Reducing Attrition in STEM Doctoral Education: A Longitudinal Investigation using Momentary Assessment and Social Psychological Intervention

ECR计划强调基础STEM教育研究，这将产生该领域的基础知识。这项研究将研究来自心理威胁的压力是否有助于解释为什么近一半的博士生，甚至更高的女性和代表不足的少数民族学生在获得STEM学位之前就离开了研究生院。这项拟议的研究将以自我肯定理论为指导，确定社会心理干预是否可以通过帮助学生改变他们对环境威胁的评估来有效地提高博士教育的保留率。由于很少有研究纵向和严格地探索对博士生的发展轨迹产生负面影响的因素，以及心理干预如何改变这些发展轨迹，这项研究将是朝着这个方向迈出的重要的第一步。为此，这项研究将增进该领域的知识，了解如何增加博士层次的STEM领域的整体参与度，同时有助于使未来的STEM专业劳动力多样化。这项研究将采取纵向随机对照试验的形式，在三个主要研究机构的两个STEM博士生队列中进行。一年级研究生将被随机分配到控制条件下，或接受标准或或有肯定干预。标准的肯定包括一个经过经验验证的写作练习，让参与者反思他们的重要价值观。新开发的或有肯定让参与者明确地将他们的价值观与他们的长期教育目标联系起来。智能手机应用程序将用于提供定期的助推器干预，并收集关于学生生活体验的持续生态瞬时评估数据。这种方法将提供所需的心理和行为数据，以记录可能导致STEM博士项目学生流失的长期压力指标。结果将提供一个窗口，了解STEM研究生的心理和表现轨迹，以及预测流失和留住的因素，包括肯定干预在这一人群中的有效性。研究结果还将有助于在STEM教育中推进与社会认同、动机和目标追求相关的理论，并通过提供必要的关于肯定干预机制的纵向信息，进一步扩展和扩展肯定理论。测试定制智能手机提供助推器干预的有效性，特别是扩展了肯定理论，并总体上扩展了移动心理干预的提供。

The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field. This study will examine whether stress from psychological threat helps explain why nearly half of doctoral students overall and even higher rates of women and underrepresented minority students leave graduate school before attaining their terminal STEM degrees. The proposed research will be guided by the self-affirmation theory in determining whether social psychological interventions can be effective strategies for improving retention in doctoral education by helping students alter their appraisal of environmental threats. Since few, if any, studies have longitudinally and rigorously explored factors that negatively impact trajectories of doctoral students and how psychological interventions can alter these trajectories, this research will be an important initial step in that direction. To that end, this study will advance knowledge in the field about ways to increase overall participation in STEM areas at the doctoral level while at the same time help to diversify the future STEM professional workforce. This research will take on the form of a longitudinal randomized controlled trial conducted among two cohorts of incoming STEM doctoral students at three major research institutions. First-year graduate students will be randomly assigned to a control condition or to either a standard or contingent affirmation intervention. The standard affirmation involves an empirically-validated writing exercise that has participants reflect on their important values. The newly-developed contingent affirmation has participants explicitly link their values to their long-term educational goals. A smartphone application will be used to provide periodic booster interventions and collect ongoing ecological momentary assessment data on students' lived experiences. This method will provide needed psychological and behavioral data to chronicle long-term indicators of stress that may contribute to student attrition from STEM doctoral programs. Results will provide a window into the psychological and performance trajectories of STEM graduate students and the factors that predict attrition and retention, including the effectiveness of affirmation interventions in this population. Results will also help advance theory related to social identity, motivation, and goal pursuit in STEM education and will further expand and extend affirmation theory, by providing needed longitudinal information on the mechanisms underlying affirmation interventions. Testing the effectiveness of tailored smartphone delivery of booster interventions expands affirmation theory in particular and the delivery of mobile psychological interventions generally.