Research: Effects of Perceived Bias on Engineering Identity Development in the Graduate Student Community

该项目旨在解决工程研究生项目的高水平人员流失问题。工程师身份，或者一个人如何看待自己是一名工程师，与坚持工程培训和实践密切相关。这项为期三年的研究工作将揭示工程学研究生如何感知偏见的经历，以及感知到的偏见对他们的工程学身份的影响。这项研究将帮助工程教育工作者了解感知偏见影响工程身份发展的方式，并在全国范围内的工程研究生样本中测量感知偏见。该项目将促进对那些有才能和能力成为工程专业人员的人所面临的障碍的理解。它还旨在认识到工程研究生教育在推进研究生如何感知偏见以及他们如何（或不）培养缓冲负面经历的弹性的研究和理论方面可以发挥的关键作用。对研究生水平工程教育的关注有望丰富对偏见经历如何抑制和转移职业抱负的一般理解，同时为那些决心忍受的人提供对工程专业高级培训的具体情况的洞察。过去关于工程师身份、招聘、保留和偏见的研究主要集中在本科生身上，很少有经验证据来理解研究生的经历。此外，偏见研究集中研究STEM领域，而我们计划专门关注工程和工程中的个别学科。该项目分为三个阶段的研究，将：(1)通过访谈，定性地探讨少数民族工程研究生的感知偏见的生活经历及其对工程身份发展的影响；(2)通过一项全国调查，定量测量工程研究生的感知偏见体验和工程认同；(3)定性地评估对前几个阶段数据的解释，并使用访谈和参与者视频日记帐户重新审视最初参与者对感知偏见的体验。这三个阶段的研究将以以下研究问题为指导：工程研究生如何概念化他们自己的身份，如何感知他们作为少数民族的身份，以及如何体验基于这些身份和身份交集的偏见？RQ2。作为研究生项目中的少数群体和经验/感知偏见如何影响工程师身份？区间的身份如何影响工程身份?RQ3。是否有与工程身份相关的经验可以减轻感知偏见的影响？RQ4。现有身份是否支持工程身份开发？如果是这样，如何利用它们来支持学生的坚持、表现和参与？目标是产生经验证据，以确定感知偏见是否/如何破坏工程身份的发展，为减少和减轻偏见提供最佳实践建议，并提出在工程研究生课程和大学中加强工程身份的机会。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project seeks to address the high level of attrition from engineering graduate programs. Engineering identity, or how one perceives oneself as an engineer, is strongly tied to persistence in engineering training and practice. The three-year research effort will uncover how graduate engineering students perceive experiences of bias and the effect of perceived bias on their engineering identity. This research will help engineering educators understand the ways that perceived bias impacts engineering identity development and measure perceived bias in a large national sample of engineering graduate students. The project will advance the understanding of the obstacles that confront those with the talent and ability to become engineering professionals. It also aims to recognize the key role that engineering graduate education can play in advancing research and theory about how graduate students perceive biases and the ways in which they do (or do not) develop resiliency that buffers their negative experiences. The focus on graduate-level engineering education promises to enrich a general understanding of how experiences with bias may suppress and divert career aspirations, while at the same time providing insight into the specific circumstances of advanced training in engineering professions for those who are determined to endure.Past research on engineering identity, recruitment, retention, and bias has focused on undergraduate students, leaving little empirical evidence for understanding graduate experiences. In addition, bias research studies STEM fields collectively, whereas we plan to focus specifically on engineering and individual disciplines within engineering. The project is divided into three phases of research, which will: (1) qualitatively explore the lived experiences of minority graduate engineering students' perceived bias and its effect on engineering identity development, via interviews; (2) quantitatively measure the perceived bias experiences and engineering identity of engineering graduate students via a national survey; and (3) qualitatively evaluate the interpretations of data from previous phases and revisit initial participants' experiences of perceived bias using interviews and participant video diary accounts. These three phases of research will be guided by the following research questions: RQ1. How do engineering graduate students conceptualize their own identities, perceive their identities as minority, and experience perceived bias based on those identities and identity intersections? RQ2. How does existing as a minority in a graduate program and experiencing/perceiving bias affect engineering identity? How does intersectional identity affect engineering identity? RQ3. Are there experiences related to engineering identity that mitigate the effects of perceived bias? RQ4. Can existing identities support engineering identity development? If so, how can they be leveraged to support student persistence, performance, and participation? The goal is to generate empirical evidence that will: identify if/how perceived bias disrupts the development of an engineering identity, offer recommendations for best practices for reducing and mitigating bias, and suggest opportunities for bolstering engineering identity in engineering graduate programs and colleges.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.