memories fade and physical evidence is erased" (NHC n.d.a, para.1). A dramatic global increase in human, economic and social losses caused by disasters has led many countries to establish national QRDR programs (Australian government nd; NSF nd; Evanson and Scheuber 2019). Although Canada has entered an era of frequent, multi-billion dollar disasters (Public Safety Canada 2015), its national QRDR program has been slow to establish Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Research Council in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHRC) primarily support research, education, and innovation in post-secondary organizations across Canada (Government of Canada 2021a). In response to the global COVID-19 crisis, the CIHR (2020a) and SSHRC (2020) launched COVID-19 specific QRDR grants in February and April 2020, respectively. These grant competitions were considered the first federal QRDR initiatives to be launched in Canada. Beyond the medical and health implications, the full spectrum of specific social impacts of COVID-19 is driving social scientists to study diverse vulnerabilities that affect the individual, family, community and society with the aim of building resilient and sustainable societies. in Canada and beyond (Wu and Karabanov 2020).

Historically, QRDR led by social scientists provide community-based knowledge, skills and strategies to advance current hazard and disaster research and inform practices and policies related to disaster and emergency management (Tierney 2015). Understanding the QRDR's demographic structure led by social scientists allows rapid coordination of local professionals to respond to their community-based extreme events (National Research Council 2006). Consequently, since 2018, the NSF-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) project, led by Dr. Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center (NHC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, conducted the first census of social science hazard and disaster researchers in the US and internationally (Peek, Champeau, et al. 2020). Since Canadian data collected as part of the SSEER project is processed through US-based networks, it may not accurately reflect the Canadian social science research workforce. QRDR initiatives launched in Canada, and the social impact of COVID-19 spur engagement from Canadian social scientists et al. (2020) suggest that developing a Canadian rapid-response social science research program would not only accurately identify various Canadian community-specific disaster impacts, but more importantly, fill the deficit of Canada's QRDR disaster science program. in the subdisciplines of social scientist-led COVID-19 QRDR efforts have improved Canada's QRDR deficit?

In response to Peek, Champeau, et al. (2020) and Oulahen et al. (2020) identified research gaps, this research used a case study approach to understand emerging social science QRDR research work on government-funded COVID-19 specific QRDR initiatives in 2020 in Canada. This case study examines the demographics of social scientists and the characteristics of their projects. This understanding will provide evidence-based strategies to coordinate and empower Canada's social science QRDR workforce, enhance Canadian social science-led QRDR development, and promote multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder QRDR engagement in Canada and internationally.

2 Disaster Research Rapid Response in the Social Science Disaster and Hazard Research Community

Hazard and disaster research has a well-developed history in engineering and science disciplines (Tierney 2019). Foundation for Building Resilient and Sustainable Communities (Peek, Tobin, et al.2020). Social scientists contribute significantly to this inter/transdisciplinary approach through theoretical frameworks, methodologies, promising practices and decision/policy making (Peek and Guikema 2021). In this case study, the definition of social science is rooted in the interaction between humans and society and reflects a range of social science disciplines developed by Laidlaw et al. (2020) described the research staff and their different focuses to support the rationale and relevance of this case study.

2.1 Canada Disaster Rapid Response Survey

QRDR social science reveals interactions between humans, cohabitants (animals) and communities after extreme events (NHC n.d.a; Morris et al.2021). Based on time-sensitive data, QRDR results provide valuable references and encourage not only the development of disaster science, but also the formulation of community disaster risk reduction strategies in different social dimensions (Wu, Perez-Lugo, et al. 2021). In particular, for over 36 years (since 1986), the NHC has successfully run a QRDR program with financial support from NSF, with over 300 QRDR reports covering various disasters from the 1986 California floods to Hurricane Katrina (2005 ) until the current COVID-19 pandemic (NHC n.d.b). These projects quickly mobilized researchers and other professionals into disaster-stricken communities to collect hard-to-reach data and support emergency response initiatives. Most importantly, these research projects provide concrete training and mentorship opportunities for next generation hazard and disaster researchers and practitioners (CONVERGE n.d.), while creating networks between researchers, local authorities, affected communities and their residents. These broad benefits drive the dissemination, translation and mobilization of knowledge, advancing post-disaster reconstruction and recovery in affected communities, regions and beyond.

