Over the past seven years data have been collected on 250 young women, ages 11-20 after they attended a summer camp for high achieving girls. This research project provides an opportunity to extend and redirect the current database for a study of STEM career choice. The research questions related to the STEM Career Choice Model are: 1. How do interests in STEM careers affect high achieving young women's experiences and educational preparation over time? 2. How do experiences, over time, affect high achieving young women's interests and educational preparation? 3. How does the educational preparation of high achieving young women, over time, affect their interests and experiences? 4. What are the critical events within high achieving young women's experience, interest, and education that affect STEM career decisions? The model will be tested to understand how these factors interact with one another, over time, in an iterative, recursive, non-linear fashion. Coupled with the identification of critical events, this study will provide greater insight into women's STEM career choices.
Intellectual Merit-- Findings will more fully define the factors of the model and how these factors interact to achieve the increased participation of women in STEM careers. The findings will map individual career trajectories that are taken by high achieving young women from middle grades into gradate school or their careers. The study assumes that there are identifiable critical events that occur over time that attract and retain high achieving young women to STEM careers. This beginning pipeline approach collects data annually at regular intervals, and the data are easily recalled and retrieved by the subjects as they remain in or leak from the pipeline. This approach of working toward a STEM career is somewhat different and more accurate than working back from the end of the pipeline asking a STEM college major or graduate student to recall their personal histories from middle school or high school.
Broader Impact-- There are very few, if any, longitudinal studies of high achieving young women from middle grades into graduate school or first careers. The new data has the potential to provide researchers with information that may lead to a better understanding and conceptualization of STEM career choice in terms of critical events within the factors of interest, experience, and education for high achieving women from ages 11-24. The broader impact will emerge from the identification of the nature, timing, frequency, and form of these critical events. With this knowledge timely and motivating environments and educational experiences may be developed in a cost-effective manner leading to increased interest among young women in STEM careers.
