RAPID: Assessing the impact of Harassment and other Negative Events on Inclusion of Undergraduate Students in STEM

有必要了解性骚扰和性别骚扰对STEM女性职业生涯的普遍程度、影响和来源。这些事件会对职业生涯产生累加的、累积的影响。这种累积的逆境是如何影响女性的，什么时候会导致她们完全离开STEM ？虽然这个话题已经被详细研究过，但人们对骚扰、短期行为和长期结果之间的关系，以及影响大学反应的结构性问题，都缺乏了解。拟议中的研究将通过跟踪学生的整个四年本科大学经历来解决这个问题，并将短期行为、心理健康和体育活动的详细测量与定性数据结合起来。该分析将对政策制定者有用，将帮助临床医生开发新的治疗方法，并最终支持干预设计。2018年，华盛顿大学（University of Washington）的一个团队推出了UWEXP，旨在研究工程专业本科生在整个四年大学生活中的情况。该项目的独特之处在于，它使用被动传感（来自手机和fitbit），结合两周一次问卷的自我报告答案和定期更长时间的调查，以更好地了解学生的体验。不幸的是，对2018年试点数据的分析发现，暴力、性侵犯、嘲笑和性别骚扰的水平出乎意料地高。这些数据包含了关于这些负面经历的独特详细的被动感知信息。为了更好地了解这些事件的影响，尽快从研究参与者那里收集更多信息是至关重要的，尤其是当学生还在大学就读时。从后续访谈和新的分析中可以获得重要的信息，收集和研究连续四年的数据将特别具有说明性。由于这些原因，RAPID基金被要求在2019-2020学年继续UWEXP项目，而团队继续为计划的四年数据收集进行长期筹款。该团队将采访经历过骚扰的参与者，了解他们经历的时间轴；从2018年和2019年队列的参与者中再收集一年的数据，以便对影响进行纵向分析；研究骚扰对参与者在事件发生后立即和随时间的行为的影响，以及社会支持和复原力等保护性因素的影响；并开发算法，可以检测由骚扰引起的行为变化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is need to understand the prevalence, impact, and source of sexual and gender harassment on the careers of women in STEM. Such events which can have an additive, cumulative effect on careers. How does this cumulative adversity affect women and when does it cause them to leave STEM altogether? While this topic has been studied in great detail, there is a lack of understanding of the relationship between harassment, short-term behavior, and long-term outcomes, as well as the structural issues that impact the university response. The proposed study will address this by following students through their entire four-year undergraduate university experience, and combining detailed measures of short-term behavior, mental health, and physical activity with qualitative data. The analysis will be of use to policy makers, will help clinicians develop new therapeutic approaches, and will ultimately support intervention design.In 2018, a team at the University of Washington launched UWEXP, which aims to study undergraduate engineering students during their entire four-year college experience, and which is unique in that it uses passive sensing (from phones and Fitbits), combined with self-reported answers to bi-weekly questionnaires and periodic longer surveys, to better understand the student experience. Analysis of the 2018 pilot data has unfortunately uncovered an unexpectedly high level of violence, sexual assault, ridicule and gender harassment. The data contains uniquely-detailed passively-sensed information around such negative experiences. To best understand the impact of these events, it is critical to collect more information from study participants as soon as possible, especially while the students are still enrolled at the university. Important information can be obtained from follow up interviews and new analysis, and it would be especially illustrative to collect and study four consecutive years of data. For these reasons, RAPID funds are requested to continue the UWEXP project during the 2019-2020 academic year, while the team continues longer-term fund-raising for the planned four-year data collection. The team will interview participants who experienced harassment about the timeline of their experience; collect another year of data from the participants in the 2018 and 2019 cohorts to make longitudinal analyses of impact possible; study the impact of harassment on participants' behavior immediately following the event and over time, as well as the impact of protective factors such as social support and resilience; and develop algorithms that can detect changes in behavior induced by harassment.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.