GSE/RES: A Longitudinal, Mixed-Method Test of a Social Cognitive Model of Women's Adjustment to STEM Majors: Building an Empirical Foundation for Theory-Based Interventions

该项目涉及一组“混合方法”研究，以检验社会认知职业理论的一个新的模型扩展(SCCT；Lent，Brown，&Amp；Hackett，1994)。事实证明，SCCT是一个启发式框架，用于了解女性和男性对各种学术和职业领域的兴趣、选择以及表现和坚持不懈。这个模型将Promise作为一个综合的框架，将许多因素(如个性、认知、社会和行为)结合在一起，这些因素已经被单独证明可以预测或促进积极适应。特别是，本项目将使用纵向设计来测试新的学业满意度和适应的SCCT模型，重点是在男女向STEM环境过渡的形成期--大学的头两年--期间社会认知变量之间的动态关系。该项目的这一部分将涉及开发或调整心理测量工具，对大西洋中部地区两所以白人为主的大学和两所历史上以黑人为主的大学的学生进行大样本抽样，以及结构方程建模程序。在一项配套研究中，参与者将使用半定性的方法进行询问，以更深入地探索他们如何体验学术环境，以及他们使用什么策略来应对作为STEM专业的过渡。马里兰大学、摩根州立大学、弗吉尼亚理工大学和霍华德大学已经同意参与这项研究。智力价值：拟议项目旨在通过以下方式促进对妇女和男子如何适应STEM环境的科学理解：(A)测试关于满意度和适应的新的SCCT模型；(B)评估模型数据在性别和体制背景下的一致性；(C)检查男女在特定模型路径上的差异；(D)探索妇女对环境资源和障碍以及个人/社会应对战略的看法。该项目将填补以往研究中的空白，将SCCT应用于妇女对STEM领域的适应。更广泛的影响：这些发现可以为教育干预的设计提供参考，通过关注可以修改的变量和过程，促进女性对STEM专业的积极适应和留住。项目小组将(A)通过在专业会议和期刊出版物上的陈述向科学和教育受众宣传研究成果；(B)向其他研究人员提供作为项目一部分开发的仪器；(C)建立一个由社会科学家、物理学家和工程师组成的多学科地方网络，他们可以就如何增加妇女和其他代表性不足群体在科学、技术和经济领域的代表性进行更多研究；以及(D)为女性和少数族裔研究生提供研究培训机会。

This project involves a set of "mixed method" studies testing a new model extension of social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). SCCT has proven to be a heuristic framework for understanding women's and men's interest in, choice of, and performance and persistence in various academic and career fields. This model offers promise as an integrative framework, bringing together a number of factors (e.g., personality, cognitive, social, and behavioral) that have been shown individually to predict or promote positive adaptation. In particular, this project will test, using a longitudinal design, the new SCCT model of academic satisfaction and adjustment, focusing on the dynamic relations among the social cognitive variables during a formative period in women's and men's transition to the STEM environment: their first two years in college. This part of the project will involve development or adaptation of psychological instrumentation, a large sample of students at two predominantly White and two historically Black universities in the mid-Atlantic region, and structural equation modeling procedures. In a companion study, participants will be queried using semi-qualitative methods to explore in more depth how they experience the academic environment and what strategies they use to cope with their transition as STEM majors. The University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Virginia Tech, and Howard University have agreed to participate in this study. Intellectual Merit: The proposed project is intended to advance scientific understanding of how women and men adjust to the STEM environment by (a) testing the new SCCT model of satisfaction and adjustment, (b) assessing invariance of model-data fit across gender and institutional context, (c) examining differences in particular model paths for women versus men, and (d) exploring women's perception of environmental resources and barriers and personal/social coping strategies. The project will address gaps in prior research applying SCCT to women's adjustment to STEM fields. Broader Impacts: The findings can inform the design of educational interventions to promote women's positive adaptation to, and retention within, STEM majors by focusing on variables and processes that are amenable to modification. The project team will (a) communicate the findings to scientific and educational audiences via presentations at professional meetings and journal publications; (b) make instrumentation developed as part of the project available to other researchers; (c) build a local, multi-disciplinary network of social scientists, physical scientists, and engineers who can pursue additional research on how to increase representation of women and other underrepresented groups in STEM fields; and (d) provide research training opportunities for female and ethnic minority graduate students.