While tri-agency did not receive QRDR grants prior to COVID-19, there were some research organizations across Canada that funded QRDR-related initiatives. Specifically, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), affiliated with Western University (Ontario, Canada) and Canada's most prestigious multidisciplinary research and communication center for disaster prevention, launched Canada's first QRDR program (ICLR n.d.a) in 2016. This QRDR program focused on the Albertan Fort McMurray wildfires, the costliest disaster in Canadian history to date (Magill 2016). ICLR has also worked with international (ie NHC) and Canadian (ie Marine Environmental Observation, Forecasting and Response Network) research institutes to advance its QRDR agenda. ICLR-led QRDR initiatives comprehensively examine community-level disaster impacts associated with Canada-specific extreme events such as wildfires and floods (ICLR n.d.b). This preliminary effort promoted the development of the Canadian QRDR and federal and state support that would significantly advance Canada's disaster and hazard research communities.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has severely damaged human health and well-being, societies and economic development worldwide (United Nations Environment Program and International Livestock Research Institute 2020). Since the 2019 COVID-19 outbreak, the CIHR, whose mandates are consistent with this public health emergency, has encouraged Canadian researchers to work together to decipher the specific challenges of COVID-19 and seek appropriate solutions (CIHR 2020a). While the CIHR typically funds health and medical studies, the multiple impacts of COVID-19 on society have prompted the CIHR to create COVID-19 specific grant opportunities in various health and social dimensions. In collaboration with other federal grant and research agencies, CIHR (2020b) introduced the first COVID-19-specific QRDR grants on February 10, 2020 under two strands: "Medical Countermeasures Research" and "Social and Political Countermeasures Research of health". (CIHR 2020a, paragraph 3). The first official QRDR grants in Canada: 227 research proposals involving 1195 investigators were submitted in a 9-day application window, and 150 reviewers across Canada completed reviews in 5 days (CIHR 2021a). This accelerated grant process ensures ample time to support research efforts that address urgent needs with urgent data collection. As COVID-19 rapidly evolved, CIHR launched five additional rounds of COVID-19-specific QRDR grants to address emerging health and social issues related to COVID-19 generally (CIHR 2020c) and medical challenges specifically, such as clinical epidemiology (CIHR 2020d), mental health and substance use (CIHR 2020e).

In comparison, the SSHRC (2020) launched COVID-19-specific QRDR grants in April 2020 in two rounds through Partnership Engage Grants (PEG) with application deadlines of June 15 and September 15, 2020, respectively (SSHRC 2021a). Overall, the PEG encourages academic researchers in the social sciences and humanities to collaborate with public, private, or not-for-profit sectors to develop agency-driven evidence that improves agency operations (SSHRC 2021a). These six-round CIHR competitions and two-round SSHRC fellowships are critical to establishing the Canadian QRDR within Canada's disaster and hazard community and to promoting initiatives by other Canadian federal and provincial agencies in support of the QRDR.

