GSE/RES: Trends in the Determinants of Gender Segregation Across STEM Majors, 1976 - 2006

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Intellectual Merit: The University of California Los Angeles is conducting a study using national data on entering college students over the past three decades to advance understanding of the characteristics of women and men who pursue specific STEM majors and how those characteristics vary across STEM fields and over time. This study uses data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey, a national longitudinal study of entering college students conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. The instrument includes dozens of relevant measures, including: self-ratings of academic and mathematical abilities, high school academic achievement and preparation, major choice, academic and career goals, life goals, value orientations, and demographic background. This study takes a unique approach by: (a) disaggregating results by gender and STEM field; (b) incorporating data from over three decades; and (c) using regression decomposition, a statistical method used primarily in economics and sociology, to understand the nature of such changes.Broader Impacts: Knowledge about the characteristics of who chooses particular STEM majors and how those characteristics have changed over time is critical to inform and improve efforts to recruit a diverse population of women and men into the STEM workforce. Prior research has identified key factors affecting college women's persistent underrepresentation in STEM fields including preparation, values, psychological factors, and structural barriers. What remains unknown is whether the determinants of STEM interest have changed over time and in different ways for women and men. Further, there is limited understanding of how determinants of participation differ by specific STEM field, a question of particular importance given that the gender gap in participation ranges from severe (engineering and computer science) to minimal (biological sciences). Project visibility will be enhanced through the production of a professional-quality executive summary, final report, and five discipline-specific reports, available on two high-traffic websites: the Higher Education Research Institute and the Sudikoff Family Institute for Education & New Media.