members to secure their individual consent, provide them with back-
ground information on the project, and invite them to discuss the
research and their concerns. These letters of invitation stated unam-
biguously the purpose of the research and assured recipients that in
the presentation of results all information that might lead to their
identification would be safeguarded.
Respondents
A total of 81 interviews were conducted, including 66 interviews
with 49 different panel members (17 panelists were interviewed twice,
because they served on panels for the two years of the study period).
Fifteen additional interviews were conducted with relevant program
officers and chairpersons for each panel, who provided details about
what had happened during the panel deliberation in the absence of
direct observation. Panelists are distributed across a range of disci-
plines. The disciplines most represented are, in descending order,
history (14); literature and anthropology (7 each); political science
and sociology (6 each); anthropology (5); musicology (3); art his-
tory, economics, classics, and philosophy (2 each); and geography
and evolutionary biology (1 each).
In addition to their disciplinary affiliation, some respondents
identified themselves as having more than one field. For instance,
a dozen individuals described themselves as involved in women’s
studies or in African-American studies. Thus, in the interviews, these
two fields emerge as booming interdisciplinary areas that are sig-
nificantly reshaping the social sciences as well as the humanities.^1
They also present some of the characteristics of “weak” disciplines as
described by Thomas Bender—they are fields that do not display
rigid external boundaries or strong internal consensus.^2
I interviewed slightly more males than females. Respondents in-
cluded seven African American and one Asian scholar. Almost two-
thirds of the panelists taught in private institutions, with 27 teaching
252 / Appendix