2.2 Social Science Efforts for Rapid Disaster Response Research

Global climate change, natural disasters and other global crises are driving nations around the world to develop community-led strategies for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. However, Canada's national climate change adaptation strategy is still in development (Boisvert 2021), although Canada's climate change is accelerating twice as fast as the global average and northern Canada is necessarily warming three times faster. than the global average (Government of Canada 2021b) . UKCRIC 2019) focused on workforce and resource assessment in hazard and disaster research to enable them to rapidly coordinate their physical, social and human resources in response to extreme events at local, regional and national levels. In particular, as noted above, SSEER has used surveys to identify global hazards and social science disaster researchers (Peek, Champeau, et al.2020). As of 2021 In conclusion, the SSEER database included 1,420 researchers worldwide (NHC n.d.c). The US-based nature of SSEER suggests that US data would be more accurate than other countries. For example, the current SSEER map (2022) shows that 58 social scientists reside in six Canadian provinces (NHC n.d.d). This figure may not reflect the entire Canadian risk and disaster research community in the social sciences; However, datasets on disaster and hazard researchers are not available in Canada, let alone those working in the social sciences and humanitarian disciplines.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced global multidisciplinary research communities to fight independently and collectively against a common enemy (WHO n.d.). Global COVID-19 Research Projects are formulating a valuable dataset to support QRDR Research Team investigation specific to COVID-19 at home and abroad. Specifically, Columbia University (2021) leads the U.S.COVID Information Commons initiative, reviewing 1,722 NSF-funded COVID-19 rapid response research projects. This study encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing among students, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders in public, private, and nonprofit organizations across the United States and beyond (Columbia University 2021). In Canada, CanCOVID (2021), a government-funded networking platform, has a data-sharing platform across 19 studies. This platform includes most medical and healthcare research projects; however, social science and humanities projects were not presented effectively. In addition, COVID-19 Resources Canada (n.d.) uses web-based data collection about researchers and their projects. Data collection relies on voluntary contributions from researchers and therefore cannot comprehensively represent the Canadian research landscape. The common challenge for data from these agencies is that researchers' academic information (eg, their disciplinary experience and geographic location) is unclear.

The experience of community-focused social scientists directly addresses the catastrophic impact of the pandemic on local and international communities (Reinhardt and Ross 2019). QRDR social science scrutinizes disaster-related vulnerabilities of specific populations that typically affect vulnerable and marginalized groups such as: B. People affected by homelessness (Karabanow et al.2022) and indigenous populations (Stukes and Wu 2020) . Baysinger and Kogan 2022) were also examined in this context. QRDR social science also examines disaster-related social impacts such as social isolation and mental health (Johnson et al. 2021), work-family conflicts (DesRoches et al. 2021), and human-animal bonds (Wu, Bains, et al. .2021). ). more environmental and social justice by contributing to resilient and sustainable communities (Drolet et al. 2015). Collecting community-driven data can help community service agencies and decision makers gain a better understanding of the unique needs of the community and then use based services and policies to meet the specific needs of the population (Doll et al.2022). In the context of COVID-19, these data are essential for QRDR social science. Addressing the unique needs of the community is critical to many efforts before, during, and after a disaster (Beaven et al. 2019). As noted earlier, to the authors' knowledge, no existing research initiatives are focused on these dimensions through Canada's COVID-19-specific QRDR.

In summary, the research gaps described above make it necessary to examine the QRDR agendas of Canadian social scientists in response to COVID-19, the demographics of social science research staff, and the characteristics of their research projects. This case study focuses on the CIHR and SSHRC dataset and is guided by the following research question: How did the Canadian social science QRDR community respond to COVID-19?

3 case study

As the primary source of research funding, three-agency-designated grants are the first choice for most researchers affiliated with Canadian post-secondary institutions (McGill University n.d.; University of Windsor n.d.). Thus, the case study of a three-agency funded research project provides a first understanding of the Canadian QRDR workforce. Additionally, social science research initiatives among the three federal agencies were funded primarily through CIHR and SSHRC programs rather than NSERC programs (NSERC n.d.). Results from the CIHR and SSHRC fellowship competitions form the primary source of data for this case study.

