Developing reliable and valid measures for science team process success factors in trans-disciplinary research

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research teams are becoming an increasingly common approach to dealing with complex or wicked problems, and for developing public policy to deal with such issues. Transdisciplinary projects generally have a research team charged with the integration of a range of different scientific disciplines and the local knowledge and expertise of the lay or interested public, to solve a pressing societal problem. Little is understood about the functioning of transdisciplinary research projects or the process factors enabling transdisciplinary projects to succeed. If success enabling process factors can be identified, they may be used as a checklist for guiding good practice. If they can be reliably and validly measured, these measures may be used as diagnostic tools for improving the transdisciplinary research process, helping make sure a project is ‘on track’ and ensuring project success. A literature review identified a range of potential factors or constructs believed by scholars to be important for the success of transdisciplinary research projects. This paper describes the development of a set of reliable construct scales to measure the proposed success factors. A preliminary attempt is made to infer the validity of these constructs, as success factors for transdisciplinary research, using two criterion related measures of project success.