GSE/RES: Trends in the Determinants of Gender Segregation Across STEM Majors, 1976 - 2006

智力价值：加州大学洛杉矶分校正在进行一项研究，使用过去30年来全国大学生入学的数据，以促进对攻读特定STEM专业的女性和男性的特征的理解，以及这些特征在STEM领域和时间上的变化。这项研究使用了合作机构研究项目(CIRP)新生调查的数据，这是一项由加州大学洛杉矶分校高等教育研究所进行的全国性纵向研究。该工具包括数十项相关指标，包括：学业和数学能力的自我评级、高中学业成绩和准备、专业选择、学业和职业目标、生活目标、价值取向和人口背景。这项研究采取了一种独特的方法：(A)按性别和STEM领域对结果进行分类；(B)纳入30多年的数据；以及(C)使用回归分解，这是一种主要用于经济学和社会学的统计方法，以了解这种变化的性质。广泛的影响：了解选择特定STEM专业的人的特征以及这些特征如何随着时间的推移发生变化，对于了解和改进招募不同人口的女性和男性进入STEM劳动力队伍的努力至关重要。先前的研究已经确定了影响大学女性在STEM领域持续代表性不足的关键因素，包括准备、价值观、心理因素和结构性障碍。目前尚不清楚的是，STEM兴趣的决定因素是否随着时间的推移而发生了变化，并以不同的方式改变了男女之间的关系。此外，人们对参与的决定因素在具体的科技、经济和经济领域有何不同认识有限，鉴于参与的性别差距从严重的(工程和计算机科学)到最低的(生物科学)，这一问题特别重要。将通过制作专业质量的执行摘要、最终报告和五个特定学科的报告来提高项目的知名度，这些报告可在两个流量较大的网站上查阅：高等教育研究所和苏迪科夫家庭教育与新媒体研究所。

Intellectual Merit: The University of California Los Angeles is conducting a study using national data on entering college students over the past three decades to advance understanding of the characteristics of women and men who pursue specific STEM majors and how those characteristics vary across STEM fields and over time. This study uses data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey, a national longitudinal study of entering college students conducted by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. The instrument includes dozens of relevant measures, including: self-ratings of academic and mathematical abilities, high school academic achievement and preparation, major choice, academic and career goals, life goals, value orientations, and demographic background. This study takes a unique approach by: (a) disaggregating results by gender and STEM field; (b) incorporating data from over three decades; and (c) using regression decomposition, a statistical method used primarily in economics and sociology, to understand the nature of such changes.Broader Impacts: Knowledge about the characteristics of who chooses particular STEM majors and how those characteristics have changed over time is critical to inform and improve efforts to recruit a diverse population of women and men into the STEM workforce. Prior research has identified key factors affecting college women's persistent underrepresentation in STEM fields including preparation, values, psychological factors, and structural barriers. What remains unknown is whether the determinants of STEM interest have changed over time and in different ways for women and men. Further, there is limited understanding of how determinants of participation differ by specific STEM field, a question of particular importance given that the gender gap in participation ranges from severe (engineering and computer science) to minimal (biological sciences). Project visibility will be enhanced through the production of a professional-quality executive summary, final report, and five discipline-specific reports, available on two high-traffic websites: the Higher Education Research Institute and the Sudikoff Family Institute for Education & New Media.