3.1 Curation and Screening of Initial Data

Among the COVID-19 specific QRDR call for proposals published by the Tri-Agencies in 2020, there are eight rounds of federal grants in Canada, namely six CIHR grants and two SSHRC grants. Among the six CIHR grants, the two-round general grants will fund 253 projects; In particular, 100 projects were financed in the first call and 153 in the second. The remaining four rounds of specific grants funded 28 projects. Thus, a total of 281 projects were funded in six rounds of CIHR QRDR initiatives. Project titles, abstracts, keywords and research teams are available in CIHR Funding Decision Notifications (CIHR n.d.). The first round of the SSHRC competition has funded 172 projects (as of September 2020) and the second round has funded a total of 123 projects (as of December 2020). of 295 projects. Compared to CIHR funding competition notifications, SSHRC award recipients include the names of researchers, their affiliated organizations, partner organizations, project titles and funding amount, but do not include project abstracts and published keywords such as notifications of CIHR funding decisions (SSHRC 2021b, 2021c).

As described above, the initial database consists of all CIHR and SSHRC funded COVID-19 specific QRDR projects. The two authors, with experience in interdisciplinary health and social research, independently reviewed and discussed 576 project titles and abstracts (CIHR-funded projects only) to identify social science research projects. As CIHR-funded endeavors are primarily focused on medical and health research, only 42 of the 281 projects were classified as social science research (i.e. medically related projects such as vaccine development and physical injury to health). diagnostic tests have been removed). While two-round SSHRC calls were explicitly identified as COVID-19-related social and humanitarian research streams, all of these SSHRC-funded projects were included in the final dataset. As shown in Fig. 1, there were 337 social science-led COVID-19 specific projects, of which 295 were supported by the SSHRC and 42 were supported by the CIHR.

3.2 Maintenance and analysis of other data

As most fellows are affiliated with Canadian post-secondary institutions, the authors used the names of fellows and associated organizations to search their professional websites and gather related information such as and public media also published news to showcase these funded projects and provide the details needed to understand project content, which is particularly relevant for SSHRC-funded projects where abstracts are not publicly available for publication of your projects, such as B. Peer-reviewed journal articles, guest comments, articles popular media, reports, short reports, and other forms of gray literature. Gray and scholarly literature helped the research team understand the background information of funded research projects and ultimately support data analysis. Additional information (such as news, website content, and academic and gray literature) was not available for all award winners, creating potential challenges for this case study. These challenges and associated limitations are discussed later in this article.

The final dataset includes project title, researcher names, affiliated organizations, home departments (university or university researchers only), major disciplines, project topics, research team composition, etc. The final dataset can be accessed in Mansour and Wu (2021). For ethical and privacy reasons, some information (names, email addresses and office phone numbers) has been removed from this published dataset. Data analysis used a quantitative approach (ie frequency and percentage). the demographic structure of the research team and a qualitative approach (ie, coding and themes) to the characteristics of research designs. Quantitative and qualitative analyzes were supported by SPSS Statistic and NVivo 12, respectively. The two researchers independently analyzed the data conducted during the weekly discussions and synthesized the final results presented in the next section.

4 results

This case study illustrates the specific social science setting of the 2020 QRDR COVID-19 in Canada, collectively (up to 20 researchers in a team) examined various specific social impacts of COVID-19 at the individual, family, community and societal levels. Among these research teams, 1,005 researchers are affiliated with SSHRC-funded projects and 114 are affiliated with CIHR-funded projects.

COVID-19 is having a disastrous impact on communities at home and abroad. These broader implications are also reflected in Canada's specific COVID-19 QRDR agenda. Among the 337 projects, there are five international partnership projects, all funded by the SSHRC. At the national level, 74 projects (60 SSHRC-funded projects and 14 CIHR-funded projects) have interprovincial partnerships. Eligibility for interprovincial collaboration is determined by the following two criteria: Criterion 1: The primary affiliation of at least two research team members is located in two jurisdictions in Canada; Criterion 2: If the entire research team is located in the same jurisdiction, their studies must be carried out outside that jurisdiction Projects (total of 14 projects). The following sections provide a detailed dual analysis: the demographic structure of the social science research team and the characteristics of its research projects.

