Measuring Mindset in Undergraduate STEM Students

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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.