Abt Associates, together with Harvard Medical School's Office for Diversity and Community Partnership (DCP) and the Biomedical Science Careers Program (BSCP), using the rich resources of both partners, propose to assess directly the effects and perceived importance of multiple factors on entry into and persistence in biomedical research of minority students at multiple points in their education and career pathways. Most studies of underrepresented minority students in biomedical research (and other math and science disciplines) usually focus on minority students at specific time points in their educational preparation -elementary and secondary school, college, graduate school - and the factors that affect their success at that particular time. This research, on the other hand, examines the full educational and career pathways of minority students, and assesses the relative importance of factors at each step along the way. Follow-up surveys and interviews with select respondents will be conducted on a sample of minority students who evidenced interest and motivation to pursue a career in biomedicine in high school (and participated in the Biomedical Sciences Career Program between 1992 and 2004). The BSCP's meticulously maintained data base provides us with solid initial data on the high school, college, and graduate students who participated in their Program between 1992 and 2004, as well as excellent contact information, which will allow us to pursue their educational and career pathways through follow-up surveys and interviews. A statistical modeling technique called survival analysis will be employed to: model involvement in a pathway that ultimately leads to a career biomedical research; predict whether individuals will exit from this pathway, and when they are most likely to exit; model the factors associated with persistence or exiting; and test similarities and differences for Black and Hispanic participants and for females. ? ?