Table 1 Overall statistics of rapid response disaster research projects led by specific COVID-19 social scientists in Canada

4.1 Researcher

This section examines the demographic structure of social scientists based on four aspects: typology, geographic location, major discipline, and educational background. Understanding these four variables will help strengthen and coordinate the Canadian Social Science QRDR workforce to respond quickly to extreme events in the future.

4.1.1 Typology

In general, four typologies were developed based on the frequency, depth, and extent of researchers' involvement in hazards and disasters, ie, core researchers, journal researchers, situational researchers, and emerging researchers (Peek, Tobin, et al.2020); For example, nuclear researchers claim to be deeply engaged in this field, and hazard and disaster research forms a central part of their overall research agenda, while emerging researchers are new to the field and are currently building their research expertise (Peek, Tobin, et al. 2020). This typology-specific information requires self-identification that cannot be detected by an Internet-based search approach. However, tri-agencies use emerging and established scholars to describe Canadian researcher typologies and have established specific grant streams to support early career (emerging) researchers in building their research output (Government of Canada 2020). In particular, federal funding agencies primarily support researchers affiliated with Canadian post-secondary organizations; emerging academics who are within 6 years of completing their highest degree (usually a PhD or equivalent) or within the 6-year limit of their permanent post-secondary or permanent employment, including postdoctoral researchers and other associates of research, faculty, assistant professors and some associate professors (SSHRC 2021d). Established researchers have recognized research credentials and credentials and are mostly associate and tenured professors at research-intensive universities across Canada (SSHRC 2021d).

Additionally, tri-agencies require principal investigators to be affiliated with eligible Canadian institutions, with post-secondary institutions (universities and colleges) and affiliated research institutions (such as hospitals and laboratories) occupying the majority of these eligible institutions (SSHRC 2021e) . The Principal Investigators The individuals named in these 337 projects are all associated with post-secondary institutions and/or affiliated research organizations. Other professionals associated with post-secondary institutions (ie, librarians and research support staff) who make a significant contribution to the research project act as co-investigators or collaborators. SSHRC COVID-19 specific grants have been provided through the Partnership Engage Grants, which aims to encourage academic researchers to collaborate with public, private, or not-for-profit sectors to develop agency-driven evidence to improve agency operations (SSHRC 2021a). Therefore, researchers from these non-academic agencies have been involved in these projects and contribute to the composition of the research team.

Considering the researcher's characteristics, Figure 2 illustrates the researcher's typology in this case study. Although these SSHRC and CIHR fellowships did not prioritize emerging scientists, it can be clearly stated that the percentage of emerging scientists is solid among all researchers. Notably, the ratio of emerging to established scientists is 1:2.7 for SSHRC-funded projects and 1:2.3 for CIHR-funded projects.

4.1.2 Geographic Locations

The two authors used the researchers' main affiliated institutions to identify their geographic locations. Of the 1,005 researchers who carried out SSHRC-funded projects, 935 were Canadian (93%) and 70 foreign (7%). CIHR-funded projects show that Canadian researchers are the majority with 96.5% of all researchers (110 Canadian researchers and four international researchers). Israel, China, Sweden, South Africa, Tanzania and Peru.

The current SSEER map shows 58 social scientists in six Canadian provinces (NHC n.d.d). The researchers involved in this case study provide supplemental SSEER information and advance social science research staff's current understanding of COVID-19. The province-based count of social scientists is visualized on the national map (Fig. 3). The results of the analysis are presented at the federal, regional and provincial levels. Note that both maps show 1040 Canadian explorers each. There are 74 international researchers excluded from Canadian maps and five researchers whose geographic locations are unknown.

Observation at the national level: The map shows that the COVID-19 oriented researchers are located in the 10 provinces of Canada. Unfortunately, no researchers can be found in Canada's three northern territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut), reflecting Canada's uneven levels of education and allocation of research resources, as these areas have the fewest postgraduate institutions. -secondary in Canada (Yuen-Yung and Wu 2021).

