A Belonging Intervention to Improve STEM Outcomes for Women and Underrepresented Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial at 22 Colleges

本课题是一项针对大学生的社会心理干预的大型随机对照试验。社会归属感干预旨在使学生在过渡到大学的过程中的斗争经历正常化，并提供富有成效的策略，帮助学生将最初的挑战与调整视为相对常见的，而不是缺乏归属感的表现。该项目研究了归属感干预对STEM课程和专业中代表性不足的学生的成就和保留的实验效果，其中有22所学院和大学的4万多名学生。该项目将探讨归属感干预的效果如何根据学生的情境线索而变化？本地STEM设置和这些提示的可见性。它检查了干预对STEM持久性和性能的实验效果（例如，STEM成绩，主修，保留和毕业）在几个污名化和代表性不足的群体：妇女，代表性不足的有色人种学生，第一代学生，残疾学生和英语学习者。与其他专业相比，STEM专业和课程似乎对代表性不足的群体构成了更大的威胁;但它们也为美国STEM劳动力提供了高薪工作和贡献的机会。因此，本项目将通过对造成身份威胁的情境线索的考察，以及对减少身份威胁的干预措施的实验研究，重点关注在代表性不足的群体中提高STEM的持久性和表现。本项目将在22所大学的40，000多名一年级学生的随机对照试验中，调查来自STEM代表性不足的群体（即，妇女、种族/少数民族、第一代大学生、残疾学生和英语学习者）受到情境线索的影响，这些线索表明他们的群体在STEM环境中可能不受重视或不被期望成功。过去几十年的研究表明，这些社会身份威胁的感觉会对学生的大学经历产生负面影响，降低学习成绩和坚持性，并导致学生质疑他们在STEM和大学中的归属感。研究人员将评估大规模预科归属感干预在提高学生在STEM课程和领域的学术持久性和表现方面的有效性。治疗传达了逆境和非归属感是过渡到大学的规范和暂时的经验，可以通过采取富有成效的社会和学术策略来改善。该项目还将通过研究STEM学术成功如何受情境线索（例如，学生和教师之间的数字表示），以及线索的可见性（例如，这种代表性是否容易评估，如妇女，或更难评估，如有学习障碍的学生）。研究人员将调查这些影响如何在广泛访问和更有选择性的大学以及过去的研究表明受到STEM中身份威胁情境线索影响的群体中发挥作用，并且这些群体在STEM和非STEM环境中表现出社会心理干预的改善结果。

This project consists of a large randomized-controlled trial (RCT) of a social psychological intervention with college students. The social-belonging intervention seeks to normalize the students' experience of struggle in the transition to college and provides productive strategies to help students perceive initial challenges with adjustment as relatively commonplace and not indicative of a lack of belonging. The project examines the experimental effects of the belonging intervention on the achievement and retention of underrepresented students in STEM courses and majors with more than 40,000 students across 22 colleges and universities. The project will explore how the effects of the belonging intervention vary based on the situational cues in students? local STEM settings and the visibility of those cues. It examines the experimental effects of the intervention on STEM persistence and performance (e.g., STEM grades, majoring, retention and graduation) among several stigmatized and underrepresented groups: women, underrepresented students of color, first-generation students, students with disabilities, and English-language learners. STEM majors and courses appear to constitute more threatening contexts for underrepresented groups than do other majors; yet they also offer opportunities for higher-paying jobs and contributions to the U.S. STEM workforce. Therefore, this project will focus on enhancing STEM persistence and performance among underrepresented groups through examination of the situational cues that engender identity threat and the experimental investigation of an identity-threat reducing intervention.In a randomized controlled trial with over 40,000 first-year students at 22 colleges, this project will investigate how students from STEM-underrepresented groups (i.e., women, racial/ethnic minorities, first-generation college students, students with disabilities, and English-language learners) are affected by situational cues that signal their group may not be valued or expected to succeed in STEM settings. These feelings of social identity threat have been shown in decades of past research to negatively shape students' experiences of college, depress academic performance and persistence, and cause students to question their belonging in STEM and in college more generally. The researchers will assess the effectiveness of a large-scale pre-matriculation belonging intervention in improving the academic persistence and performance of students in STEM classes and fields. The treatment communicates that adversity and feelings of non-belonging are normative and temporary experiences in the transition to college that can improve by adopting productive social and academic strategies. The project will also investigate the boundary conditions of cue-induced identity threat by examining how STEM academic success is moderated by situational cues (e.g., numerical representation among students and faculty), and the visibility of the cues (e.g., whether such representation is easily assessed, as among women, or more difficult to assess, as among students with learning disabilities). The researchers will investigate how these effects play out in both broad-access and more selective colleges and among groups that past research has shown are affected by identity-threatening situational cues in STEM and who have shown improved outcomes from social-psychological interventions in STEM and non-STEM contexts.