GSE/RES: Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE)

美国的高中生接触到许多课堂策略和活动，以及课外项目，旨在提高女性追求科学和工程职业的兴趣。教师可以自由地选择如何使科学对女性更友好，以及选择使用的方法，这使得进行控制教育实验来衡量效果变得困难。流行病学方法对于挖掘大学一年级学生对科学和工程感兴趣的预测因素的背景是理想的，同时控制人口统计学差异。本研究将以全国4000名四年制和两年制大学生为研究对象，考察高中学生接触各种干预措施与他们后来坚持选课和选择专业之间的联系，特别关注女性坚持学习的预测因素。虽然大学里有很多事情可以劝阻学生在大学一年级就选择STEM专业，但相对而言，很少有人是新被这些领域吸引的。一旦确定了一个专业，男性的流失率就会比女性高。然而，最初对大学感兴趣的女性人数比男性少几倍。我们看到了一个巨大的机会，可以确定影响女性在高中时对STEM职业兴趣的策略。这项研究有能力揭示和支持最有前途的教育实践的使用，包括许多由美国国家科学基金会资助的项目开发和传播的，在我们国家多方面的教育体系中。该项目的智力价值在于，它将提供和传播各种新颖和传统方法的有效性，以吸引女学生进入目前存在相当大争议的STEM职业。来自公共卫生和医学的流行病学技术提供了一种成本效益高且易于理解的方法，可以在控制众多人口统计学和背景因素的同时检验多种假设。这项研究将使用对学生、教授和教师的在线跟踪调查来收集敏感的、更定性的数据来完成分析。该项目更广泛的影响包括测量各种传统和新的教学实践和活动的效果。随着公众对女性科学家和工程师在劳动力中所占比例不足的争论愈演愈烈，有必要对这个国家课堂上的各种替代方案的成效进行一次考察。衡量这些方法的相对优点，同时控制关键的背景和人口因素，将有助于教师和学校决定为所有学生提供优质科学教育的最佳方法，特别是那些目前在STEM职业中代表性不足的群体。大学将从确定最有效的项目中受益，以便在当地社区开展自己的推广活动。

High school students in the U.S. are exposed to many in-class strategies and activities, as well as extra-curricula programs that are aimed at increasing the interest of females in pursuing careers in science and engineering. Teachers' freedom to choose to address the issue of making science friendlier to females and to choose the methods to employ makes it difficult to conduct controlled educational experiments to measure effectiveness. Epidemiological methods are ideal for mining the backgrounds of first-year college students for predictors of interest in science and engineering, while controlling for demographic differences. This study will examine the connection between the exposure of high school students to a variety of interventions and their later persistence in course-taking and selection of major for 4,000 four-year and two-year college students nationwide, focusing deliberately upon predictors of persistence for women. While much can happen in college to dissuade students from STEM majors in their first college year, relatively few are newly attracted to these fields. Once declaring a major, attrition of males is somewhat greater than it is for females. However, the number of females with initial interest in college is several times smaller than for males. We see a great opportunity in identifying the strategies that impact female interest in STEM careers while in high school. This study has the capability to both reveal and bolster the use of the most promising educational practices, including many developed and disseminated by NSF-funded programs, in our nation's multi-faceted educational system.The intellectual merit of the project is that it will provide and disseminate evidence for the efficacy of a variety of both novel and traditional approaches for attracting female students to STEM careers for which considerable current dispute is ongoing. Epidemiological techniques from public health and medicine offer a cost effective and well understood methodology to simultaneously test multiple hypotheses while controlling for a multitude of demographic and background factors. The study will use online follow-up surveys of students, professors, and teachers to gather sensitive and more qualitative data to complete the analysis. The broader impacts of the project include the measurement of the effect of a variety of both traditional and new teaching practices and activities. With public debate raging about the underrepresentation of female scientists and engineers in the workforce, there is a need for an examination of the fruitfulness of the universe of alternatives in the nation's classrooms. Measuring the relative merits of such approaches, while controlling for critical background and demographic factors, will help teachers and schools decide on the optimal methods for providing a quality science education to all of their students, especially those who are in groups currently underrepresented in STEM careers. Colleges will benefit from the identification of the most effective programs for their own outreach activities in their local communities.