Observation at Regional Level: Across Canada, 10 provinces and three territories are grouped into five distinct regions (east to west and south to north), the Atlantic Provinces (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island ). , Central Canada (Ontario and Quebec), the Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), the Pacific (British Columbia), and the Northern Territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut). This uneven distribution of researchers shows that no researchers are located in the Northern Territories, while the Center Region hosts the highest number of researchers (707 researchers), which is about 8.3 times more than the Atlantic Region (85 researchers) . This uneven distribution reflects already identified differences in educational resources at the national level.

Observation at the provincial level: The three largest provinces where most researchers are located are Ontario (418 researchers), Quebec (289 researchers), and British Columbia (98 researchers). faculties. According to the Times Higher Education (THE n.d.) Global University Rankings 2022, Canada's top three universities, the University of Toronto (Ontario), the University of British Columbia and McGill University (Quebec), are among the top 50 institutions educational institutions (THE n.d.). These national and international rankings are in line with census data provided by the researchers of this study. The three provinces with the fewest researchers are New Brunswick (7 researchers), Newfoundland and Labrador (5 researchers) and Prince Edward Island (1 researcher), all located in the Atlantic region.

4.1.3 Main Disciplines

In general, the researchers' professional websites on the websites of affiliated institutions indicate their main disciplines addressed in this case study. Unavailable information about the researchers' primary disciplines is presented in Fig. Nursing and pharmacy, public health, psychology and social work make up the majority of research disciplines focused on the specific type of COVID-19 research. Other social science disciplines including economics, finance and accounting, education, sociology and religious studies continue to contribute to multidisciplinary engagement related to COVID-19.

4.1.4 Educational Training

Searching researchers' professional websites yielded related professional information, such as: B. Educational background (maximum degree). their demographic data (such as gender and ethnicity) on their agency websites. Therefore, this case study reports only the highest grades of researchers. As shown in Table 2, 81.6% of researchers have a doctorate or equivalent degree. This number is significantly higher than the census result of Peek, Champeau, et al. (2020) (62.59%).

4.2 Research Projects

In addition to the names of researchers and affiliated organizations, the original award list data included research project titles, which represent basic project content such as topics and research topics. Gray literature, such as research news published by organizations affiliated with researchers, also briefly featured winning projects. This additional information allowed the research team to analyze and summarize some critical features of these funded research projects.

4.2.1 Research Topics

Although COVID-19, like other extreme events, affects the entire population, it disproportionately affects vulnerable and marginalized groups (Karabanow et al.2022). in hazard and disaster research and practice, particularly for social scientists (Peek, Champeau, et al.2020; Wu et al.2022). Project title information and associated press releases. Figure 5 shows the identifiable research topics for the remaining 160 projects. The research's four main target groups are children and adolescents, older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities.

Table 2 Education levels of researchers in COVID-19 specific social scientist-led rapid response disaster research projects in Canada

4.2.2 Project Topics

COVID-19 has impacted nearly every dimension of society, including cultural, political, economic, social and health. Research project titles and associated press releases generally illustrate the primary social dimension of each project. However, as Figure 6 shows, most projects focus on health and its associated impacts, the social dimensions have attracted the interest of most researchers. Examples include examining human-animal links during the COVID-19 lockdown, home education and family development, social media and misinformation, food security, and settlement services for immigrants and refugees. These projects specifically address the emerging and pending social issues of the emergency phase of COVID-19 in Canada.

4.2.3 Cooperations

The multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder characteristics inherent in COVID-19 driven disaster and hazard research

Table 3 Canadian Characteristics of Canada's COVID-19 Specific Social Scientist-Led Rapid Response Disaster Research Projects

led researchers in Canada and abroad to collectively identify relevant interventions. As described above, among the 337 projects, five international projects are funded by the SSHRC. Among the remaining 332 national research projects, the majority (78%) focus on current research communities. Possible contributing factors are (1) the local community is the primary field in which most social scientists contextualize their research ideas (Allman 2015); and (2) the rapid progression of COVID-19 resulted in severe public health restrictions (i.e., social distancing, lockdown, and curfews) during the emergency phase, limiting researchers' ability to conduct personal fieldwork outside of their main communities. Although interprovincial collaborative projects represent only 22% of total funded projects, these interprovincial partnerships encourage the mobilization and translation of knowledge across jurisdictions.

