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

迫切需要更好地理解工程行业的高流失率，特别是在他们工作的头十年。因此，本项目将审查新来的土木工程师的组织社会化，并将特别关注社会化过程如何以有助于专业人员流失的方式进行性别划分。它将建立在以前关于同一主题的纵向研究的基础上，并将继续开展长期工作，通过完善和扩展经验支持的、针对工程的性别社会化模式，发展适应工程职业的文化适应过程，使之与非规范性身份相交。综合教育和研究计划将对工程教育领域产生重大影响，优先考虑未得到充分利用的性别理论的重要性，招募男性参与性别研究和系统改革，并解决工程工作场所研究方面的差距。除了本项目所基于的原始研究之外，现有的研究还没有系统地考察新来的男性和女性工程师的性别组织社会化经历。最终，该项目将促进新来的工程师社会化方面的更大公平，以减少工程职业的流失，并扩大未被充分代表的群体对工程的参与。此外，该项目将同时为工程教育、工程研究、组织研究和性别研究等领域做出贡献。该项目的目标将是完善和扩展土木工程工作场所性别社会化的理论模型，并创建基于研究的干预措施，以实现更具包容性的社会化。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年以来一直参与一项类似的研究。他们在工程公司工作，也在联邦、州和县各级的政府组织工作。当该项目开始时，他们将处于职业生涯的第五和第六年。对于这一群体，将通过两个月一次的个人社会化记录(前一个项目过程中开发的一种工具)和一年两次的深入访谈，在三年内纵向收集混合方法的数据。调查和访谈将探讨他们在工作场所的经历，包括他们面临的最大挑战，他们正在学到的最重要的东西，他们最难忘的互动，以及他们与同事的关系。研究结果将被用来改进和扩展基于他们职业生涯头几年创建的模型。第二组将是前早期职业土木工程师，他们离开了工程专业，转而从事非工程职业。他们将参加一次一次性面试，探讨他们离开工程学的原因、导致他们做出这一决定的思维过程和时间表、他们现在对自己的决定的看法、可能会产生影响的工作经历，以及大学可以如何更好地为他们做好准备。从这些数据中，将创建离职原因和发挥作用的组织社会化因素的类型学。然后将这种类型学与现有的理论模型和测量工具进行比较，以确定需要根据那些离开土木工程的人的经验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，做法、流程、关系和社会网络)，包括它们是如何交叉性别划分的。研究成果和基于这些成果的模型将被用于为土木工程专业人员创建专业形成材料。专业形成材料将在全国和地方实施。这一奖项反映了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。

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.