Research: Characterizing Gendered Socialization of Early Career Civil Engineers to Promote Inclusive Practices and Retention of a Diverse Workforce

迫切需要更好地了解工程职业的高流失率，特别是在他们工作的第一个十年内。因此，本项目将研究新人土木工程师的组织社会化，并将特别关注社会化过程中如何性别化的方式，有助于从职业的磨损。它将建立在以前关于同一主题的纵向研究的基础上，并将继续长期的工作，通过完善和扩大一个由专家支持的、针对工程的性别社会化模式，发展适应工程专业的文化进程，使其与交叉的非规范性身份相兼容。综合教育和研究计划将通过优先重视未充分利用的性别理论的重要性，让男性参与性别研究和系统变革，以及解决工程工作场所研究中的差距，对工程教育领域产生巨大影响。除了这个项目建立在原来的研究，没有现有的研究系统地研究了新来的男性和女性工程师的性别组织社会化经验。最终，该项目将促进新工程师社会化的更大公平，以减少工程职业的自然减员，扩大代表性不足的群体对工程的参与。此外，该项目还将同时促进工程教育、工程研究、组织研究和性别研究等领域，其目标是完善和扩大土木工程工作场所性别社会化的理论模型，并为更具包容性的社会化创造基于研究的干预措施。这项研究将涉及两组参与者。第一组将是来自全国各地的早期职业土木工程师，他们自2018年以来一直参与类似的研究。他们在工程公司工作，也在联邦、州和县各级政府组织工作。当项目开始时，他们将在他们职业生涯的第五和第六年。对于这一群体，将通过每两个月一次的个人社会化调查（在上一个项目过程中开发的工具）和每年两次的深入访谈，纵向收集三年的混合方法数据。调查和访谈将探讨他们在工作场所的经历，包括他们最大的挑战，他们正在学习的最重要的事情，他们最难忘的互动，以及他们与同事的关系。调查结果将用于完善和扩展基于职业生涯最初几年创建的模型。第二组将是离开工程专业从事非工程职业的前早期职业土木工程师。他们将参加一个一次性的面试，将探讨他们离开工程的原因，思维过程和时间表导致这一决定，他们现在对他们的决定的看法，工作经验，可能会有所作为，以及大学可以更好地为他们做好准备的方式。从这些数据中，将创建一个类型学的原因离开和组织社会化因素发挥了作用。然后将该类型与现有的理论模型和测量工具进行比较，以根据那些离开土木工程的人的经验确定需要对两者进行哪些补充。项目成果将包括确定和描述组织社会化的各个方面（例如，（a）在性别方面，包括在性别方面如何相互交织。研究成果和基于它们的模型将被用来创建专业的土木工程专业形成材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得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的支持。

There is a pressing need to better understand the high rates of attrition from engineering careers, particularly within their first decade on the job. Therefore, this project will examine the organizational socialization of newcomer civil engineers and will focus specifically on how the socialization process is gendered in ways that contribute to attrition from the profession. It will build on a previous longitudinal study on the same topic and will continue the long-term work of developing processes of acculturation to the engineering profession that are compatible with intersecting non-normative identities by refining and expanding an empirically-supported and engineering-specific model of gendered socialization. The integrated education and research plan will yield a dramatic impact on the field of engineering education by prioritizing the importance of underutilized gender theories, enrolling men in gender research and systems change, and addressing the gap in research on engineering workplaces. Other than the original study that this project builds on, no existing research has systematically examined the gendered organizational socialization experiences of newcomer men and women engineers. Ultimately, this project will facilitate greater equity in the socialization of newcomer engineers in order to decrease attrition from engineering careers and broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering. Furthermore, this project will contribute simultaneously to the fields of engineering education, engineering studies, organizational studies, and gender studies, among others.The objectives of this project will be to refine and expand a theoretical model of gendered socialization in civil engineering workplaces and to create research-based interventions for more inclusive socialization. The study will involve two groups of participants. Group 1 will be early career civil engineers from around the country who have been participating in a similar study since 2018. They work in engineering firms, as well as in governmental organizations at the federal, state, and county levels. When the project begins, they will be in the fifth and sixth years of their careers. For this group, mixed-methods data will be collected longitudinally for three years through bi-monthly Individual Socialization Logs (an instrument developed during the course of the previous project) and twice-yearly in-depth interviews. The survey and interviews will explore their experiences in the workplace, including their biggest challenges, the most important things they are learning, their most memorable interactions, and their relationships with co-workers. Findings will be used to refine and expand the model that was created based on the first few years of their careers. Group 2 will be former early career civil engineers who left the engineering profession for a non-engineering career. They will participate in a one-time interview that will explore the reasons they left engineering, thought processes and timelines leading to that decision, what they think about their decisions now, workplace experiences that could have made a difference, and ways university could have better prepared them. From this data, a typology of the reasons for leaving and organizational socialization factors that played a role will be created. That typology will then be compared to the existing theoretical model and survey instrument to determine what additions need to be made to both in light of the experiences of those who have left civil engineering. Project outcomes will include identification and characterization of facets of organizational socialization (e.g., practices, processes, relationships and social networks) that are gendered, including how they are gendered intersectionally. Research findings and the model based on them will be utilized to create professional formation materials for civil engineering professionals. The professional formation materials will be implemented nationally and locally.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.