4.2.4 Canadian Characteristics

All three agencies accept grant applications written in both of Canada's official languages ​​(English and French). Currently, a decreasing number of French applications in each funding call has led the three agencies to develop adequate strategies to ensure fair access to funding in both official languages ​​(CIHR 2021b). Table 3 shows that 62 projects are written in French (61 projects funded by the SSHRC and one supported by the CIHR), representing 18.4% of the total awarded projects.

In addition, support for research and education of Indigenous Peoples was prioritized in the Canadian Federal Government's Strategic Plan for Research Fellowships 2019–2022 (Government of Canada 2019) to comprehensively address the multiple impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities to develop needs-based solutions (CIHR 2021c). Projects covered a wide range of indigenous research topics, including indigenous culture and resilience, economic recovery of indigenous communities, indigenous social development and mental health. One of eight SSHRC-funded projects was led by a French principal investigator and the research proposal was written in French.

5 challenges

The above results briefly describe Canada's first COVID-19-specific social scientist-led QRDR, including: (1) social science research team demographics (typology, geographic locations, courses, and educational backgrounds), highlighting the distinctive characteristics of scientific researchers and uneven research development across Canada; and (2) characteristics of research projects (research themes, project themes, collaborations, and Canadian characteristics), emphasizing the need to foster collaboration and focus on unique Canadian contexts. The curation, analysis and data synthesis processes revealed the following challenges, reflecting potential research findings and limitations. Based on these identified challenges and limitations, this section provides recommendations for improving QRDR in Canada and internationally.

First, since the official sources for this case study provided somewhat limited information, the resulting lack of full details precluded further analysis. For example, SSHRC-funded projects represent 87.5% of all projects examined in this case study. The list of SSHRC awardees consists of names of researchers and affiliated organizations, project titles and total funding amount, excluding essential information such as project summaries and keywords. Although CIHR-funded project summaries and keywords are publicly available (representing 12.5% ​​of the total projects examined). research), this limited information may not be sufficient to identify additional critical details related to the project, such as B. Research methods, data collection tools and protocols, and team structure and collaboration (Peek, Champeau, et al.2020). In the absence of this crucial information, however, this case study failed to assess social science research methodologies, thus jeopardizing other related analyses.

Second, COVID-19 has shifted most daily routines to the virtual world; However, Internet-based research and data collection does not always provide up-to-date information. When authors used names of researchers and affiliated organizations to locate and access professional details on organizations' websites, it is possible that these websites were not regularly updated or maintained. Therefore, some information collected may be out of date. As Canadian and international post-secondary educational institutions rapidly established their inter/transdisciplinary and international research collaborations, Canadian researchers (particularly faculty members) were increasingly conducting research and teaching outside their home disciplines. Because these researchers may be working outside of their original areas of training, web-based information gathering carries the risk of misidentifying the researchers' major discipline, as well as other potentially misleading demographic variables. Although affiliated organizations can research news by consolidating some of the collected data, research project descriptions are often abbreviated, compromising deeper analysis.

Third, the QRDR aims to transform perishable data into evidence-based interventions to inform research, practice and policy-making. As this specific COVID-19 QRDR is considered to be the first official QRDR endorsed by the Funding Agency of Canada, dissemination of research knowledge is translation and the mobilization process is still evolving The report may not be publicly available. Articles in scientific journals are the main A means of disseminating and mobilizing knowledge for most academic researchers. It can be difficult to directly trace search results to a designated QRDR grant across different publications. Consistent and effective approaches to knowledge dissemination and mobilization are urgently needed to promote time-sensitive QRDR outcomes.

