Measuring Mindset in Undergraduate STEM Students

该项目旨在开发一项严格的、以证据为基础的调查，以衡量本科生STEM学生的“心态”。心态是影响学生成功和坚持不懈的一种心理特征。思维结构指的是学生是否认为智力是一种与生俱来的不可改变的特质(称为固定心态)，还是可塑性和可改进的特质(称为成长心态)。当学生在学业上遇到困难时，研究表明，那些具有成长型思维的学生更有可能采取行动来提高他们的表现，而那些思维定势的学生更有可能放弃或接受低表现。许多学生成功倡议试图利用心态的影响，通过实施干预措施来鼓励学生采用成长心态来提高学生的成功。然而，这些干预措施取得了不同程度的成功。这种变数成功的一个原因可能是，用来衡量心态的调查在本科生中不起作用。如果是这样的话，调查结果衡量心态干预的有效性和结果的能力将有限。这个项目的主要调查者进行的初步研究支持了现有的心态调查可能不适用于本科生的可能性。这表明，这种变异性的结果是因为本科生对调查问题的解读有多种方式。这个项目的目标是开发和验证一项新的调查，以衡量本科生的STEM学生的心态。此外，该项目将为首席研究员、一名新的STEM教育研究员提供支持，以了解开展这项工作所需的心理测量学知识。这一专业发展将包括统计学的研究生课程以及心理测量学和统计学专家的合作/指导。该项目的目标是根据既定的心理测量标准开发和验证新的心态量表，供本科生使用。这项工作将在两年内分三个阶段进行。首先，将对大量不同的本科生STEM学生进行访谈，了解他们对智力的看法，以完善本科生思维模式的概念性和可操作性定义。根据这些结果，将通过认知访谈和分类活动来起草和完善调查项目。该量表的内部结构将通过对第二个全国STEM本科生样本的调查，并对他们的反应进行项目反应理论分析来检验。最后，产生的法理网络(概念和观察之间的相互关系的表示)将通过管理新的心态工具以及相关和不相关的结构的测量来进行测试。为一个感兴趣的构造测试法理网络意味着它应该以预期的方式区别于其他构造并与其他构造相关。这项新的调查可能会被研究人员用来回答有关本科生心态的重要问题。或者，教师可以利用它来了解本科生在课堂上的心态，并相应地调整他们的教学。最后，从业者可以利用它来开发和评估旨在通过鼓励学生转向成长心态来提高学生成功的干预措施。该项目通过EHR核心研究：STEM教育研究能力建设(ECR：BCSER)竞赛得到支持，该竞赛旨在培养个人在STEM学习和学习环境中开展高质量基础STEM教育研究的能力，扩大对STEM领域的参与，以及STEM劳动力发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to develop a rigorous, evidence-based survey to measure the "mindset" of undergraduate STEM students. Mindset is a psychological trait that may influence student success and persistence. The mindset construct refers to whether a student believes that intelligence is a trait that is innate and unchangeable (called a fixed mindset) or malleable and improvable (called a growth mindset). When students struggle academically, it has been shown that those with a growth mindset are more likely to take action to improve their performance, while those with a fixed mindset are more likely to give up or accept low performance. Many student success initiatives have attempted to leverage the effects of mindset to improve student success by conducting interventions to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset. However, these interventions have had varied success. One reason for this variable success may be that the survey used to measure mindset does not work well with undergraduate students. If so, survey results will have limited ability to measure the effectiveness and outcomes of mindset interventions. Preliminary research by the the principal investigator of this project supports the possibility that the existing mindset survey may not work well with undergraduate students. It suggests that the variability results because undergraduates interpret the survey questions in multiple ways. The goal of this project is to develop and validate a new survey to measure mindset in undergraduate STEM students. Additionally, this project will provide support for the principal investigator, a new STEM educational researcher, to learn about the psychometrics needed to conduct this work. This professional development will include graduate classes in statistics and collaboration/mentorship from experts in psychometrics and statistics.The goal of this project is to develop and validate a new mindset scale for use with undergraduate STEM students in accordance with established standards for psychological measurement. This work will be conducted in three phases over two years. First, a large, diverse sample of undergraduate STEM students will be interviewed about how they think about intelligence, to refine the conceptual and operational definitions of mindset at the undergraduate level. Based on these results, survey items will be drafted and refined through cognitive interviews and sorting activities. The internal structure of the measure will be tested by surveying a second, national sample of undergraduate STEM students and conducting item response theory analyses on their responses. Finally, the resulting nomological network (representation of interrelationships between concepts and observations) will be tested by administering the new mindset instrument along with measures of related and unrelated constructs. Testing the nomological network for a construct of interest means that it should be distinct from and related in expected ways to other constructs. This new survey might be used by researchers to answer important questions about mindset in undergraduate students. Alternatively, instructors could use it to learn about the mindsets of undergraduates in their classes and tailor their instruction accordingly. Finally, practitioners could use it to develop and evaluate interventions that aim to increase student success by encouraging students to shift towards a growth mindset. The project is supported through the EHR Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) competition that is designed to build individuals' capacity to carry out high quality fundamental STEM education research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, and STEM workforce development.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.