GSE/RES: Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE)

美国的高中生接触到了许多课堂上的策略和活动，以及旨在提高女性在科学和工程领域从事职业的兴趣的课外计划。教师可以自由选择解决使女性更友好的科学问题，并选择采用的方法，这使得很难进行受控的教育实验来衡量有效性。流行病学方法是挖掘一年级大学生背景中对科学和工程感兴趣的预测因素的理想方法，同时控制人口统计学差异。本研究将对全国4000名四年制和两年制大学生进行调查，考察高中生在接受各种干预措施后，在选修课程和选择专业时的坚持性之间的关系，重点关注女性坚持的预测因素。虽然在大学里可以发生很多事情来劝阻STEM专业的学生在大学的第一年，但相对较少的学生是新被这些领域吸引的。一旦宣布为重大疾病，男性的自然流失率略高于女性。然而，最初对大学感兴趣的女性人数比男性少好几倍。我们认为，在确定影响女性在高中期间对STEM职业兴趣的战略方面，这是一个很好的机会。这项研究能够揭示和支持在我国多元化的教育体系中使用最有前途的教育实践，包括由NSF资助的项目开发和传播的许多实践。该项目的学术价值在于，它将提供和传播证据，证明各种新颖和传统方法的有效性，这些方法吸引女学生进入STEM职业生涯，目前仍有相当大的争议。来自公共卫生和医学的流行病学技术提供了一种成本效益高和易于理解的方法，可以同时测试多个假设，同时控制多种人口统计和背景因素。这项研究将使用对学生、教授和教师的在线跟踪调查来收集敏感和更定性的数据，以完成分析。该项目的更广泛影响包括衡量各种传统和新的教学做法和活动的效果。随着公众对女性科学家和工程师在劳动力中代表性不足的激烈辩论，有必要对美国课堂上各种替代方案的丰硕成果进行审查。衡量这些方法的相对优点，同时控制关键的背景和人口因素，将有助于教师和学校决定向所有学生，特别是那些目前在STEM职业生涯中代表性不足的学生提供高质量科学教育的最佳方法。大学将受益于为他们自己在当地社区的外展活动确定最有效的计划。

High school students in the U.S. are exposed to many in-class strategies and activities, as well as extra-curricula programs that are aimed at increasing the interest of females in pursuing careers in science and engineering. Teachers' freedom to choose to address the issue of making science friendlier to females and to choose the methods to employ makes it difficult to conduct controlled educational experiments to measure effectiveness. Epidemiological methods are ideal for mining the backgrounds of first-year college students for predictors of interest in science and engineering, while controlling for demographic differences. This study will examine the connection between the exposure of high school students to a variety of interventions and their later persistence in course-taking and selection of major for 4,000 four-year and two-year college students nationwide, focusing deliberately upon predictors of persistence for women. While much can happen in college to dissuade students from STEM majors in their first college year, relatively few are newly attracted to these fields. Once declaring a major, attrition of males is somewhat greater than it is for females. However, the number of females with initial interest in college is several times smaller than for males. We see a great opportunity in identifying the strategies that impact female interest in STEM careers while in high school. This study has the capability to both reveal and bolster the use of the most promising educational practices, including many developed and disseminated by NSF-funded programs, in our nation's multi-faceted educational system.The intellectual merit of the project is that it will provide and disseminate evidence for the efficacy of a variety of both novel and traditional approaches for attracting female students to STEM careers for which considerable current dispute is ongoing. Epidemiological techniques from public health and medicine offer a cost effective and well understood methodology to simultaneously test multiple hypotheses while controlling for a multitude of demographic and background factors. The study will use online follow-up surveys of students, professors, and teachers to gather sensitive and more qualitative data to complete the analysis. The broader impacts of the project include the measurement of the effect of a variety of both traditional and new teaching practices and activities. With public debate raging about the underrepresentation of female scientists and engineers in the workforce, there is a need for an examination of the fruitfulness of the universe of alternatives in the nation's classrooms. Measuring the relative merits of such approaches, while controlling for critical background and demographic factors, will help teachers and schools decide on the optimal methods for providing a quality science education to all of their students, especially those who are in groups currently underrepresented in STEM careers. Colleges will benefit from the identification of the most effective programs for their own outreach activities in their local communities.