Understanding Interventions That Encourage Minorities to Pursue Research Careers Summary of a Workshop (2007) / Chapter Skim
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2 Examples of Previous Research
2 Examples of Previous Research
Pages 7-23
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From page 7... ...
Because many of those interested in these questions are biomedical researchers who may not be steeped in social science viewpoints on these issues, the planning committee constructed an early session in the workshop to provide a varied set of lenses for participants to think more broadly about this kind of work -- and to help consider themes for future study. The perspectives offered at the workshop -- and in this summary -- do not provide an exhaustive set, but they help to provide a broader set of questions and approaches for thinking about these issues.
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From page 8... ...
pipeline, noting that it serves as a template with which to view and develop interventions designed to encourage minorities to enter research careers. SCCT draws heavily from the more general social cognitive theory of the Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura.
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From page 9... ...
In a general population of college students, women at the college level and below tend to report significantly lower self-efficacy beliefs at math compared with men. However, the same tendency is not exhibited in more specialized populations, such as engineering students.
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From page 10... ...
In a study of students at a predominantly white university, Lent and his colleagues found "that SCCT variables were well predictive of goals and actual persistence in engineering over a three-semester sequence." This model was equally good at predicting choice and persistence goals in engineering majors when extended to two historically black universities. Lent and his coworkers are now conducting a large-scale longitudinal study of computer science and computer engineering students at multiple predominantly white and historically black colleges and universities around the country. This theoretical work has suggested particular intervention points and approaches, according to Lent.
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From page 11... ...
"So you can think of it as a pure cost-benefit calculation made by what we in economics always talk about -- the rational and perfectly informed actor." Of course, as Preston noted, "we do understand that not every individual is totally rational or perfectly informed." Costs, which Preston said are relatively easy to estimate, are for tangible expenses -- such as tuition, room, board, books, and foregone earnings -- and they occur at the time of the investment. Benefits, which can include future wages and future income streams, in contrast, can be much harder to predict.
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From page 12... ...
If mentoring programs are thought to make a difference, for example, economists will try to analyze whether being mentored influences the probability of investment in human capital. This could be done for majority and for minority students to see if there are differences in the effects of mentoring.
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From page 13... ...
For example, student outcomes could be measured from different schools, some of which have an institutionalized mentoring system and others that do not. Such experiments require thought, time, creativity, and funding, said Preston, but "economists can really make some interesting inroads if they take up this challenge." Social Identity and Stereotype Threat Claude Steele, director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, professor of psychology and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, and his colleagues have focused their research on two main themes.
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From page 14... ...
Stereotype threat arises when a person is in a situation where a negative stereotype applies. A good example is women in mathematics. In a series of experiments done by Steele and his colleagues, women and men who were equally skilled in math were given a very difficult math test one at a time in a testing room. Women in this situation tended to underperform.
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From page 15... ...
. then you may see some decrements in performance." The effects of stereotype threat also were observed among African Americans taking a test using Raven's Progressive Matrices, a type of IQ test. When told that the test was to measure IQ, African American students dramatically underperformed compared with white students.
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From page 16... ...
If the cues change, performance can change. The most important change that has to happen, according to Steele, is for women and minorities to have a sense that they belong in a particular setting.
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Particular interventions can dramatically shape how students respond to cues. In a study done by Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen at Yale University, African American and white students watched and then discussed a videotape of an African American student talking about how alienated and out of place he had felt at Yale.
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From page 18... ...
The survey asked students about their background, undergraduate and doctoral program experiences, finances, aspirations, and expectations for graduate study. Conclusions drawn from the survey were published in the book Three Magic Letters: Getting to Ph.D. One critical factor Nettles and Millett examined was how students are supported during their doctoral education.
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From page 19... ...
Yet being a research assistant can have a profound effect on a student's experiences in graduate school. For students with a research assistantship, Nettles pointed out, "we observe an increase in students' social interactions with peers, their academic interactions with faculty, their interactions with their faculty advisers, their presenting papers and publishing articles, and their overall research productivity." Somewhat surprisingly, a research assistantship did not influence students' time to degree, their overall satisfaction with their doctoral programs, or social interactions with faculty.
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From page 20... ...
Publishing articles actually was associated with an increased rate of progress in their doctoral programs and reduced the time to degree. Research on Existing Interventions Existing intervention programs can have research components that produce broadly applicable information.
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From page 21... ...
For example, a 2003 meeting on mentoring found that relatively little was known about mentoring specifically for STEM students. "We know that STEM core mentoring appears to be more prevalent in the after-school programs at the middle and high school level, but the level of systematic STEM career and workforce mentoring is not high in undergraduate research programs," George said. However, support networks for women, including students, in STEM areas in academia, industry, and government are useful in AAAS created a Science Mentoring Research website that followed on the 2003 meeting: |
From page 22... ...
Other Research Initiatives Several other important lines of research were mentioned more briefly by presenters and attendees at the workshop. Two described here are conducted by current grantees of the Efficacy of Interventions program; additional interventions and research studies are discussed elsewhere in this summary.10 For example, Reba Page, professor of education at the University of California, Riverside, conducts ethnographic studies of mentoring, journal clubs, research in labs, and so forth to understand how those components of intervention programs play out in practice.
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From page 23... ...
As Daryl E Chubin, planning committee member and director of the AAAS Center for Advancing Science and Engineering Capacity, said, many kinds of investigations can produce information needed to advance minorities in research careers.
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