Collaborative Research: SBP: Broadening participation: Reducing the consequences of subtle discrimination in STEM

扩大科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)中代表性不足的群体的参与，是美国劳动力的人员配备、管理和效率方面的一个关键目标。事实上，非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人在STEM劳动力中所占的比例不到10%。这项拟议研究的总体目标是增加西班牙裔和非裔美国学生的招生、留住和为STEM职业生涯做准备。我们专注于少数族裔学生在STEM背景下遇到的微妙但重要的信息，这些信息破坏了他们的成功。我们独特地考虑到，努力结束对少数群体成员的压迫并代表少数群体成员倡导的盟友或多数群体成员，能够有效地解决微妙的歧视问题，从而最终支持少数族裔学生的STEM兴趣、效率、成就和职场成功。总而言之，这项工作的发现将推动关于少数族裔压力干预和盟友参与的学术研究。此外，它将为留住STEM中的非裔美国人和西班牙裔学生提供立即适用的战略，这是增加美国STEM劳动力中少数族裔代表的必要步骤。这项研究追求的总体目标是开发和测试战略，通过识别和评估减少微妙歧视的有害后果的盟友行为，加强非裔美国人和拉美裔学生在STEM职业生涯中的留住。对这一不足的一个解释是，学生在大学期间的成长经历存在细微差异。在这样做的过程中，我们构建并测试了一个概念模型，该模型独特地将归因模糊、压力和应对理论与关于盟友影响的新兴见解结合在一起。我们基于组织科学相关领域的证据提出了稳健的逻辑，认为微妙的歧视的模糊性耗尽了在STEM取得成就所必需的认知和情感资源。这一推理反映了对为什么以及如何微妙的歧视是有问题的第一次彻底的分析，并直接指出了减少歧义的策略是这些影响的强大的理论驱动的缓冲。我们融合了经验抽样和实验室实验的互补方法，建立了理论上有意义和实践上有用的知识。这项工作将提供具体的、以证据为基础的战略，以支持非裔美国人和西班牙裔大学生，从而提高他们在STEM的兴趣、效率、动机、成就，最终在组织中选择职业并取得成功。特别是，我们专注于有动机的观察者--盟友--在减少微妙歧视对其目标的影响方面以前未被审查的角色，从而催化新的多样性科学。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is a critical goal in the staffing, management, and effectiveness of the U.S. workforce. Indeed, African American and Hispanic people comprise less than 10% of the STEM workforce. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to increase the recruitment, retention, and preparation of Hispanic and African American students for STEM careers. We focus on the subtle yet significant messages that minority students encounter in STEM contexts that undermine their success. We uniquely consider the ways that allies, or majority group members who strive to end oppression toward, and advocate on behalf of, minority group members, can effectively address subtle discrimination, and thus ultimately support the STEM interest, efficacy, achievement, and workplace success of minority students. In summary, the findings from this work will serve as an impetus for scholarship on minority stress interventions and ally engagement. Additionally, it will offer immediately applicable strategies for retaining African American and Hispanic students in STEM, a necessary step for increasing the representation of racial minorities in the U.S. STEM workforce.This research pursues the overarching goal of developing and testing strategies that enhance the retention of African American and Hispanic students in STEM careers by identifying and evaluating ally behaviors that reduce the detrimental consequences of subtle discrimination. One explanation for this shortage is the subtle differences in students' formative college experiences. In so doing, we build and test a conceptual model that uniquely integrates attributional ambiguity and stress and coping theories with emerging insights about the influence of allies. We advance robust logic based on evidence from the fields related to the organizational science to propose that the ambiguity of subtle discrimination depletes cognitive and affective resources necessary for achievement in STEM. This reasoning reflects the first thorough analysis of why and how subtle discrimination is problematic and points directly to ambiguity reduction strategies as powerful theory-driven buffers of these effects. We blend complementary methods of experience sampling and laboratory experiment to build theoretically meaningful and practically useful knowledge. This work will provide specific, evidence-based strategies to support African American and Hispanic college students, thereby enhancing their STEM interest, efficacy, motivation, achievement, and ultimately career choice and success in organizations. In particular, we focus on the previously unexamined role of motivated observers--allies--in reducing the consequences of subtle discrimination for its targets and thus catalyze new diversity science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.