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.