Data curation focused on Canada's first federal QRDR initiatives and was based on CIHR and SSHRC grantees. While tri-agencies are the primary grant agencies for Canadian research communities, provincial government research and funding organizations, non-profit organizations, and other agencies across Canada have also financially supported COVID-19-specific research activities; however, these projects were excluded from this case study. As such, this case study may not represent the full QRDR COVID-19 specific social science agenda and related research strength in Canada. A nuanced understanding of the COVID-19-specific QRDR, its research team, and the specifics of its projects in Canada requires a collaborative multi-agency approach.

6 recommendations

In response to these challenges and limitations above, the following recommendations are made to enhance Canadian QRDR development:

Recommendation 1: Promoting transparency, dissemination and updating of information from source resources could effectively address the above challenges.

Establishing a QRDR project tracking system not only supports research funding agencies in frequently evaluating and adjusting their funding streams and associated strategies, but most importantly, effectively promotes the mobilization of QRDR knowledge and strengthens its impact. outreach in the research, practice, and policy-making communities. For example, the NHC has developed a website to disseminate QRDR reports (NHC n.d.b). This approach encourages knowledge mobilization among researchers, practitioners, policy makers, the general public and other stakeholders. ICLR-funded QRDR project reports are freely available on the ICLR website (ICLR n.d.b). Ideally, federal funding agencies could initiate a similar and even more advanced approach to mobilizing knowledge to address existing and future challenges.

Recommendation 2: Improve understanding of Canadian disaster and hazard research staff.

In North America, the NHC initiated several research projects to better understand disaster and hazard research workers in the United States and internationally, as reported by the 2018 SSEER project census data (Peek, Champeau, et al.2020) . This difference indicates a lack of understanding among the Canadian disaster and hazard research team that will be used in the SSEER project would bridge this research gap and encourage multi-stakeholder collaboration to better serve communities affected by extreme events.

Recommendation 3: Improve multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Rapid response disaster research is closely related to community-based resources. A community-focused collaborative approach should be established between community stakeholders, local researchers, funding agencies and others. This collaboration will encourage participatory community research through the use of community-specific knowledge and skills to solve community-directed problems. This collaboration is critical to supporting indigenous-specific research. Furthermore, as disasters do not respect geographic boundaries, this collaboration must start in the local community and expand more broadly to develop mutual knowledge and promising strategies to build resilience and sustainability.

7. Conclusion

The federal COVID-19-specific QRDR grant opportunities, which will run through 2020, are critical to the development of Canadian QRDR initiatives at the national level. However, the landscape of this community in the Canadian context is still unclear. Analyzes of 337 SSHRC and CIHR-funded projects involving 1,119 researchers contribute to the first understanding of Canada's QRDR workforce demographics in the social sciences and its rapid response to COVID-19 Location, primary discipline, and educational background. Although these social science researchers represent the full spectrum of social science disciplines, their geographic locations are unevenly distributed across Canada. Furthermore, examination of characteristics related to research projects shows that social scientists have studied a wide range of pressing community-based issues related to vulnerable and marginalized populations and indigenous research projects).

The new challenges in this case study are primarily associated with data maintenance, such as B. limited information about the project and mobilization of research knowledge from government funding agencies and researchers-affiliated organizations. These challenges prevent this project from fully contributing to a comprehensive understanding of all Canadian Society QRDR scientific personnel and the characteristics of their projects. In this sense, three recommendations were drawn up that promote transparency, dissemination and updating of information; Improve staff understanding of hazard and disaster research; and improve multi-stakeholder collaboration. These recommendations not only enhance QRDR development in Canada and beyond, but also point to future QRDR-specific research topics.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by Research Development Grants from the Department of Health at Dalhousie University. This research was also conducted thanks in part to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program (Award #CRC-2020-00128).

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